Long Shadows in Cyprus

Book excerpt: Imagine if your childhood haunts were sealed off like an ancient tomb… M.J.W. Clark arrived in Cyprus as an eight-year-old in the summer of 1970 and lived there for two thrilling years. The Cold War was entrenched, hippy lifestyles were running out of steam, it was the era of the tie-dye T shirt, the Chopper bike and coke adverts ‘Teaching the World to Sing…’ In the summer of 2018, the author returned to the island to walk The Green Line, the land trapped in the United Nation’s no-man’s land that divides it. Lying under half a century of almost sacred dust it is a 1970s world begging to be explored. Crossing into Northern and Southern Cyprus several times and taking the reader far from the tourist hordes, he undertakes a trek through deserted villages, quiet trails, silent woods and dry ravines. It’s a journey back through time and a discovery of how place and time affect who we become.