Demolition of a tiny section of wall in Nicosia brings hope to a divided nation

Melissa, a traditional Greek-style cake shop in an old quarter of Nicosia, was serving Turkish coffee in the same way it had for decades. Kateifi, baklava and other freshly baked cakes and sweets filled its window displays. Hand- embroidered, white tablecloths covered the few rectangular tables where customers could sit to enjoy their coffee. The day I was there, a few customers came in, but only to pick up regular orders of sweets, it seemed.

Before the civil conflict that began towards the end of British rule in the late 1950s, Melissa was a perpetual hub of social life, and the street outside bustled with bicycles, pedestrians and taxi cabs. In recent years, the view from its gilded window frames has been very different.

Now the streets are empty. A rusty bicycle leans against a lamp post. Solitary figures occasionally emerge from dilapidated workshops that occupy the grand old buildings where boutiques once flourished. Grass tussocks have sprouted around the ramshackle brick barriers and between the sandbags filling the windows of the surrounding, Venetian-style buildings.

Crumbling walls display the faded markings of political slogans from long-since-forgotten campaigns. Once buzzing with conversations about the coup d'état, the military junta and self-determination, the sagging electrical wires that run from telegraph pole to telegraph pole look today as if they had been gripped by a creeping paralysis. In fact, the whole area seems to have been suspended in time, and resembles a Hollywood backlot for a film from yesteryear.

When, in 1958, the British colonial government rolled out the first barbed-wire barricades across Ledra Street in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, it seemed inevitable that the seeds of division would yield a bitter harvest of intercommunal conflict, regional tensions, and finally partition of the whole island.

Where minarets and churches once jostled each other happily under the high, bright sun by day and the crescent moon by night, garrisoned troops took up positions with their machine-guns in outposts and artillery turrets, in effect dividing the inhabitants of Nicosia into distinct ethnic groups - Turkish and Greek Cypriot.

My father, a Greek Cypriot born in Cyprus in 1926, has fond memories of the times he spent in coffee shops with his Turkish and Greek Cypriot friends. He worked as an electrician for the Paphos electrical station (now a museum), and recalls three Turkish Cypriot friends in particular. When he decided to migrate to Australia, some of these friends joined him.

To this day, on my father's forearm, is a faded tattoo of a sailing ship with the words "Cyprus to Australia 1951" visible in a pennant under the image. His small group of friends - Greek and Turkish Cypriot - all had the same tattoo pierced on to their forearms to commemorate their epic journey. As a boy, I was fascinated by the likeness of the tattoos when the group would meet. As the years passed, the tattoos faded and the group dwindled in size. Today, only my father and one other man, a Turkish Cypriot, survive.

For my father, Cyprus was never divided. Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots were never at war with each other. When he lived in Cyprus, there was a high degree of cohesion and integration between the two ethnic groups. So, in his mind, this is how he left Cyprus and how he has always remembered it.

In reality, when the yoke of colonial rule was finally shrugged off in 1960, the responsibility for forming a government representing both ethnic populations was perhaps too great. In addition, the ambitions of the United States and Britain in the Middle East and the posturing of Greece and Turkey over territorial sovereignty in the Mediterranean contributed significantly to tensions between the two communities. Eventually, as the groups drifted further apart, ethnic enclaves grew. The number of integrated villages fell in number.

In time, Nicosia was divided by a wall.

This year, the wall started to come down. Although the demolition work was centred on only a small part of the boundary of the historic Old City within the capital, it still had profound symbolism. Even if official efforts to unify the island of Cyprus have failed, on a municipal level Greek and Turkish Cypriots have been co-operating for years towards preserving and restoring the Old City's rich Ottoman, Venetian and Lusignan heritage.

Within United Nations and European Union circles, the US under-secretary of state Nicholas Burns has added his voice to the growing consensus of diplomats and heads of state calling for a swift and final resolution to the Cyprus problem. Burns, who plans to visit Cyprus later this year, is expected to express his government's support for the most recent unification model - a bizonal, bicommunal federation. These recent conciliatory initiatives and overtures have all followed the demolition work on part of the wall that has divided Nicosia from the whole island since 1974.

The demolition work has paved the way not only for the opening of a pedestrian bridge on Ledra Street, a once-thriving commercial centre, but also for the current talks in the capi-tal between leaders of the two communities. In August, Mehmet Ali Talat and Tassos Papa -do poulos resumed discussions about the future of their island.

The small bridge across Ledra Street has thus not only brought back together two commercial districts, but also raised thoughts of the re unification not just of a divided city, but of the entire island and of the hearts and minds of all Cypriots.

And if the ghosts of the dead and dispossessed inhabitants of old Nicosia - Turkish and Greek Cypriot alike - were to appear before us today, they would be mingling in the middle of these bustling markets and at the tables of old-style cafes such as the Melissa.

Harry Nicolaides is a Greek-Cypriot Australian writer born in Melbourne

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