Foreign airlines can't touch down, and tourism is limited to weekend gamblers from Istanbul. These days it reads like a joke. He pointed out the shuttered fronts of half a dozen banks that had gone belly up in the past six months, robbing nearly a third of local residents of their savings. Later we stood atop the old Saray Hotel, once the finest in this part of Cyprus. Below, the neglected stone buildings of old Nicosia on the Turkish side stand in stark contrast to the gleaming high-rises and thicket of construction cranes just a stone's throw away across the divide.
Businessmen gather here to gaze in dismay at what the politicians have done.
But I can't ignore people who are 100 m away. I want us to be like them. The biggest tourist attraction in Cyprus, apart from the beach, is the green line, a disjointed barrier of oil drums, razor wire, rusted cars and assorted junk that stretches from one side of Cyprus to the other. Signs erected by nationalists and the Turkish military keep the memory of war alive. One morning I tried to cross.