The common belief in the world press was that Levent's nemesis, Rauf Denktash, the Turkish Cypriot president of the north, was resisting a Turkish desire to settle the Cyprus unification issue. Ankara was said to want to remove an obstacle to Turkey's entering the EU. Denktash was the person Kofi Annan specifically blamed when he threw up his hands after an impasse in reunification talks last April.

Levent saw things as more typically Cypriot in their complexity. He said that Turkey could easily overrule Denktash. However, rebuffed by the EU regarding a laundry list of human rights, Turkey was not at a point to offer an agreement on Cyprus as a gesture to get into the union. It would rather hold this out as a later playing card. Neither was Levent sure that the big nations of the EU were really in a hurry to see Turkey, a country about their size but much poorer, acquire political weight in the union. Meanwhile, the Republic of Cyprus, in the southern portion of the island, would definitely enter the EU, as approved, this May. And Levent's Afrika would unrelentingly press for Europe for all Cypriots.

We had time after our meeting to visit Old Nicosia, whose lovely Ottoman town houses are being restored in the northern neighborhood of Arabahmet, near St. Sofia Cathedral. St. Sofia is one of the finest Gothic churches on the island, even though the Turks who sacked it in 1571 turned it into what is now known as the Selimiye Mosque and appended two 175-foot minarets, which dominate the skyscape. Beside it, the covered bazaar is cool and fragrant with spices and the sweetness of fruit. Among the stalls of household goods and food is one that sells modern tapestries depicting Jesus Christ. Levent had assured us that the time has come when both Muslim and Christian Cypriots sincerely want to get along with one another.

On our return to the southern side, the lobby of the Hilton was a buzzing rialto of business dealing. Southern Cyprus is prosperous, with a gross domestic product three times greater than that of the north, which suffers from being shunned in international trade. The southern republic is, moreover, well off by European standards, with high technology taking a healthy role in the economy.

Before a recent crackdown, the island had been a notorious haven for funny money. There are fourteen thousand "brass plate" offshore companies in the Republic of Cyprus, mostly Russian. Chris Weafer, the chief strategist for Alfa-Bank, Russia's largest private bank, was quoted by the Cyprus Mail as saying that much of the $200 billion that left Russia illegally is holed up in Cyprus. Somerset Maugham once called France's Riviera a sunny place for shady people. Today's Cyprus could easily earn the epithet.

For the new Russians, in any case, Cyprus has become an upscale Black Sea. The Russian speakers in the lobby may have been among some fifty thousand who have said good-bye to galoshes and settled on the island. Meanwhile, Damascans and businessmen from Beirut fly here in half an hour to do deals—about the same time that it takes Israelis to arrive from Tel Aviv to hold festive mixed marriages. I can't think of any place more busily cosmopolitan than Cyprus.