On a quest for roots in divided Cyprus

By Dina Kyriakidou

KYTHREA, Cyprus (Reuters) - Armed with vague childhood memories, printouts of Google Earth maps and hand drawings of streets that might no longer exist, I crossed into north Cyprus in search of my grandmother's home town.

It was a journey to the birthplace of a larger-than-life woman whose memory I cherish, to the house my besotted grandfather built for his 17-year-old bride in 1928.

"When you marry, find someone handsome because you'll have to look at him for the rest of your life," my barely literate but very practical grandmother advised me when I was 10.

She died aged 90. That was before 2003, when the crossing points on the U.N.-patrolled green line that splits the Mediterranean island opened, allowing Greek and Turkish Cypriots the first glimpse of each other in nearly 30 years.

The Nicosia checkpoint was not the busy spot I remembered from previous trips. Lethargic officials now sat in white booths, waiting for the occasional car to pass.

"The honeymoon is over," said Mete Hatay, a Turkish Cypriot researcher for the Oslo-based International Peace Research Institute, my companion on this trip. "Fewer and fewer people cross over every day. Reality has overtaken curiosity."

I've lived my adult life away from this island and this journey is not hard for me. But I know that people on both sides of this divide, which has defied decades of international peace efforts, still nurse open wounds.

For many of the 160,000 Greek Cypriots who fled in 1974 when Turkey invaded the island after a Greek Cypriot coup, it is a heart-breaking experience, especially when they find their ancestral homes occupied by Turks.

"For the Turkish Cypriots, moving to the north was more like migrating to freedom, not the tragedy it was for the Greek Cypriots," said Mete, whose grandmother comes from the south.

About 40,000 Turkish Cypriots were also displaced after inter-communal fighting in the 1960s, shortly after Cyprus declared its independence from the British.

WORLDS APART

As we drove through the divided capital, it became clear the breakaway north -- recognised only by Turkey -- had seen few benefits from Cyprus's accession to the European Union in 2004.

In the south, luxury showrooms, hotels and restaurants abound in a tourism-driven economy. In the north, shops sell fashions of past decades and provincial casinos are the main attraction for the few foreigners who venture here.

Star-and-crescent flags are everywhere. One is painted on the mountain, its huge form outlined with flashing lights.

We reached the town of Kythrea, 15 km northeast of Nicosia. It's known in Turkish as Degirmenlik -- water mills.

The bleak, crumbling town was foreign to me. Gone were the animals grazing in green fields and farmers picking oranges and olives that impressed me as a suburban child visiting relatives.
Most houses appeared deserted and the land abandoned.

The large Church of Holy Mary Chardiakiotissa was built with the island's trademark yellow sandstone in a gothic-orthodox style mix. The bell tower is now adorned with speakers for the muezzin's call to prayer.

Nearby stands the simple, white, two-storey house where my grandmother arrived as a bride, where my mother and her siblings were born.

I knocked on the door but there was no answer.

"The people who live there are Turks from the Aegean coast," said a friendly neighbour, Ramazan Kaldirim, 23, whose family came here from a village near the Black Sea in 1976.

I told him I have no claim on this house, sold after my grandfather died in the 1950s. I am connected to it only through stories of happy matchmakings and tragic deaths, of children's mischief and friends' kindness during hard times.

We also stopped at my uncle's 19th century house to admire its carved stone entrance, now padlocked. He lived here until 1974 and he drew for me the maps of my mission.

Back in Nicosia, he asked me if his house was still standing but barely looked at the snapshots I show him.

"I know what my house looks like," he told me.