Cyprus, the beautiful, politically divided island in the Eastern Mediterranean (and ancestral home of Etwart the South Cypriot Pygmy Hippopotamus) had some good news today.
The entire length of Ledra Street, historic main thoroughfare through the capitol of Cyprus, Nicosia (Lefkosia), has become readily accessible to both Greek and Turkish Cypriots after decades of closure.
In 1974, the Turkish army invaded the Republic of Cyprus and carved out an area in the north of the island that would end up administered by the Turkish Cypriots under the protection of the invading army. The legitimate government held the south of the nation.
Nicosia was cut right through the middle, like East and West Berlin, and the border between, with a small no-man's land, was called the Green Line. The UN still maintains a presence in Cyprus along this demarcation.
Ledra Street was cut off.
When I visited Cyprus in 2005, one could walk from south to north Nicosia, but through a tightly-controlled checkpoint on the western end of downtown.
Greek Cypriot Ledra Street, in central Nicosia, now a lively pedestrianized shopping area, ended with a wall, a wooden platform with stairs that looked over the no-man's land, and a sign that said in Greek and English, "Freedom cannot be won without blood."
I hoped the fresh-faced soldiers, teenage heroes or near that age, patrolling the platform with automatic weapons, didn't have to back up that slogan with their lives.
There was no sense of danger-- far from it-- but there was a palpable current of grief and regret, somewhat like the feeling I got in a restaurant in Little Italy in New York City in 2002, months after 9/11. A spirit can pervade a place.
Now I can imagine that minatory platform replaced by a kiosk with officials checking passports and other ID's. (Check out the British newspaper The Guardian's photo gallery).
The reopening is a welcome development in a saga that has seemed to have no possible positive outcome. I leave it to the Cypriots themselves to determine how much significance this event has for their lives. I applaud it in any case.
Map courtesy of BBC, photo of platform here.
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