Dome Hotel, Kyrenia, 15th November 1999
It was Independence Day, a celebration of the declaration of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in 1975. Martial music played around Ataturk’s statue; and three flag-decked naval patrol boats lay nodding gently off shore. Soldiers in dark coffee coloured uniforms and white helmets stood at the corners of the memorial square. There was a blessedly short speech at ten o’clock followed by the presentation of tributes, floral shield mounted formally on stands. The military goose stepped theirs into place; representatives of the banks, the Lions, the emergency services, and the political parties approached sedately; and children and what looked like the local WI came forward casually out of step. All bowed their heads to Ataturk then turned and did the same to the braided military party. A bugler played a plaintiff call, like the ‘Last Post’, but without the closing trill and final long, poignant notes. The band played the national anthem; the children had a group photograph; the crowd dispersed.
We drove to Salamis, across the crystalline limestone Kyrenia Mountains and a plain of vast dry, treeless fields cultivated for cereals and potatoes. Salamis was an ancient Greek city-state on the east coast, at the mouth of the River Pedieos. The capital of Cyprus as far back as 1100 BC, it survived successive occupation by Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians and Romans, but eventually succumbed to the forces of nature – and humankind. Too often humankind at its most intolerant: around the excavated buildings – the remains extend over an area of a square mile – are niches which contained marble statues, and those that remain are dolefully headless or faceless. When Christianity was adopted as the state religion, nude statues were broken up and any signs of Roman pagan practice were literally defaced. And there were archaeological vandals – the grey figure of Persephone once had a face hands and feet of white marble.
At the Kampanopetra Basicila, overlooking the Mediterranean, we swam in the sea and picked up ribbed red potsherds among the ruins.