Walls: Travels Along the Barricades by Marcello Di Cintio

Author:Marcello Di Cintio
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Canadian Non-Fiction, Travel, Borders, US-Mexico Border, Berlin Wall, Great Wall of Montreal, Syngman Rhee Line
Publisher: Goose Lane Edition
Published: 2012-08-16T04:00:00+00:00

It rained hard in the morning, but the sky cleared and the aroma of orange blossoms hung like honey from the trees on Ledra Street. They seemed to have bloomed overnight to herald the approaching heat of summer. I tried to stay beneath them as I walked, bathing in their invisible sweetness.

Ledra Street had not always been so kind. In the 1950s, EOKA killed so many British troops and Greek-Cypriot collaborators here that the road was dubbed Murder Mile. Now the street shone as the main shopping district of the Old City. Outlets of European chain stores were selling jewellery, shoes, and, oddly, coloured Palestinian kaffiyehs — yellow and green and pink — which were in fashion. The McDonald’s and Starbucks hummed with the conversation of sun-pinked and plump British tourists. “Taverna” restaurants offered apathetic versions of Cypriot cuisine to foreigners who didn’t know the difference. The orange blossoms provided the only charm to this road of commercial tourism.

I turned right down a side street to the café where I sat nearly every day for three weeks and spent far too many euros. The weather was warm during my time in Nicosia, and the café workers dragged every table and chair outside onto the street. The seats filled quickly with Cypriot bohemians, big-haired philosophers, and women in hippie head scarves who all drank espresso frappés. I ordered small Cypriot coffees in quick succession, but my regular server eventually cut me off. “You drink too much coffee,” she said. “It is not good for you. Can I bring you a lemonade instead?”

After my coffees and lemonade, I returned to Ledra and entered a souvenir shop called Fanos. The store was one of the few original shops on the street and was named for its owner, Fanos Pavlides, who had worked there for more than sixty years. I’d wanted to talk to Fanos since I arrived in Cyprus, but he always put me off. He was always too busy. This time when I walked in, Fanos was trying to sell a bottle of zivania, the Cypriot answer to grappa, to a pair of female Slovakian tourists. “We used to drink whiskey on Cyprus, but we switched to zivania because it doesn’t give a headache,” Fanos said. “Your husbands will love it.” The women were not convinced and settled instead for a few postcards before leaving the store.

Fanos was not happy with the sale, and not happy to see me, but the store was empty and he had no excuse to refuse a conversation. Clad in the sweater vest, shirt, tie, and jacket ensemble — apparently the required dress for aging men of the eastern Mediterranean — Fanos sighed and sank into a chair behind a cluttered desk. I asked him about Ledra Street. “I started working here in 1945, when I was a teenager. We sold bicycles at the time.”

“You were a teenager in 1945? How old are you now?” I asked.

“Eighty-four years old.”

“Really?! You don’t look older than sixty.”

“It is because of the zivania,” he said, his sales pitch lingering.

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