The question I ask myself over and over again is when will this door to lasting peace unlock and enable the two communities to live side by side on the island which is blessed in so many ways. Is it the hubris of the gods who look down on our comfortable lives and give us a continual set of self serving politicians who as soon as they accede to power seem to need to cling on to it, however corruptly, and these days unashamedly? Because that it is what it is looking like for the island at the moment. No tangible progress, no attempts to explain to people the meaning of the proposed "bi-zonal, bi-communal federal system being proposed or the more recent flavour of the month, the so called "loose federation".
Meantime the island and its people are slowly and inevitably being transformed as the older generations disappear. Those who remember independence, lives lived together, struggles, the divisions and the occupation of the north of the island by Turkey. Its nearly 45 years since I left the coastal town of Famagusta and we all yearn to go back, yet the politicians seem unable, after all this length of time to find a solution which would enable this. The town remains ghostly but lights are slowly being lit along its coastline which means it wont be long before it is taken from us completely. So its return to its inhabitants is a bit like a mirage which recedes as you approach.
In Nicosia, the capital, I walk towards the Green Line, and look at the changing landscape. The roads that were once lined with commercial shops have slowly been taken over by coffee shops and bars, restaurants and live music venues. I pass the ice-cream shop my father would take us to, and further down see the little narrow shop which once used to be a bookshop (a favourite place for a Saturday morning visit with him) now selling Indian artefacts and things that can only be described as tat. Just nearby a small patisserie which has survived the changing times, producing the best cheese pies called Hurricane. My friend Pambos would always treat me one, and going back there was an acknowledgment that while he has gone, my thoughts honour his memory.
On the same road my eye spies a familiar figure from the back. An Armenian friend who I used to exchange some friendly and flirty greetings in my youth. He owned one of the many material and shoe shops there. He has been there day in day out since as far back as I can remember. Except that this time he turns round and faces me with a toothless grin. I am shocked and mercifully he doesn't recognise me. Perhaps we both look ancient to one another and best to allow memories to stay in the past. I leave the main commercial Ledra St and head up to the car. In these backstreets the artisans had their shops. Mr Yiannis, the shoemaker, Mr Stelios and Mrs Koula the dressmakers. Now a handful, if that, of them are there. Using their old traditional methods of cutting the cloth, marking it with chalk, stretching the leather and hammering on the heels.
The whole of the centre of the city is being subsumed by a layer of concrete, courtesy of the now deceased Architect Hadid whose tortuous plan is unfolding like a nightmare over many years and untold inflated budgets. It is a joke now about how and when the whole project will be finished but even this seems to stand a better chance then what we call CYPROB.
And yet and yet, the neighbourhoods where I live when I come back, are full of houses which bask in the sunshine, the pomegranates hanging from the trees, the lemons glistening green, the flowers cascading over the fences which can no longer contain them.
The Kyrenia mountain range is bluish purple and perfectly visible in all the days I am visiting. The dreaded sand from the Sahara forecast for the weekend has not quite arrived to shroud their view. A fading view of them and all the history that they hold. But even as they fade every family and every person can recount stories of village life and families that the mountains cradled in their gullies and valleys over so many decades. I leave once more, happy to see the family well, but heartbroken that this place, with so much to offer has boundaries and walls, Green lines and defence posts that should have no place in this world anymore.
Maybe it is time Cypriots took it upon themselves to decide their future before it is decided for them.
Time to UNITE CYPRUS NOW.
