The scar that divides the island of Cyprus has many names: the Green Line, no man’s land, demilitarised zone – the signs at the border of the area read ‘United Nations Buffer Zone. No unauthorised entry’ – with the same message in Greek and Turkish. For fifty years, this phantom zone has separated the Greek part of Cyprus in the south from the Turkish part in the north, ever since the Turkish army occupied the north of the island in Operation Attila to protect the island’s Turkish population from the consequences of a coup d’état by the Greeks. The military crisis that followed tore Cyprus in two; the UN intervened and set up the buffer zone to keep the warring parties apart. Anyone who lived or worked in the zone had to leave in a hurry. Even today, you can’t just enter it – not as a Cypriot, not as a tourist. Everything that the locals had to leave behind at the time is still there and may not be taken away; this zone is the domain of the UN soldiers who keep the peace here. Bustling shopping area is now desolate What was a bustling shopping area in June 1974, with small, tightly packed shops, is now a ghost town, a desolate area. We walk past dilapidated villas, facades with bullet holes and crumbling shop fronts with closed shutters. One of the soldiers orders us to stay on the street, because there could still be mines next to it. Everywhere nature is reclaiming its territory, the streets are overgrown and bushes are growing out of facades. We enter a shop, part of a two-storey open-air shopping complex. White paint is peeling from the walls and we find a pile of televisions, medicines, a rack of magazines, an open bottle of Pepsi Cola and all sorts of dusty junk that once filled the shelves. In the building next door we find a car: a Toyota Corolla Deluxe, its red paint hidden under a thick layer of dust. All the tyres are flat, but the car shows almost no trace of rust. We open the driver’s door; The interior smells like new, the seats and door trim still have protective plastic film. The black leatherette is spotless. The odometer reads 32.9 miles – that’s roughly the distance from the port city of Famagusta to here. There’s a sticker on the windshield: ‘Made in Japan’, built in 1974, intended for: Cyprus. Brand new: this red Corolla from 1974 has remained largely sealed and untouched all these years. The car even smells like new inside. Toyota dealer Dickran Ouzounian The red Corolla is not the only Toyota we find in this building. After all, this was the Toyota dealership of Dickran Ouzounian & Co Ltd. The family business was founded in 1896 as a bicycle repair shop, later moved to selling household goods and in 1962 became a Toyoya importer. In its 66 years of existence, the company had seen many ups and downs, but that summer day in June 1974 must have been the worst day ever. Just days before the Turks launched Operation Attila, company director Stephan Ouzounian had received 52 brand-new Toyotas from Japan. He had also paid for the Corollas, Carinas, Celicas and Crowns. The cars had been brought by boat to the port of Famagusta, from where they were driven under their own power to Nicosia, to a huge parking garage that Ouzounian’s company used. The first customers were due to pick up their new cars within a few days. But the Turkish invasion put a spanner in the works. In one fell swoop, Ouzounian had lost not only 52 Toyotas, but his entire company stock: 700 bicycles, 360 tires, parts – the damage amounted to the equivalent of 130,000 euros. A princely sum at the time. And insurance companies never pay for damage resulting from war. The original billboard of Toyota dealer Ouzounian was not spared by the vandals. The parking garage with the Toyotas is located in the middle of no man’s land, which is less than a hundred meters wide here in the city center. Dickran Ouzounian junior, who now sells Toyotas from a glass dealership palace on the west side of the center, has been waiting for years for permission to remove the cars. After all, they are special objects; silent witnesses to an important moment in world history. Three Toyotas still neat, the other 49 damaged Not that many of the cars have come through the years unscathed. Only three still look neat, apart from their flat tires. They are not in the parking garage where we are; they were once dragged by the blue helmets to the former shopping center, which is next to the parking garage, for reasons that are unclear – boredom, probably. There they are now, in a room with the word “showroom” written above it by some joker with a paintbrush. The other 49 cars are all damaged: roofs dented, bodywork rusted, engine parts looted, upholstery cut to pieces. According to the soldiers escorting us, the damage to the Toyotas was done by Turkish Cypriots, who began entering the no-man’s land long ago, at night, after the UN patrols had left the area. They were the ones, they say, who dismantled the cars, stole parts and vandalized the buildings they managed to enter. Dickran Ouzounian says that the vandalism began about thirty years ago, on the day before the UN soldiers who had been staying in a room above the parking garage moved to another location. So the predecessors of the blue helmets escorting us dismantled the Toyotas? Ouzounian smirks: no comment. The mummified body of a cat lies on the ground between the cars. The cat’s body must have been lying between the Toyotas for years; perhaps the animal died of heatstroke. No wonder. It’s 40.2 degrees Celsius here now. One of the soldiers gives the corpse a gentle nudge with his foot before returning his gaze to the screen of his smartphone. He yawns. There are more exciting places for peacekeepers to watch action than here. Disaster movie If you’re quiet, you can hear the sounds of the city, the inhabited world, which is just a stone’s throw away. We hear buses passing by, hits blaring from radios, cars honking. Time stands still here, and a little further on, the Starbucks is about to open. It’s a bizarre place – while everything here is still as it was left forty years ago, you can still have wireless internet on your iPhone. The Celica ST 1600 Coupé is well preserved. Feels like a disaster movie We walk one more time to the Toyota Crown Deluxe sedan, which looks like it’s made of brown papier-mâché thanks to the thick layer of dust that covers it. A little further along is a badly battered Corolla SR coupe. It has been parked right under a broken roof light for four decades and is therefore much further gone than the other cars here. We take one more look at this strange collection of filth, metal and dust, these time capsules that have degenerated into morbid works of art – we feel like we’re in the set of a disaster movie. Then we climb back into the white Isuzu pick-up truck with the UN symbols on it. A Nigerian peacekeeper drives us silently to the checkpoint. We thank the man politely and pass through the gate, which closes behind us with a loud click. We look back one more time, at the ruins we just visited. Then we drive the 80 meters in our rental car to the Starbucks that has just opened. We order iced coffee. New car in no man’s land: this Corolla has had a hard time over the past forty years. This story was previously published in AutoWeek Classics 4 2015.
Source: www.autoweek.nl
