Heat rises like petrol fumes from no man’s land, shimmering above the shell holes and giving the disturbing impression that a careless spark could set the whole place off. I scan the positions opposite through heavy binoculars, blinking away the sweat and searching for movement in the black summer heat.

Three hundred yards to my left, a UN observer smokes a cigarette on the roof of an abandoned factory. Dead ahead, behind the razor wire, a war-torn city sprawls northwards, deserted and crumbling, its elegant quarters and slapdash slums made equal by death.

My rooftop position is neither in the Lebanon nor the Balkans. It’s in Cyprus, at the Ammochostos cultural centre, in Deryneia, just a 15-minute drive from Ayia Napa, the Sun, Fun and Two-for-the-Price-of-One capital of the eastern Med. Back there, the streets are swollen with sunburnt families toting unwieldy inflatables past fast-food outlets and souvenir shops. Above them, darkened rooms throb with the comatose bodies of nocturnal ravers seeking sanctuary from the sun. Here, however, all is quiet.

Thirty-one years ago, when Communion wafers were the only disco biscuits on offer in Ayia Napa, thousands of Greek Cypriots fled from the Turkish army through what was then a tiny fishing village. The invasion, a response to 10 years of EOKA terror and an ill-judged attempt by the Greeks to overthrow the Cypriot government, was just the latest in a series that went back thousands of years. By the time a ceasefire was negotiated, the Turkish army had occupied 37% of the island, seizing the northern half of the capital, Nicosia, and the world-famous resort of Famagusta, on the east coast.

The Ammochostos cultural centre stands hard beside the strip of straw-coloured no man’s land they call the Green Line. “They took everything worth having,” mutters Petros Christoforo, its laconic curator. “Our citrus industry, our cereal farms and the best beaches: all gone. Barbarians!” Today, with characteristic enterprise, Deryneia is turning a buck from the tense situation.The cultural centre exists, somewhat paradoxically, to inform tourists of the events that robbed the republic of its most cosmopolitan destination. A screen shows propaganda videos and there’s an interactive diorama of the lost city. It costs me 50p to climb the steps to the roof, where, using powerful bino- culars, I can spy on sweating Turkish snipers in their bunkers 300 yards away.

Yet nobody sees the partition of Cyprus as a permanent solution. In 1996, the veteran Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash threw a party to declare the Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC). Only Turkey came.

I DRIVE FROM Deryneia to Vrysoulles, across a desperate landscape ripe with scorched earth and goat dung. Broken concrete sideroads end in boulder-strewn fields full of rubbish and rusting iron. I pull into the Ayios Georgios refugee estate and spot the classic, clichéd travel shot of an Orthodox priest in full vestment, sipping from a cup in the shade of a plane tree. I sit at the next table, fire up the camera and wait to catch the old cleric’s eye.

Coffee and water arrive, with compliments from three men at another table. When I turn to say thanks, they invite me to join them. It’s 34C in the shade, but we sit comfortably, Omegan, Christopherou, Markou and I, comparing knives and swapping smuggling tips.

Fags are £2.50 for 20 down here, says Markou, but up there — he points northwards — the same money will buy five packs. Before Famagusta fell, he worked as a joiner. Omegan was a plasterer. Too poor to flee the island, they ended up here as refugees, within tearful eyeshot of home. I ask them how they feel about the invaders and the notion of reunification.

“Turkish Cypriots are good people,” Markou declares. “If Turkish soldiers go home, then everything will be okay.”

It's time to seek a Turkish opinion. The road to Ta Katehomena — the Occupied Territories — has recently opened, and horror stories concerning confiscated hire cars should be treated as Greek myth. The KKTC is desperate for tourism, and a border crossing is now easier than a trip to Gibraltar. Cheap insurance and free tourist visas are obtained at the frontier, and while the firearms and moustaches are prolific, their owners seem friendly enough.

Continued on page 2

() I drive into Famagusta, following signs to Palm Beach. Here, right on the Green Line, stands the Palm Beach Hotel, a tatty building that deserves at least three of its five stars. A handful of British tour operators use the place, and it exudes a certain Saigon charm, its sandy beach terminating in a barbed-wire barricade and its southern neighbours standing empty, shell-shocked and bullet-splattered, behind high- security fencing.

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