TWENTY years ago I went on a UN-conducted tour of the Nicosia Buffer Zone: access to such usually forbidden no-man’s land, the livid scar at the heart of the Cyprus conflict, was a profound and emotional experience for a young journalist.
Twenty years on, I had the opportunity to return, hoping that things might have changed, that somehow the sense of desolation I felt on my first trip would be less.
If anything, it was more painful: a further two decades of neglect had made the once beating heart of the capital sadder than ever.
Our journey began at Ayios Kassianos. Greek and Turkish Cypriot forces alike suffered heavy casualties here in 1974 and buildings sustained terrible damage. The area’s lovely colonial-style school bears the horribly disfiguring scars inflicted by bullets and shrapnel.
As we pick our way carefully along a dirt road, a UN helicopter clatters deafeningly overhead.
Lieutenant Gareth Dickson, our guide, reassures us that 99 percent of the area is now clear of mines.
There is graffiti in both Greek and Turkish scrawled on dilapidated and derelict buildings.
Soon we reach the narrowest point of the buffer zone. It is only 3.3 metres wide.
What has changed in the past 20 years is the problem of illegal immigration. Lt Dickson points to an area where hapless people seeking a better life in Europe try to penetrate from the Turkish-occupied north to the Republic of Cyprus. Newly laid barbed-wire, glinting in the spring sun, has been put up to scupper their plans.
The UN force has also installed motion-sensor lighting in the entire city area, along with CCTV cameras in illicit crossing hot spots.
For a local journalist, it is impossible to maintain Lt Dickson’s easy if well-intentioned detachment as we walk down these deserted streets which once bustled with life and traffic. Now these once busy commercial thoroughfares are far narrower. Not because of more activity – as would normally happen with the passage of time – but because they are overgrown with wild bushes.
Road signs have almost disappeared. It is very hard to recognise them unless you know the area. And shop signs are obscured by rust.
Close your eyes and it is easy to recall the days at the Symeou Coffee Shop where buses from villages on the northern outskirts of Nicosia ended their bone-rattling journeys. Villagers used to quench their thirst here with Lex, a once celebrated soft drink, during summer days before they made their way home or into town. The coffee shop’s façade, which appears to be on the verge of collapse, is supported by a few rotting wooden beams.
We come across signs bearing the names of famous entrepreneurs who range from brewers of beer to importers of cars and electrical goods:
Fotos Fotiades, Kozakis, Galatariotis Bros, Philippou Bros, Hadzikyriakos and others. All these familiarly named businesses are still flourishing today with far bigger premises in the government-controlled areas, a testament to the determined spirit that helped Greek Cypriots survive and even prosper after the 1974 trauma.
As famous, if on a smaller scale, is the example of Matheos, who owned a little restaurant along the buffer zone. The tiles are broken into thousands of pieces across the floor of his original premises. There are no tables, the paint on the walls has faded to an indeterminate colour and the shelves are almost empty, barring a few dusty bottles.
We are not allowed to take anything back to Matheos, who now owns a highly popular restaurant of the same name near Phaneromeni Church in Nicosia’s old city, just a few metres away from his derelict former business.
But some 30 years later, he managed to reclaim a prized possession from his forcibly abandoned restaurant: the traditional ‘kapnistiri’, or ritual incense burner, that he used to in the traditional ritual Orthodox blessing of his eaterie.
Then we come into area that leads to the Ledra Street crossing. It feels like stumbling into another world as the UN officer opens one set of the bolted gates on either side of the bustling thoroughfare, flanked by cafes, restaurants and shops, that was re-opened to both communities two years ago after 34 years.
We pass through, traversing the tourist crowds, and Lt Dickson shuts the heavy metal gates behind us on the other side, returning us to the dead zone’s world of eerie silence.
On our left is the Olympus hotel, which Lt Dickson says was the only five star hotel on the island prior to the now far more famous Ledra Palace. Yet Winston Churchill is said to have stayed at the Olympus on numerous occasions.
Soon we are at Maple House, where mainly Canadian troops patrolling the buffer zone were once housed. The whole arcade-style building is undergoing renovation. In buffer zone lore, Maple House is famous for its underground parking lot, which still houses cars imported from Japan, marooned there since the invasion. They are thickly coated in dust and their tyres are flat, but they are still in working order, UN officers say. These cars will be prized collectors’ items one day. All have just 60 miles on their clock: marking their sole journey from Famagusta port to Nicosia.
Maple House also features a room where soldiers have collected a number of items, including televisions, radios and other memorabilia from houses and other buildings and have put them on display.
And so my tour ends, a fascinating but dispiriting trip down memory lane.
