I have cycled along Ledra Street again. The place bustles with aliens, as my ID book issued by the Cyprus immigration authorities calls us, to an extent I have never seen before in this country. Turkish Cypriots, Pontiacs, Sri Lankans, Phillipinos, Iranians, Chinese, Russians, British. You name it, you have it. And they behave much freer than they did five years ago. They behave as if they are part of the city.
Still one thing remains unchanged and that infuriates me — the presence of older Cypriot men patrolling the streets in search of excitement. I bumped into one at the corner of Lefkonos Street and the fruit market. He stood there leering at a Chinese girl in a mini skirt who was walking away with handbags full of shopping. His eyes said it all. He was looking at a cabbage, piece of meat, something he thought he could buy very cheaply. I thought about vagina dentata gangs in Denmark. Maybe we could do with few of them here.
I went to visit some friends of mine who live just at the end of Voulgaroctonou Street. They are Germans renting a tiny flat attached to the roof of a building next to Politis.
We sat on the roof drinking wine and looking into the buffer zone that spread just below us. To the left there was a little yellow car, abandoned in a corner of a football pitch, falling into pieces.
Apparently, the car has a sign on it saying Yellow Car in capital letters. It is used by the UN patrolling the zone as one of the orientation points. But this is a top secret because what happens inside the dead zone is not supposed to be made public.
Frankly speaking, I don’t agree with this policy. A few years ago, UNOPS made a survey of the buildings in the area. They documented the ruins, took photographs and even made some estimation about how to restore the most historic ones. I wanted to write a report about the process but was told the issue was ‘too sensitive’. The owners of the buildings in the ‘zone’ would be too ‘wounded’ if they saw what happened to their property. Good, I thought, at the time. Let them see. If I had any control over what was happening in this country I would open Nicosia’s buffer zone to everybody. I would make people wander among these ruins. Maybe then they would start rebuilding.
A performance of Sophocles’ Electra by a Canadian theatre company at the Blind School in Nicosia. The best I have ever seen. It was in French though so there were only thirty people in the audience. But surely, even children in Cyprus know the story so why couldn’t people come and enjoy it anyway? Nevertheless, those who came had a real feast. At the end, an official representing the state got up and started clapping and the state photographer took the only picture of the evening. But not of the Canadian actors bowing. No, that was not that important. He photographed the official clapping. For posterity.
After the play I went with a group of friends to a new bar that opened in the EKATE building, again in the old town, next to the fruit market. Typically, among ruins. We had beer and chatted about Electra, Medea and Antigone. And the reasons why in Greek tragedies rebels who tell the truth and rebel against injustice are always women. And why they always have to die at the end. Then we went on to discuss Maria Callas’ affair with Onassis. And what would have happened had her first orgasm been with Meneghini and not with the man who collected women.
And this led us to an attempt of listing five best places in Nicosia to find intelligent men for dating. Just to make it clear – no, I wasn’t in this new bar just with women. I was there with three women, two gay guys and one average heterosexual. We started with the Moufflon bookshop, then managed to come up with El Sabor restaurant in the north, then squeezed in the Weaving Mill but unfortunately in August it doesn’t count because Leontios and Sotiria are on holiday. And this is just about it. Ah, maybe also Garo Keheyan’s ‘post-Pharos Trust concerts Ayios Kassianos parties’. But they don’t count either during this hot summer season…
