The driver gestures to an alley where you can just make out people behind barricades.
Famagusta, that most beautiful of ancient port towns (its name in Greek means "hidden in the sand") had been our idyllic destination: a golden beach lined with luxury hotels and a child's swimming pool dream.
Hotels, holiday apartment blocks, shops, supermarkets, restaurants — build, build, build and then build more.
The battles of foreigners owning property abroad were well known to us: haranguing the municipality, chasing after builders, grappling with electricity and water issues.
In 1983, my father, outraged that a restaurant had sold out of Kleftiko, the national dish that he had promised to his guests, declared to the owner we would never return.
"Nice move, Dad," my brother, who would later become a successful restaurateur in Manhattan, remarked dryly on the walk home.
The relative unspoiled, sun-kissed nature of a traditional existence began to fade.
Characters came and went: the affable Lebanese water ski instructor who just disappeared one summer (drug smuggling, we heard); the kindly and stately family lawyer; the driver cum supermarket and restaurant owner who ran off with a Romanian woman half his age, deserting his family; the German neighbor who suffered through the Allied firebombing of Hamburg as a young girl in World War II and wanted to visit London to see where the Luftwaffe had struck.
In 1992, my father suffered a fatal heart attack just a year into his retirement.
Months later, my brother-in-law fell seriously ill and passed away not long after he, my sister and their young son had made a new life teaching at the international school and living in a house next door that my parents had built for her.
[...] it was a soft target because it carried that desire to make the easy buck on its sleeve for some to exploit and bad financial decisions were made all around.
EDITOR'S NOTE — Tamer Fakahany is a deputy managing editor of The Associated Press.
Famagusta, that most beautiful of ancient port towns (its name in Greek means "hidden in the sand") had been our idyllic destination: a golden beach lined with luxury hotels and a child's swimming pool dream.
Hotels, holiday apartment blocks, shops, supermarkets, restaurants — build, build, build and then build more.
The battles of foreigners owning property abroad were well known to us: haranguing the municipality, chasing after builders, grappling with electricity and water issues.
In 1983, my father, outraged that a restaurant had sold out of Kleftiko, the national dish that he had promised to his guests, declared to the owner we would never return.
"Nice move, Dad," my brother, who would later become a successful restaurateur in Manhattan, remarked dryly on the walk home.
The relative unspoiled, sun-kissed nature of a traditional existence began to fade.
Characters came and went: the affable Lebanese water ski instructor who just disappeared one summer (drug smuggling, we heard); the kindly and stately family lawyer; the driver cum supermarket and restaurant owner who ran off with a Romanian woman half his age, deserting his family; the German neighbor who suffered through the Allied firebombing of Hamburg as a young girl in World War II and wanted to visit London to see where the Luftwaffe had struck.
In 1992, my father suffered a fatal heart attack just a year into his retirement.
Months later, my brother-in-law fell seriously ill and passed away not long after he, my sister and their young son had made a new life teaching at the international school and living in a house next door that my parents had built for her.
[...] it was a soft target because it carried that desire to make the easy buck on its sleeve for some to exploit and bad financial decisions were made all around.
EDITOR'S NOTE — Tamer Fakahany is a deputy managing editor of The Associated Press.
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