Putting Cyprus together may be impossible

APOSTOLIS, A RETIRED Greek-Cypriot dentist aged 78, tours his former clinic in Varosha, now a derelict shell of a building, for the first time in nearly half a century. His friend Despo wipes away tears in front of her grandfather’s old shop, where she would park her bike after school. Varosha was once home to some 39,000 Greek-Cypriots and swarms of tourists. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton strolled on its beaches. Four young Swedes, later known as ABBA, gave one of their first concerts here. Now it is a ghost town, overgrown by bushes and trees. Opposite Apostolis’s clinic, painted over the façade of what was once a Greek high school, are a pair of flags, one Turkish, the other belonging to the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC), set up after the island was split by a Turkish invasion in 1974 into Greek and Turkish portions.