“Andrea, where are your Turkish—sorry, Greek delights?”
I asked the owner of The Romantic Grocery and Gift Emporium. Since the partition more than thirty years ago, all references to Turkey were frowned upon in this part of Greek Cyprus.
“Which ones?” There were varieties from several villages. A whole box for a euro (around one US dollar).
“The Aphrodites.”
“We have no more. You’ll have to go to Lefkosia to find them.”
I sighed, first at having to miss my treat and then at having to mentally register Lefkosia instead of Nicosia, its Turkish name.
“I may just do that.” I left shortly after, crossed the road to my hotel, and went to bed.
The next morning, a bus took me through sun-baked villages, dazzling dried-up salt lakes, desiccated olive groves, and grass-shorn hills and valleys towards Lefkosia. Two hours on a rickety, springless minibus had left me paralyzed, as it dropped me off at one end of Ledra, the main tourist-packed thoroughfare of the city.
Several stores sold Greek delights along with candied nuts and cloth shopping bags with the island of Cyprus sketched on them. None had the Aphrodites. A combination of +40°C(104F) blazing heat, along with the innumerable crowd jostling into me, almost made me faint. I saw a sign: “Pahit Ice, a local ice creamery and fresh juice shop.” I entered air-conditioned heaven. I ordered fresh-squeezed orange juice with a side of salt, which I promptly stirred into my drink. In Africa, I was brought up to do so, to replace the salt lost in sweat.
It was turning four in the afternoon. The last bus home left at five. The owner of Pahit was looking at me askance at my adding salt to my juice. I chanced to ask him directions for where to find my Aphrodites. “Go north up Ledra,” the man said after a slight pause. “You will find a shop selling postcards and newspapers at the end. They will have your Aphrodites.”
The further up Ledra Street I got, the fewer the crowd, the more I encountered police, then army patrols, and finally a checkpoint manned by UN forces in their distinct blue uniforms and helmets. The shop I sought was nowhere to be seen. In a store selling model soldiers, tanks, warships, and souvenir bullets, I asked again.
“That store is on the Turkish side, past the checkpoint. Did you bring your passport? You go to the checkpoint with it. They’ll stamp a piece of paper instead of your passport.”
“Excuse me?”
“Or else our side won’t let you back in.”
If the Greeks saw your passport stamped with a Turkish Cypriot visa, they would not let you reenter Lefkosia. If you couldn’t show an entry visa to the Turkish Cypriots, they would jail you for illegal entry. A pragmatic solution was found: a piece of paper, not your passport, would be stamped, allowing you entry into Turkish Cyprus. Before returning to the Greek side, you discarded the piece of paper. Blind-eyed administration of checkpoints was practised by both sides, desperate for tourist dollars. But you never knew when you would be confronted by an exception—an officer refusing to look away.
“I left my passport at my hotel. Nobody told me. Is there any other way?”
“Go down the side streets, which aren’t guarded, and cross into the Turkish side.”
“But how do I get back?”
“The same way you came; just hope you don’t run into a patrol.”
I headed back to catch my bus. No amount of delights was worth risking jail for.
It was 7:30 p.m. by the time our bus juddered to a halt in front of The Romantic. Shattered and parched, I crawled up the steps to the entrance to revive myself with local fridge-cold slices of watermelon. As I crossed an aisle, I stopped dead in my tracks and stared.
There in front of me stood The Lady of Cyprus (Aphrodite) on a life-sized poster, in all her naked loveliness, emerging from the foamy sea onto the golden sands of Pafos. The shelf behind her was overflowing with tasty jewels of multi-coloured, multi-flavoured delights, all poised, it seemed, to cascade into my open arms like long-lost girlfriends. Delights of orange and lemon, vanilla and apricot, strawberry and bergamot, and, of course, his beloved rosewater.
“Andrea, when did these arrive?”
“Today—just for you,” she winked.
