Tuesday, February 26, 2008

we crossed the green line



i have just uploaded one million pictures on flickr, and my head is about to explode from multi tasking on the internet while breathing in the awful smoke of a disgusting cigar in this cafe. so, i'm afraid there will not be much of a written summary today. but do visit my photos for the visual piece!

yesterday we made the very exciting journey into the north side of cyprus, turkish occupied territory. i had very mixed feelings about doing this. i was concerned about wiping away my pre-1974 idyllic memories of the north side, and i was also simply afraid, as i am both an american and a greek cypriot citizen. but there was nothing to fear. as for memories, those are mostly of my early childhood hometown of kyrenia, which we are going to visit on wednesday.

it was actually wonderful to see some of the incredible sites that we saw yesterday: old famagusta, kantara castle and ancient salamis. also, despite the blight, which is happening on both sides of the island, there were some breathtaking views and gorgeous meadows carpeted in wildflowers.

mostly i felt a lot of sadness, especially sitting in famagusta and looking into the friendly/happy/sad/grumpy faces of the turkish people there. i will never understand why humans, who all have brains and hearts, can't get over their ridiculous differences and just respect each other, human to human. it is the ordinary people who are caught in the middle of this fierce governmental dispute about who the land belongs to. it is the ordinary people, on both sides of the line, who suffer most from this division.

today is a leisure day, though we may yet manage to go to the donkey sanctuary. we plan to lounge on the beach too.

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