“I visited an unknown part of my country today”.

That was the title of a short message I had sent on this day 21 years ago, to a list of friends with Greek and Turkish names.

“I crossed on foot, and I followed the proper or even «proper» procedures on both sides. The sheer numbers of people though made the procedures a joke, and many G/Cs actually walked through without asking anybody. On my way back nobody asked anything – a T/C could just do the same. The numbers are in the thousands of T/Cs and hundreds of G/Cs.

I am sure that you will see many articles describing the situation and the feelings on both sides, I will just say that I sincerely hope that things will not end here.

Yiannos.”

Then a friend from the north wrote something and I responded:

“I was not going to cross – although I must admit that I had my passport with me, but some friends were there ready to do it and I joined them. As I wrote before, the procedures more or less collapsed after some time, and so carrying a passport was not really necessary.  I walked for about 2 hours in the northern part of Nicosia, and I visited the impressive St Sophia. The people were friendly, and as far as I know no incident whatsoever happened on either side of the divide.  I have to say though, that I doubt that all of the people returned to their «own» side by midnight.

I have to say that I am very disappointed with the reaction of our government which – to put it mildly – is confused with what is going on, and they don’t know what to do next.

The only thing they manage to say is that «Denktash is bad». Well, this is hardly news! And even if this is one of his tricks, our duty is to try and turn it against him – and 6000 people getting together and crossing the line contribute towards this end.”

Twenty-one years later I am overwhelmed. We failed.