I awoke with a head cold. It came on suddenly so hopefully it will leave just as suddenly. I was tempted to make it a full rest day, lounging around Lanarca, watching The Mandalorian, reading my book. But the weather forecast shows rain tomorrow and thus if I was going to do my planned self-tour of Nicosia, the Cyrpus capital city, it was today or possibly never.
Long the capital of Cyprus, Nicosia was split when the Turkish army invaded and occupied northern Cyprus in 1974. With the reunification of Berlin post-fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the title for last divided capital belongs to Nicosia. The checkpoints finally opened in 2003 to allow some transit back and forth between Cyprus and the occupied territories. And I kinda wanted to see that. I had been in Berlin last year and saw the tourist attraction rebranding of Checkpoint Charlie. That was surreal even then. But it was way more surreal to see an actual, functioning divided capital in operation… or maybe I should say dysfunctional divided capital in operation.
A lot of the checkpoints and no man land area strictly enforced a policy of “no-photography.” I took some selfies and photos farther inside once I hit shops and informational kiosks but even then I wasn’t sure if I was breaking the law. Besides, there was a nausea in my stomach, not from the aforementioned head cold, but from the weird feeling that I was rubbernecking, that this was somehow tragedy porn or a voyeuristic sadism that had me and many tourists gawking at this insanity.
I was all the more taken aback by the large billboard with Turkish President and strongman dictator Erdogan looming over the town center. To think that as I was there that guy was being given a fawning, formal state visit in Washington DC by President Donald Trump was all the more stomach turning. It all feels so Orwellian, so dystopian, and yet on the same streets there are McDonald’s, Coke Zero, shared ride electric scooters, and people just going about their normal days. I know my one tour guide said they were all Cyprians… and while the universal homogenization of culture and lifestyle seemingly permeates the walls of divided peoples creating some semblance of commonality, there’s also a very real tension in the air, a clear reminder exemplified by the Turkish flags fluttering and the propagandistic portraits that emphasizes the other. The saddest part of that was that I see Donald Trump and his cronies aspiring to emulate cults of personality and exploit the otherness for their own personal power gains.
It was a tough visit, a roller coaster of emotions. I have often written about and talked about in my life the notion that individual’s reactions to art is strongly influenced by the personal baggage brought to the experience. The same can be said of history, to life in general. I have a lot of baggage with strongmen, with walls, with divisions, and with propaganda. So my reaction was at times a visceral recoiling.
I’m not saying anything new or profound. But I do find myself oddly adrift and contemplative today. I skipped a run because as I stumbled about Nicosia, I found myself repeatedly tripping over broken or mismatched sidewalks, sometimes just over a tree-root misaligned cobblestone. I dropped my cheaper on the North side bottle of water repeatedly, it sliding out of my hands either due to the stuffy head I’m dealing with or because I was off-kilter emotionally in processing the current state of affairs, both locally and globally.
What a weird day.
***
