The devastation is the same but the spirit seems very different on thetwo sides of east Belfast's peace wall, writes Monika Unsworth
Removal vans packed with the belongings of people forced to leave their homes are a common sight in east Belfast these days. The driver of the one parked outside a little red-brick house in loyalist Cluan Place, however, starts unloading furniture and carrying it into the boarded-up property.
A small elderly woman watches anxiously as a mattress, then a chest-of-drawers are taken into the house.
"I couldn't stay in the new house the Housing Executive gave me. It had this flight of really steep steps and I have angina so I just couldn't manage there. They have told me to go back to my old house until they can find me a bungalow but they don't know when that is going to be. Actually, I was hoping you were the girl from the Housing Executive bringing me some news on that," she explains.
Anne, who does not want to give her surname - "I don't want the Housing Executive to think I'm ungrateful, I know they are doing their best" - was living in her Cluan Place home for almost 10 years when the vicious sectarian riots of the past two months between loyalists on her side of the peace wall and nationalists from Short Strand on the other side started to force people out of their houses.
The latest Housing Executive figures make grim reading. In three streets alone, loyalist Cluan Place and nationalist Clandeboye Drive and Clandeboye Gardens, 50 properties have been damaged as a result of the disturbances with 22 households classified as homeless. Two have been permanently rehoused and a further three offered alternative accommodation. Many people have just left to stay with relatives.
The scene in Cluan Place is one of devastation. Every house has its windows boarded up while the backs of the houses bordering the peace wall are more or less destroyed.
Most roofs have big gaping holes in them and there is debris everywhere.
Most of the chipboards covering the windows are draped in Union Jacks while one is adorned with a poster of King William.
The graffiti is equally telling: "Welcome to Hell", "F . . . the RA", "No Surrender".
The worst thing is living in constant fear, says Anne's son Robert, who has "flown the nest" but lives close by and looks in on his mother every day.
"Most nights you hardly dare to go to bed because you don't know what's going to happen, and even when nothing happens there is always this tension in the air. There's one bungalow over there where they don't even dare go to the toilet because there is a hole in the roof and they don't know what's going to come in through it next. The roof was set on fire by a petrol bomb but it sort of burned itself out, just leaving the hole."
"This used to be a lovely street, really friendly and really clean," his mother adds. "Now there is nobody left."
The street is indeed deserted except for one very elderly man standing outside his house looking up at the metal containers topped by barbed wire which the British army has erected in the past few days to strengthen the peace wall. As his house is closest to the wall the back is virtually an empty shell, Mr William Thompson explains.
"I usually get the brunt of any stuff coming over the wall but I always get it fixed up again, every time."
Has he applied for alternative accommodation? "No, they are not going to get me out of here. It probably takes ages to get another house and sure where would they put me anyway at my age?"
The holes in the roofs and boards across the windows are the same in nationalist Clandeboye Drive, but the atmosphere seems very different. There is no graffiti, most houses have colourful hanging baskets and people stand chatting in the street.
The Short Strand Community Centre, a bright, modern complex two streets from Clandeboye Drive, offers everything from mother-toddler groups to drug awareness classes and an after-school club.
Ms Margaret McDowell, who is from Co Laois but has lived in Belfast for 24 years, says people in the small nationalist enclave are used to sticking together.
"There is a great community spirit round here. The other day Joe O'Donnell [the local Sinn Féin councillor] gathered everybody round and said, 'The government are sending a presence into Cluan Place' and a wee woman here was outraged, shouting 'well, if they get presents we want some, too.' And everybody was in stitches for hours because he had meant a security force presence. If it wasn't for the laughter we would have despaired a long time ago."
The misery the residents are living in is, however, very real. Ms McDowell says she has been suffering from stress since a bag containing flammable liquid landed beside her, bursting open and splashing all over her.
"If they had thrown a petrol bomb straight after that would have been the end of me."
Much of her house is virtually uninhabitable, she says.
"I lived three weeks with a hole in my back roof before somebody came to repair it and half an hour after they left my house was pounded again and they had to come back and replace another 50 slates or so.
"The back rooms upstairs are destroyed, the carpets are water-logged and there are dirty, black stains everywhere. As for the smell, the house was stinking of petrol and paint-thinners for days after that bag came over the wall."
While she is "seriously thinking about taking a wee break at my mum's in Portlaoise", Ms McDowell has no intention of moving out.
"No way. People here have put so much money and sweat and love into doing up their homes. Nobody has got the right to come in and destroy that for them."
Her 15-year-old son Kevin is sent to get some of the stones that have been landing in the family's backyard. One is the size of a small brick but nicely rounded as if taken from a rockery.
Ms McDowell looks at it almost affectionately. "This is a nice one. I'll get it dated - it came over on the 16th - and use it as a door-stopper."