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This episode contains mild swearing.

Welcome to the Guardian Long Reed, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture,

politics and new thinking. For the text version of this and all our long reads go to the Guardian.com

forward slash long read. Sanctuary I grew up during the troubles and have been seeking a place of peace ever since.

Written and Red by Darren Anderson. I would lie awake for hours when I was a little boy, holding out against surrender to sleep,

listening to the helicopters drone above our neighborhood. After the government dismantled the border checkpoints in the late 1990s, including one at the end of our street, the watch tower the last part to go, a curious series of visitations took place. They began as a

deviation in the hum of a city night and steadily grew. Even though it was mechanical, it had purpose, intention

behind it. As the source of the sound grew closer, a light would grow in the corner of my room next to a pile of books.

Beneath the switch enlarging, then turning wild and tesoract on the ceiling. It became clear the home that I was hearing was the sound of pursuit. A hunt was on. Boy racers, joy riders, hood stealing from their own, power militaries and some mission.

The cops in the army were hot on their trail, gonsites wavering.

If the runners got to the border, the authorities could not follow.

I often reached the window just in time to see the red tail lights of a car vanishing into the

mist of rain, leaving a breach in the night air like water in the wake of a ship. If they made it over that borderline,

they were safe, protected by a partition invented by colonists earlier in the century.

But the curve leading up to our housing estate and beyond

to freedom was elongated and easy to misjudge, especially if you were driving at

high speed in the perpetual rain of a continent's age.

Some did not make it.

On several occasions I found myself inside those cars with acquaintances, friends of friends, hitchhiking.

Only once had I the naivety to ask, Jesus lads, how can you afford a motor like this?

To a howling hyena chorus. Betraying my greenness in a town where

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