A glimpse of Famagusta from a roof

"The asphalt on the roads has cracked in the warm sun and along the sidewalks bushes are growing. Today, September 1977, the breakfast tables are still set, the laundry still hanging and the lamps still burning. Famagusta is a ghost-town," Swedish journalist Jan-Olf Bengtsson wrote describing the scene three years after the Turkish invasion of the Island. The situation hasn't changed since then. I wonder what happened to those breakfast tables since, the petrified croissants and danish pastries, the dried up coffee grounds in the bottom of lily white hotel cups, the tattered laundry blowing in the wind? Famagusta is in actual fact an unintentional time capsule of a long forgotten summer vacation in the 70s. I wonder what will happen to this abandoned slice of history, would it be turned into an open air museum, a free space for all to visit, a source of revenue from tourism for both governments of this still divided island, or will its fait remain undecided?

 On a recent visit to The Island, as the locals like to call Cyprus, I told myself I simply had to visit the 'Ghost-Town of Famagusta'. Well, not actually visit, as no one can, but only visit the furthest point North before Famagusta, just meters from the UN position. Beyond that, Turkish Army jeeps were patrol up and down, and beyond that still, the fenced off Town of Famagusta. From the roof of a a two story structure, a civic amenity aimed at explaining to tourists what actually happened to the town, I look out with a pair of powerful, borrowed binoculars at a row of white buildings in the distance. That was Famagusta, famed as an exceptional beach resort town in the 60s and 70s. It also had a substantial deep water port which accounted for 83 percent of the Island's total general cargo handling in 1973, according to a guide published by Famagusta Municipality. The town also accounted for ten percent of the country's industrial employment, with just seven percent of the country's total population residing in the town.

 I have to say, I was expecting to see a lot more of the town maybe from a closer vantage point and with a more powerful telescope, but, sadly, the best I could get was a grainy zoom from my iPad camera. I really hope both sides come to some sort of agreement on this attractive piece of beach-side real estate, maybe some form of joint administration of the town.

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