AS NICOSIA’S Ledra Street continues its transformation from the dingy shopping backwater of the 1990s to a haven for trendy high street stores and well known cafes, the small businesses are vanishing one by one.
One of them is the popular but tiny kiosk owned by Eleni Xeniou. For the past 40 years, Eleni has been working day in and day out as the owner of the tiny outlet that marks the entrance to the narrow thoroughfare between Ledra and Onasagorou Streets opposite Flo Café.
But her life is now about to change. In two weeks’ time the friendly, bubbly 64-year-old will lock up her kiosk for the last time and leave the only job that she has ever known. The owner of the building has opted to demolish the little kiosk to make more space for people to stroll through the walkway and perhaps expand the nearby restaurants.
With only weeks to go now and stock running low, the once-packed shelves are now virtually bare and empty. Magazine stock has been virtually cleared away, there are no newspapers and only the most basic goods are now on offer. With a constant stream of people passing by and asking for things that she no longer stocks, the answer is always the same: “sorry I’m leaving. I’m really sorry but it’s closing up soon.
“This is my life here, I feel horrible. It’s terrible because I feel like I’m friends with so many people here. I’ve been working 15 to 16 hours a day, six days a week,” she says waving her arms high in the air.
As more people pass by, many of them stop for a chat and Eleni tells me that some of them even come inside for a coffee and natter at times. “I love to see people, I feel alive here. And I read the papers everyday, I feel in touch with the world.” All of a sudden one young girl appears to say, “I’ll really miss you when you’re gone.”
Eleni tells me about an elderly lady who lives just down the road and comes to get her paper every Saturday. “When I told her that I’d be leaving she just started crying. If I lived close by I swear I’d come and bring her paper every day.”
Our conversation is suddenly interrupted as she shouts out to a smart suited passerby. “Hey, hey! You gave me too much for those cigarettes yesterday, here’s your change,” she says, reaching out to him with a bunch of coins. Placing great importance on trust, Eleni tells of the way that some of the nearby shopkeepers and assistants refer to her as a “second mum”.
Great numbers of tourists have always stopped off for a paper or bottle of water, and some of those who come back to Cyprus for a second visit return to the kiosk to see her again.
“The only thing that really irritates me is so many times that foreigners have stopped by and asked me how to get to Turkey. Then I can’t help it, I have to step in and explain the situation and whole history to them.”
With 40 years on a historic street like Ledra Eleni has witnessed many changes. When she first set up shop in the early 1970s it was still Nicosia’s major shopping street with socialites and workmen alike rubbing shoulders down the narrow, car-choked road. After the invasion and certainly by the 1980s, it had lost its appeal as Makarios Avenue became the capital’s hot spot. Not even pedestrianisation in the 1990s could lure back the shoppers in their previous numbers.
Then came the opening of the Ledra Street crossing in April 2008 and the area has now become a buzzing mix of all different cultures and nationalities.
Eleni remembers the opening as among the most memorable, and certainly the most chaotic, event she has witnessed in all her years there.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. And to be honest, I’d never really spoken to a Turkish Cypriot before that either,” she says.
“It was very weird at first; new faces started appearing and the customers started changing, it was all new to me. But I’ve become more used to it now.”
She speaks of the days when there were hardly any foreign residents to be seen down the busy street. “You would only see Cypriots, nothing but Cypriots. And they didn’t have any of these trendy cafes to sit at. After all, the street was full of cars and there was plenty of tooting and noise before the street became a pedestrian one.”
In the present day, the shopkeeper seems to be particularly bewildered by the amount of people begging for money in the area. “You would really hardly ever see that happen a few years back. Never ever, it’s just such a shame because now I see it everyday.”
So what’s next for the vivacious lady who has been working on this very spot for so long? Separated from her husband and with only one son who is now married, Eleni isn’t quite sure what to do. “I suppose I’ll rest a bit at home, but it will be strange for me not to be doing anything. I don’t really have anyone to look after and I’ll be lonely,” she says.
“I suppose I’ll take up a hobby that I never had the chance to do before. I like it when tourists teach me a few German words. Yes maybe that’s what I’ll do; I think I’ll take up German lessons!”
