Stage Setting

Because airports are awesome I decided to visit five of them on my way to Cyprus. Heathrow posed the only serious challenge as I had to book separate flights and formally cross the border into the United Kingdom to collect my luggage. Then I had to drag all my possessions from the sleek and trendy Terminal 5 to Terminal 1 zone K which looks and smells like a public swimming pool. I then took a graceful nap slouched over my carry-on in front of electronics store. At noon I boarded my flight which was packed full except for the seat next to mine which was graciously empty. The woman occupying the window seat on the other side of the vacant space was a late middle aged British woman with hair dyed emergency-flare red to match her knee-high socks. She had a snake skin handbag designed for shop-lifting watermelons. I kept to myself for most of the flight as her bag, shoes, jacket, and empty plastic wine bottles slowly conquered the empty seat between us. As the plane approached Cyprus she noticed I was eager to peer out the window and began giving me a free aerial tour. “There is a great little Armenian restaurant in that town there.” She said gesturing towards some tall hills “And from that monastery over there you can see Lebanon on a clear day, it was built by St. Helena you know…” Just as she was about to introduce me to her favorite diving spot we were on the ground and I became concerned about exactly how large this island is. We landed in Larnaca on the east side of the island. Larnaca is not the capital, Nicosia is, but one cannot fly into Nicosia airport because it is on the wrong side of the green line. Just so no one is lost and everyone can know what a green line is and why it matters I am going to give a brief history of this fair island island. Cyprus has been the little guy wrapped up in big power politics since ancient times. In 58 BC a certain Roman noble by the name of Publius Clodius Pulcher got himself kidnapped by pirates. He asked the King of Cyprus to cover the ransom, and when he refused Cyprus promptly found itself annexed by Rome. It remained in Roman/Byzantine hands until the Byzantine governor insulted Richard the Lionheart’s wife while Richard and the entire army of the 3rd crusade was parked in the southern port of Lamassol. The resulting invasion of 1191 left Richard with an island he didn’t want so he sold it to the Knight’s Templar. The Templar put up some fresh paint, steam-cleaned the carpets, stained the cabinets, and re-sold it to Guy de Lusignan in 1192. This French family turned out to be not so good at collecting taxes and after 300 years the bankers of the Middle Ages (Venice) foreclosed on Cyprus. In 1570 the Ottoman Turks showed up with 60,000 troops and asked the Venetians nicely to leave. They did not and after a bloody show down Cyprus joined the Ottoman Empire. The Turks found the island affable and decided to settle a bunch of people there. In 1878 the Ottoman Empire lost a war to Russia which had nothing to do with Cyprus whatsoever, but as a result Cyprus was leased to the British Empire. I was heretofore not aware nations could be leased. Perhaps our own government could raise some money this way by leasing Ohio to Canada or something. When the Brits took over formally in 1914 they found the island inhabited primarily by Greeks (left over from the Byzantine/Roman era) but there were also a significant minority of Turks. The Greek Cypriots began clamoring for the British to give the island over to Greece which upset the Turks living on the island who did not want to be governed by Athens. Cyprus became independent in 1960 under a deal that said that the Island would remain independent and that Turkey and Greece should keep their noses off the island. Things came to a head in 1974 however when a bunch of Greek Cypriots staged a coup declaring their intention to join with Greece. 5 days later in the defense of the Turkish Cypriots, Turkey launched a full scale invasion of the north of Cyprus. By the time international pressure halted the invasion, some 2,000 people were dead, some 230,000 people had been forced to flee their homes and 37% of the island was under Turkish control. The limits of that occupation, known as the green line, runs right though the capital, splitting it in two much like Berlin during the Cold War. “Northern Cyprus” has declared its independence from the southern part of the Island, but the whole of the international community (except, of course, Turkey) recognizes Turkey’s 1974 invasion as illegal and refuses to acknowledge the Turkish Cypriot state. Therefore it is illegal to enter Cyprus from via occupied areas. Nicosia’s airport is on the Turkish side, so I can’t use it. That is why I had to fly into Lacarna. Once I was on the ground on the right side of Cyprus I took a bus 30 minutes to Nicosia and was dropped off at the small student housing complex that will be my home for the summer. It is 85 meters from the green line. If the Turks decide to invade the south I will be the first to know. However, any further military action is highly unlikely and would be seen as pointless by both Greeks and Turks. The rest is for the politicians and diplomats (ahem…) to figure out.