TREAD carefully through the building sites that litter Paphos, testament to the city’s preparations for its stint as 2017 European Capital of Culture, and you eventually find your way to the enclave of Mouttalos. Thousands of Turkish-Cypriots once lived here, before intercommunal fighting, reprisal killings and Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974 drove their exodus to the island’s north. George Pachis, a local Greek-Cypriot, sometimes helps those who fled find the graves of relatives. Recalling one brings him close to tears. Accompanying an old widow through the cemetery recently, rather than the single tomb he expected, he found a gravestone listing nine names, including a two-year-old girl. All had been shot dead by Greek-Cypriot irregulars.
The scars of Paphos bear witness to the traumas of Europe’s last divided country. Cyprus’s cleavage may be peaceful today, but it is deeply entrenched. Its artefacts—barbed wire, rusting military outposts—are scrawled artlessly across the UN “buffer zone” that divides Nicosia, the capital. Checkpoints allow easy travel between north and south, but the two peoples lead separate lives; 48% of...Continue reading
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