Cyprus - Part 2 - Nicosia



Walking through Nicosia and traveling around Cyprus, I am struck by the modern day waves of immigrants. Instead of conquerors and colonizers using military might, a shifting of labor markets is happening, perhaps not well documented by the International Labor organization. At an individual level it is a human story full of hope and emotion, and devoid of the coldness of statistical tables that don’t tell the richness of individual stories. I find them everywhere: The Cameroonian sales clerk in the music store who makes recommendations to help me pick contemporary Cypriot music by Anna Vissi and Alkinoos Ioannides; Basheer from Bangladesh, who is both a student and mans a news kiosk (He loans me his cell phone to call a taxi); Meekness from Zambia who staffs the Clinique counter at the airport advising newly rich and badly sun burnt Russians going home after their holiday in the sun on how to care for their skin; Pepe from India who provides home care to an elderly Cypriot woman; The beautiful Hungarian waitress who shares a taxi with me from Larnaca and discusses the Paul Coelho book she is reading; The Nepali waiters who scurry around the seafood restaurant in Agia Napa; Yannis the former professional football player from Georgia, who arrived to play for a local team until his bad knees killed his football career; ( Now he drives a taxi and has become my official taxi driver); The Sri Lankan nanny who takes care of the two year old brother of Diamandis, the psychology student at the University of Cyprus I meet during a shared taxi ride. Each story is labyrinthine in its detail of hope, opportunity, economic migration, and cultural displacement.

If there were an Olympics for culinary events, the Cypriots would be in the finals. And their winning entry would be Meze. I am at the Xe Foto restaurant in the old city of Lefkosia. Andreas Loizides the owner is explaining to me that he picked the name because of the play of light streaming through trees into the courtyard around which the restaurant is set. Foto is the Greek word for light he clarifies for me. His house band has been performing Rembetika and more contemporary Cypriot music for 20 years. Andreas himself gets on the mike in between and his guests break out into Syrtaki and other Greek dances.




This is one of the best places to try Meze, which is as much about food as it is about bonding with friends and family around a dining table in that uniquely Mediterranean way. The waiter keeps bringing in Mezedes, little delicacies. Much of the experience has to do with the sharing and passing around, savoring each dish, and recommending it. First comes the olives, salads, bread, tahini, talatouri, and hummus. Next comes the vegetables, garnishes, raw pickles, all served with haloumi. The meats follow in an assembly line of lamb, chicken, beef, pork dressed up as souvlaki, klefliko, sheftalia. Just when you think it is over the waitresses reappear with fresh fruit and pastries. The secret I discover is to pace myself and listen to the advice of my Cypriot friends, siga, siga, slowly, slowly.

I am walking around Lefkosia’s old city. Surrounded by Venetian walls that from the top look like a snowflake or a sliced Grenade. The Venetians built the fortifications in 1570 to keep the feared Ottomans out. The bastions were named after wealthy Venetian merchants who paid for the them in a clever fund raising model long before Harvard and Wharton learnt to name their buildings after wealthy alums. But they turned out to be a complete failure. Well, the Ottomans arrived just three years later, scaled the walls, took over Lefkosia and stayed for 300 years. Another reminder that walls don’t really keep anyone out.

Driving us around the old city is Ahmet, a Turkish Cypriot with a handlebar mustache. There is a sense of gravitas about him. He bikes across the international border everyday to come to work and drives a quaint school bus that looks like it could be from the 60s. I almost look around to see if beat poets and hipsters Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Wavy Gravy are on the bus. Ahmet tells me that he used to be a truck driver who drove tractor trailers from Finland to Bangladesh in marathon 20 day trips across all the central Asia “sthans”, and Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. “Anda, Kela, Aaap Khana Kaho” he tells me using the few Hindi words he remembers from his trips and guffaws loudly.


Evie, a tour guide is guiding me through the old city. At one point she leads us to the border that separates the two sides of Cyprus. The watchtower set up by the UN forces are now deserted. The forces are long gone since things have become more peaceful. An elderly Cypriot gentleman comes out to greet us. His house backs up against the border. He probably grew up and lived all his life in this house till one day someone drew the green line across his backyard and arrived with rolls of barbed wire to prove it. Beyond the barbed wire fence behind his house is a no mans land where houses, schools, hotels, sit dilapidated, abandoned and out of bounds for everyone to avoid people stepping on land mines.

Evie herself is a refugee from across the border. Her family were wealthy farmers on the northern side when history came calling. They abandoned their orange orchards and everything else they had and were forced to hit the “reset” button on their life. Even though the border is now open she has not gone back. The memories are too haunting for her to confront them.

Evie leads me to the house of Zambella, the former mayor of Nicosia and one of the best known art collectors on the island. The first floor of his house is an art gallery with a treasure trove of works by Cyprus artists. Some of the paintings are of Zambella himself. I find it disconcerting that he looks like George Bush. Perhaps, it is one of the approved looks in the political reference books. I just hope he did not mess up the city he governed.


Evie and Ahmet then take us to the village of Kaimakli, where right on the village square is a 19th century traditional building known as the Monoportis house. Its current occupant is Julia Astreou-Christoforou whose family has lived here for six generations going back to the mid 19th century when the Patriarch Hadjipetris built a dominating central arch in the big room on the marriage of his son Tzirkako to Hadjikatina. This kind of history spanning many generations and easily traced and documented seems to come effortlessly to the Cypriots. Julia now weaves hand-loom fabrics in the same house using traditional Cypriot looms. Her beautiful daughter Daphne, a product of French design schools, now models the Arete shawls her Mom designed for Queen Arete’s costume for the theatrical production of the Odyssey.