HELBI

After a joyous re-opening on Thursday, the Ledra Street crossing in Nicosia closed in the evening and opened again Friday. Greek Cypriots hope that the opening of the Ledra Street crossing after 44 years will help normalize relations between them and the Turkish-Cypriot community. The news gives this column the opportunity to present the paintings of Cypriot attorney and collector Giorgos Tornaritis, who was born in Limassol and lives on his estate in Nicosia. His canvases portray Cypriot women in black – mothers, daughters and sisters of the missing – still waiting for the return of their loved ones against the backdrop of the Pentadaktylo Mountain range in Kyrenaia, in the occupied north of the island. “Symbolic expressionism can render better than words do the agony of the long years of waiting and the hope for a return,” Tornaritis told Helbi. The paintings, which are a continuation of an exhibition the artist put on in Ammochostos (Famagusta) in 1967, are to be published in a book, and will be exhibited in Athens, Nicosia and London.