AS LONG as urban man has felt the need to wander within his city walls, and been indisposed to do this on his own feet, there have been other men to take him. From palanquins to rickshaws to the Daimler Victoria, the first taxi, the grand sweep of history could be accounted for in terms of man’s ingenuity in devising ways to accommodate his horror of walking. And when civilization has crept or fizzled to its close, among the rubble and cockroaches, do not doubt that there will be a man skulking in the shadows willing to drive you somewhere. The Ledra Palace taxi stand, a two-minute walk from the Green Line, conveys a sense of this.
The unnamed ruin whose front yard the taxijides have claimed for themselves is a reminder of nature’s indifference to mankind’s civic instincts. A gaping shell, if it faced south instead of west one could see straight through its vestibule to Pentadaktylos. Inside, the floorless rooms have sprouted knee-high grass. But the building’s most tragic feature is a spiral staircase whose ruined steps curl up against a fleshless wall and merge, in lieu of a second story, with the sky itself. Hanging from a wire-thin strip of railing that clings to the last step, a chunk of masonry seems to float in the breeze. Standing under it, I was reminded of an Alexander Calder mobile disintegrating in hell. A stone’s throw from this dilapidation it was business as usual.
Ruggedly individualist, the Ledra Palace taxijides prefer to work for no one but themselves. When the line opened in 2003, they followed a man, Triftaros, to this crumbling edifice and set up camp. Up to 15 black or white Mercedes Benzes can be found there on any given day, many of them for most of the day. On a blackboard nailed to a portable kafeneion, their movements, or lack of such, are tracked.
Some of the taxijides were sitting on plastic chairs around a tub of embers, prodding the ashes. Others occupied benches. I was admiring the ruin, when an old man in a sui generis suit waved his hands at the building. I asked him what he thought of it.
“The Turks,” he said regretfully.
After I had sworn not to mention anything of what he told me to Kofi Annan, he lamented the stupidity of Cypriot politicians. He then told me a parable in English.
“And the Turkish prince put the big eye in the avory,” the man said at a point, indicating an imaginary balance.
“To weigh it,” I said.
“Yes, and it would not go down, no matter how much gold he put in the avory. And then he threw. . . What is this?”
Bending down, he picked up a handful of rubble.
“Rubble,” I said.
“Yes, rubbles, and still it would not go down . . . You see? Greed!”
I wandered off to the taxi stand where two men were sitting around the tub of ashes, and ordered a coffee.
“Business has gone to hell,” one of the drivers said. He was a big man with a silver mustache and hands meant for cracking walnuts. “I started driving because the money was good. That was 20 years ago. Business has gone to hell.”
The other man stirred the ashes and said, “Gas used to be cheap. Eight pounds per tank. Now it costs 20.”
I asked the second man about the opening of the border, surprised that it hadn’t helped business.
“Don’t say that. There is no border. But, yes, our customers are mostly Turkish Cypriots and other foreigners.”
I sipped my coffee and observed an older man in a lived-in wool suit sit down on the other side of the tub. He reminded me of Mickey Rooney, had Mickey Rooney survived a year in the desert. Just beyond the stand, a taxijis had fallen asleep on his chair like a schoolboy at his desk. Outside a second kiosk, an ancient man with a dendrite’s beard in a flowing purple robe sipped a cup of coffee.
“Then there’s insurance,” the mustachioed taxijis resumed. “It’s too expensive now and the government doesn’t do anything. There’s a monopoly.”
The man in the wool suit suddenly exploded. “You want to see how bad they’re doing? Look over there! You see the taxis? All Mercedes. All new. How do you explain that?”
“It used to be a good job,” the mustachioed driver groused.
“Stamata re koumbare! Why don’t you quit then?”
“What should I do? . . . Become a builder’s assistant?”
“We have air-conditioning in the summer,” the man in the wool suit went on, “heating in the winter. It’s a quiet job.”
A heavy, bearded man, polishing his Mercedes, looked up.
“You’re retired,” he said. “You get a pension. What about us?”
“But we have two coffee shops,” the man in the wool suit protested weakly.
Fearing a riot among the Greek taxijides, I asked about their Turkish colleagues.
“Go talk to Yunus,” the mustachioed driver said.
The walk to the Green Line is always a strange one. Flowers and barbed wire, and the deserted Fulbright pavilion. The Ledra Palace, abandoned in mid-season. These images are burned into the memory like light onto photographic paper. The Turkish police pointed out a portly man with rosy cheeks and a clipped moustache.
“I am the President of the Turkish Taxi Drivers,” the man announced when I approached his taxi and identified myself.
“I’m looking for Yunus,” I said.
“I am Yunus.” He was smiling now. “The Greeks told you about me, yes? They are my friends.”
I asked Yunus about business.
“You mean my complaints?”
This seemed to be a cross-cultural theme, so I nodded. But before he could list his grievances, Yunus had rushed away, mumbling apologies.
“I’ll be right back . . . Five minutes.”
Three somber Greek-Cypriots entered Yunus’s Mercedes and they sped away. For several minutes I stood in the shadow of the Border Shop watching feral cats. Across the street from the Border Shop, under a corrugated tin roof, a solemn old man in a blue ski hat watched me. Then Yunus was back.
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” he said, “the Greek taxijides can take a passenger from their side to ours. We aren’t allowed. Why? . . . Second. Permits. If a Greek wants to drive on this side, he gets a permit for a year. For us, two days.”
I asked Yunus what he wanted for the future. Once the line went, his business would go with it.
“I want one Cyprus, no Green Line. Yes, there will be no more business here, but we will go somewhere else.”
Back at the taxi stand, the chalkboard had not altered visibly. I overheard a middle-aged blonde woman say to a taxijis, “Yes, I drive a taxi in Turkey.” Her business card identified her as Inger Yes?kan, sales agent. She had emigrated from Norway to Turkey, where she now drove a taxi in Alanya.
“I like to challenge myself,” she said of her new career.
The enigmatic raconteur was now sitting on a bench by himself, the sunburned Mickey Rooney in front of the tub.
“I’m sixty-five,” he said, “I can drive for five more years.”
I asked him for a memorable story, the kind we expect taxi drivers to tell around ash tubs.
“I’m sorry. It’s just a job.”
“Will you miss the life?”
“No,” he said.
“Then at least you will miss your fiends?”
I suppose I had also expected some solidarity among these mavericks, among these ruins.
“These men? . . . Not at all. They’re greedy. We don’t get along.”
I thought this was sad and left it at that. It was noon and sunlight was pouring through the ruins. One floor up, the concrete was still floating in the breeze. I thought of the future of Cyprus, balanced as it was on a thin wire, haunted by beauty and devastation. I noticed a can of Efes beer among the weeds, and thought that progress, as decline, is always slow.
[Photographs by Theopisti Stylianou
]
