Pam's View

At first you don’t notice it. Like so many things beige, muted, dusty in color – they melt into the background. This is especially true in a new country that was formerly a British colony where one tends to concentrate on the mechanics of getting from here to there while driving on the wrong side of the road.
It is amazing how long it takes to start noticing the absence of things! At first it is groups of empty lots amidst construction of new buildings advancing at a ferocious pace. Then it is an old square stone house tightly shuttered, but progressively being taken over by nature, grass growing from its roof.
Next you notice several such houses clustered together; slowly being covered by vines, cyclamen, fennel, and other wild growths. Once they had been homes and businesses of Turkish or Greek Cypriots, depending on which side of the Green Line you are on. Legally they still are, but while the owners await decisions on the thorny issues of an unresolved conflict decisions to be made by people who have never seen them -- they sit unattended. Sometimes whole villages lie as if discarded – dust where lemons, flowers, and children should be growing.