We live our lives forever taking leave - Rilke

Counter

Saturday, 25 July 2020

Friday, July 24/2020

Coffee on the balcony in the early morning before it gets hot. Overlooking the city. Bit of breeze and surprisingly quiet other than on market day, though there is the occasional ambulance siren as we are on the route to the hospital. Market take down and clean up well into the night but nothing left of the debris by morning as a “zamboni” circles the parking lot getting the last bit of earth where the potted plants and seedlings were yesterday.

Familiar with three lots of non Turkish Cypriot immigrants in the North; Turkishs settlers from the mainland as well as families of Tturkish military officers stationed here, international students, and British and other European (increasingly Russian) expats. But read of another large group, although the stats are a bit dated, coming from the 2006 census:

“This is an extremely diverse group that includes documented and undocumented workers employed in agricultural, construction and manufacturing sectors, as well as in hotels, catering and casinos. Fieldwork carried out for my previous report within the walled city of Nicosia and some other areas indicates that the majority of these workers hail from the Hatay district of Turkey, near the Syrian border, and from southeastern Turkey.106 Many among these do not have Turkish but Kurdish (Kırmança) or Arabic as their mother tongue. Most are Sunni Muslims (quite a few are Shafi), although a significant number are also Alawites. They offer a cheap source of labour, constituting almost 35-40% of the TRNC’s labour force.“

Group is disproportionately male and not long term, workers who leave at the end of their contracts and are replaced by new lots.