today I met A., a greek cypriot friend of a friend and we went for a walk along the city divide.
She was born in north cyprus and was 13 in 1974 and has vivid memories of the war,  of the turkish invasion and of being a refugee. She has returned only twice to the north to see her house, which settlers from Turkey have taken over. She has the documents to prove ownership and has been recognised by the european court of  human rights as the lawful owner and hopes that if one day cyprus is unified she will get her childhood home back.
She doesn’t like the settlers from Turkey (and from what i have experienced even turkish cypriots don’t like them either!) but then reflects and says that the situation is not their fault but that of turkish government, and that if one day Cyprus will be reunited those people will have put roots in the island and a way to live all together will need to be found. In the last referendum she voted YES to unification in support of the Annan plan (75% of greek cypriots voted NO); furthermore she support the entry of Turkey in the EU because she hopes that once in the EU Turkey will have to respect rules and withdraw troops, and she will get her home back.

We walk along the city’s divide and at some point she brings me in the garden of a friend and then through a very tiny alley…and we are in the buffer zone. in the middle of it. No one can see us, but i can see the flags of both sides. We stay inside a crumbling abandoned house and i took sometime to photograph. We cannot walk far in order to avoid the army of either side seeing us; it is very quiet and nothing moves.
Later we went to the house of another friend, J, an american artist, photographer and traveller. Her garden wall forms the wall of the buffer zone. Her, like me a foreigner, speaks of the buffer zone as a border, which all cypriot refuse to define as such. As artist she understands my need to get to know a place and how slow my project has to proceed in order for it to work. She has lived on the buffer zone since the 90s and has an amazing studio; she points out how many foreigner have settled in these streets, as in the 90s greek cypriots were afraid of living here.