From the flat roof of the two-storey house where I live, I have a panoramic view of the mountain ranges which enclose the Mesaoria plain at the centre of Cyprus.
On the left is Troodos. On the right, the Kyrenia range, 10 to 15 kilometres distant: the square top of St Hilarion, the mountain fortress of Britain's King Richard the Lionheart; the soft peak of Buffavento and the five stumpy fingers of Pentadactylos.
Picked out in white stones on a foothill is the slogan: "It's grand to be a Turk".
We can visit the Troodos but not the Kyrenia mountains which were subtracted from the republic 25 years ago when Turkey invaded and occupied the northern third of Cyprus.
When we came to this house as refugees from the Lebanese civil war, I found holes in the kitchen and bathroom windows and spent bullets on the roof. The house is only a kilometre or so from the so-called Green Line which divides the island between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. In summer we can hear soldiers from the opposing sides trading insults and the call to prayer rising from a minaret.
The original line across Nicosia was drawn by a British army officer armed with a green felt pen during the intercommunal troubles of 1963-64. The designation has been subsequently applied to the 1948-49 armistice line between Israel and Jordan and the line which divided Beirut during the civil war. Nicosia, the first capital to be divided by a green line, is the only one still divided.
Every time I go to the roof to hang the laundry or sit in a canvas chair with a drink to watch the sun set over the red tile rooftops of Ayios Dhometios, my village suburb of Nicosia, I feel the tug of Kyrenia, a pang for the loss of the little house we owned, resentment over the division of the island.
If I as a foreigner feel hurt and regret, how much more distress do Cypriots on both sides of the line feel about their homes, villages, lands, the way of life destroyed between midJuly and mid-August 1974?
Nikos and Eleni Protopapas, who live downstairs, lost a large citrus plantation which had a turn-over of a quarter of a million Cyprus pounds, a rambling village house and its thriving vegetable garden, icons of favourite saints, chests of embroidered linens, handhewn furniture, the ease of being at home, the comfort of worshipping in the village church on Sunday.
When driving along the plain to the foothills of Troodos, they usually pull over to the side of the road and gaze across the empty expanse of no-man's land at the large white church, now a cinema, and at the citrus packing plant, established in the spring before the invasion. They spend most of their time now near Paphos where they potter around a small garden and their children and grandchildren come from the US and Britain for holidays.
Most of our neighbours are refugees from the north. Many would go home if they had the chance.
Theo Lambrides, a Greek Cypriot whose mother was a refugee from the 1922 Asia Minor troubles, says: "If you live in this part of the world, you must teach your children they will be refugees at least once in a lifetime."
Theo's wife, Helen, was made a refugee by the 1948 war in Palestine. They were driven from their home in the Neopolis quarter of Nicosia in 1956 and Theo lost his architectural practice in Kyrenia in 1974.
The Green Line bisects the rondel of the walled city of Nicosia. At Paphos Gate, Greek and Turkish troops are posted on either side of the opening, 30 metres apart. UN troops separate the combatants all along the line.
In some places there is a wall, topped with barbed wire and sharp glass, in others an overgrown buffer strip. For many years houses and shops close to the line lay empty and fell into disrepair. The mayors on both sides revived these dead neighbourhoods, offering subsidies to owners to repair and reconstruct, and reunited the city beneath the land by building a common sewage system.
THERE is an economic as well as a political divide. The independent republic - the Greek south - is prosperous. Greek Cypriots have a per capita income of $14,000. But in the Turkish Cypriot breakaway state - the northern part which remains tied to the troubled Turkish economy - the income is $4,000.
A survey of the scene from the top floor of the highest buidling in the walled city provides a striking contrast. To the south lies a modern European city of gleaming glass-sided high rise buildings, the streets are filled with new cars; to the north just below the walls are the faded red tile roof tops of one and two storey houses built in the 1950s and '60s, beyond are clutches of stolid official buildings, a new stadium, rows of new apartment houses, cars move easily through the tree-shaded streets.
Greek and Turkish Cypriots are permitted to cross only two or three times a year on religious pilgrimages. Until December 1997 when the European Union rejected Turkey as a candidate for membership, there was a flourishing bicommunal reconciliation movement. The Turkish side banned all contacts on the island, so Cypriots go elsewhere to meet or confine themselves to the phone or e-mail.
Cypriots live so near, yet remain so far apart.