Nicosia, The Divided City

Everywhere I turned, I bumped into a wall.

Crude concrete creations blocking sidewalks. Barbed wire atop gray monoliths. That ubiquitous sign: Forbidden Zone. Do Not Enter.

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, but the walls are still alive and well in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Nicosia is a divided capital, split in two by a peacekeeper’s Green Line. The 1974 War left Nicosia rent in two, impassible for years. It’s the only divided EU capital; its defunct international airport lies broken and abandoned inside the buffer zone– the time capsule ’70’s terminal reclaimed by nature, the last plane rusting quietly on the runway.

This is Nicosia.

The intrigue of a split city was one of the reasons I came to North Cyprus, but I wasn’t expecting to be so completely enthralled by Nicosia. The city is full of mysteries, of stories untold, of old wounds and new joys, of denial and defiance. I spent hours wandering the dusty streets.

The history of Nicosia is selective on the North Cyprus side of the city. A giant mosque was once a church– this is obvious, inside and out, yet there is no marker about its evolution. A walking map of the old city of Nicosia indicated a circular route that is impossible to complete.

The wall does not appear on the map.

In this reality, Nicosia is not divided.

And yet, I kept running up against that wall.

I found myself daydreaming. The rundown old buildings, the bits of graffiti, the historical ruins: what were the real stories here? Who lived here once, before the city was divided? What happens when your street is blocked off by a wall?

An old market proudly proclaims that once, Greeks and Armenians and Turks mingled and traded here. There is no mention of why this is no longer true.

Military personnel mix with tourists. Dogs bark in front of abandoned buildings with Greek inscriptions over the door. These houses belonged to someone once; legally, perhaps, they still do. What stories are hiding in this riddle of a city?

This is why I loved Nicosia. This is a city of layers, of mysteries, of conundrums; there is a fresh and present disruption to the natural flow of the capital. I wanted to speak to the streets, to the empty buildings, to the rundown storefronts: who were you, before a wall ran through your heart?