A fenced “Green Line” separates northern and southern Cyprus. It is a barbed-wire scar: a forgotten no-man’s-land, a fossil from an unresolved war that is out of place in today’s Europe. In 1974, Greek nationalists staged a coup in Cyprus. This provided Turkey reason to invade, to protect the ethnic Turkish population. Forty years later, the island remains partitioned. But many Cypriots—Greek and Turkish alike—dream of reunification.
“It will happen,” says Selin Ruha, a Turkish-Cypriot friend who meets me at the border. “We islanders have more in common with each other than with either Greece or Turkey.”
I cross the Green Line on foot.
The south checkpoint: a British military policewoman—yet another relic, this time from a colonial era when the Royal Navy ruled the Mediterranean—waves me through. (Do I need an exit visa? Not at all, she says. Go on through—goodbye.) On the north side: two bored Turkish immigration officers stamp a piece of paper. (Is it a visa? No—it’s just a permit. No country except Turkey recognizes the tiny Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.) This once militarized crossing has been open for years. In such small ways, poor Cyprus is already stitching itself back together. Ruha wants to show me another effort. She takes me to see Varosha.
What is Varosha?
It is the carcass of a once glamorous Cypriot city, a beautiful port whose great misfortune was to fall across the old front lines. At its peak, Varosha was a prime European tourist resort. Its chic beaches were lined with sunbathers. Its five-star hotels coddled movie stars such as Sophia Lauren and Paul Newman. The fancy high-rises remain. But they are empty. Pocked by artillery shells, they crumble in the sea air. Their windowless suites are homes to seagulls. The entire sprawling ruin has been declared off-limits by Turkish military authorities. A few swimmers—Turkish Cypriots, mainly—still frequent a slice of the best beaches in the Mediterranean. But they frolic in a graveyard. Behind them tower buildings that appear transplanted from bombed-out Dresden, circa 1945.
Two faiths: earthly vs. cosmic rewards, Famagusta, northern Cyprus.
Paul Salopek
Ruha tells me of a plan to revive Europe’s only ghost city.
Greek and Turkish Cypriot activists are collaborating to turn the shell-pocked corpse of Varosha—once home to 25,000 tanned pleasure seekers—into a metropolis of the 21st century: a “green city” that grows its own food, that incorporates ecology into its design, that generates its own power from alternative energy sources. It will be a model of urban renewal and peace building. A university in the United States has drawn up some initial design ideas. Funds are being raised.
“We should start this project immediately,” Ruha tells me. “We’re just wasting time. It would be a bridge between north and south. I’m an optimist.”
In the nearby city of Famagusta, a Turkish Cypriot merchant named Yilman Parlan is sympathetic, but shakes his head: “Varosha belonged mostly to Greek Cypriots. We drove them out. Large tracts of land in the south belonged to Turkish Cypriots. They drove us out. After all these years, after all the reconstruction, the changes, how do we sort it out? How do people reclaim their lands?”
Parlan taps his balding skull: “I’m 52. I’ve been waiting for peace since I was 11. I’m still waiting.”
My legs are tired. I walk to the sea at night.
Waiting. Sinan Pasha mosque, the converted 14th-century church of Saints Peter and Paul.
Paul Salopek
Famagusta is ringed by a 500-year-old wall of stone erected by Venetian traders against invading Ottomans. Like all walls, it failed. To the south, along the coast, stand the concrete skeletons of Varosha, blacked-out monoliths against the stars. I try to imagine vegetable gardens sprouting on skyscraper rooftops. Solar panels. Bicycle paths. Seaweed farms. And I think: Parlan is right about two things. Virtually every war boils down to property. And in the end, wars are also about eternal waiting. Even the survivors of defunct wars must wait. Refugees and veterans know this: Should you live to be a hundred, you will wait. Your war will be over when you die.
The Mediterranean sighs in the dark. Tomorrow, the ferryboat sails to Turkey.
