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Journal of War and Culture Studies Volume 1 Number 3 © 2008 Intellect Ltd
Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jwcs.1.3.309/1

Trauma, space and embodiment:

the sensorium of a divided city
Gabriel Koureas Birkbeck, University of London

Abstract Keywords
This paper investigates the ways in which the divided city of Nicosia (Cyprus), trauma
scarred by wars and ethnic conflicts that have left open wounds in the fabric of the memory
city, tries to heal itself and incorporate its traumatic memories within its spatial reconciliation
organization, and asks if such an incorporation is possible. The visual and sensor- conflict
ial language of the city of Nicosia is examined in detail in relation to its ‘polito- senses
graphy’, concentrating on issues of space, borders (both physical and psychic), affect
memory and trauma. Their interactions with hegemonic and personal narratives Cyprus
are discussed in order to interrogate artistic intersections in the spatial and psy-
chic parameters of the city. The paper aims to demonstrate that artistic produc-
tion in the city of Nicosia is embedded in the space of the city. Like the space of the
city, these works demand our participation, our interaction through all our
senses. Encounters with these works, like encounters with the city, produce
embodied experiences that are no longer framed as representations. In experienc-
ing these works and the city, one is unable to rely solely on vision, as they call for
our hearing, smell and tactility in comprehending spatially and artistically the
impact of war and conflict. It is only by understanding the sensorial impact of
trauma that one can begin to comprehend the political and social conditions in the
city of Nicosia and its artistic production.

Around the border that divides Nicosia (Cyprus) into the Turkish-speaking
north part and the Greek-speaking south part, space is unkempt, ruins of
war are unrepaired, wrecked buildings are left untouched, garbage sits
uncollected, as though purposely marking and re-marking memory. Items
of ruin, rubbish and the abject are intricately related to items of mili-
tarism, internationalism and politics. They form what Yael Navaro-Yashin
calls a ‘polito-graphy’ (Navaro-Yashin 2003: 108).
How can divided Nicosia, scarred by wars and ethnic conflicts that
have left open wounds in the fabric of the city, try to heal itself and incor-
porate its traumatic memories within its spatial organization? Is such an
incorporation possible? In order to investigate these questions, I am going
to examine in more detail the visual and sensorial language of the city of
Nicosia in relation to its ‘polito-graphy’, concentrating on issues of space,
borders (both physical and psychic), memory and trauma. I look at their
interactions with hegemonic and personal narratives in order to interro-
gate artistic intersections in the spatial and psychic parameters of the city.
What I hope will become clear is that artistic production in the city of
Nicosia is embedded in the space of the city. Like the space of the city, these

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works demand our participation, our interaction through all our senses.
Encounters with these works, like encounters with the city, produce a ‘real
time somatic experience no longer framed as representation’ (Bennett
2005: 23). In experiencing these works and the city we are unable to rely
solely on vision, as they call for our hearing, smell and tactility in compre-
hending spatially and artistically the impact of war and conflict. It is only
by understanding the sensorial impact of trauma that we can begin to
comprehend the political and social conditions in the city of Nicosia and
its artistic production.

The city of Nicosia

Maria Loizidou’s installation Trauma was shown in Nicosia in 2000. On
entering the exhibition, I was led to the main area through a narrow cor-
ridor (Figure 1) lined with white aprons hanging from meat hooks. They
were all stained with red paint. These stained aprons touched my body as
I went past them. They made me feel the disgust of an imaginary encounter
with blood. In 2002, another artist, Klitsa Antoniou, exhibited the installa-
tion Traces of Memory (Figure 2). This installation greeted me with a wall, a
border. However, this was a wall made of roses. At the bottom of the wall of

Figure 1: Maria Loizidou, Passage of Time, Trauma, 2000.

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1. For a detailed history

of Cyprus, see Purcell
(1969).
2. For a more detailed
discussion of the
sociocultural history
of the island, see
Koureas (2006).

Figure 2: Klitsa Antoniou, Wall of Roses, 2002.

roses, there was a series of cooking utensils filled with a red liquid. My
senses were instantly confused and placed on alert; I expected the room to be
full of the smell of roses. Instead, I did not want to get too close to this wall
in case the liquid was blood. I also did not want to touch the wall of roses
just in case the thorns would prick my fingers. I had a confused somatic
reaction to this wall. On the one hand, I was repulsed by it because of the
bloodlike substance, reminding me of bodily fluids, of the abject body; on
the other hand, I wanted to be near it, to touch it and smell it. Why do both
of these artists want to subject me, the visitor, to painfully uncomfortable
somatic experiences? A probable answer can be found in the streets and
museums of Nicosia. For this reason, I leave the two exhibitions for a
moment and take a sensory tour of the city and its history.
Nicosia in English, Lefkosia in Greek, Lefkosha in Turkish, Chora in col-
loquial Greek and Sheher in colloquial Turkish Cypriot. A name constitutes
an identity and as such the multiplicities of names describing Nicosia pro-
vide an indication of its many identities. This is a city with as many names
as conquerors. The Achaeans settled on the island from 1200 BC to the
twelfth century AD, when the island was occupied by the Lusignans, fol-
lowed by the Venetians in the sixteenth century, and over three centuries
of Ottoman rule until 1878 when the island passed into British hands. In
1960, independence from British rule was achieved.1 However, this newly
found sovereignty was marred by years of ethnic conflict that left the
island physically and mentally scarred by its division in 1974 into the
Turkish-speaking north and the Greek-speaking south. The border also
cuts across the heart of Nicosia, dividing the city into two.2
I am going to concentrate on the walled city of Nicosia, the ‘old city’, as
it is known to the inhabitants of its divided space. The Venetians erected
the wall surrounding the old city in the sixteenth century in order to pro-
tect it from attacks. The border that divides the Greek-speaking from the

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3. For a post-1960 Turkish-speaking communities was partly erected in 1963 and was fully
history of Cyprus
see Panteli (2000).
established as a demarcation line between the two communities after the
events of 1974.3 These two borders form the two most arresting visual
4. For a more detailed
discussion of
landmarks of the city. However, there is one striking difference between the
the significance of two. Whereas the Venetian wall provides an eye-catching aerial image of
the divided maps the city, an effective example of what Michel de Certeau calls an ‘optical
of Nicosia see
Papadakis (1998).
illusion’ (de Certeau 1984: 93), the dividing line between the two commu-
nities is almost untraceable from aerial views. For de Certeau there are two
possibilities in relation to viewing the city: firstly, the arrangement of
things into an image to be surveyed by distanced subjects; secondly, inhab-
iting the city or creating ground-level practices or tactics of everyday life
(de Certeau 1984: xxi). I want to take de Certeau’s argument a step fur-
ther in order to argue that the ‘ground-level’ practices need also to incor-
porate an affectual, embodied interaction with the city space that will
depart from the strict confines of the visual.
The various maps of Nicosia provide visual images of the city as if
seen, or surveyed, by distant subjects. The Venetians were the first to
map the city systematically, but a more comprehensive mapping took
place during the British colonial period. As Donna Haraway has argued,
maps make ‘things seem clear and under control’ (Haraway 2000: 144).
It is this need to contain and control the fear of the ‘Other’ and impose
totalizing, nationalistic and hegemonic discourses on to the landscape of
Nicosia that is also very much evident in the maps of the city since its
official division in 1974 by the infamous ‘Green Line’: both communities
are represented as segments of the whole (Figure 3). In order to get a map
for both sides of the city I have to visit both communities. A whole map of
the city does not exist in Cyprus. The nearest one gets to such a map is
Google Earth. In the visual language of mapping, Nicosia was recreated
as two separate entities. 4 A void exists in the representation of each
of the two communities. Such a void constitutes an uncanny representa-
tion for the viewer of these maps. Freud defines the uncanny as ‘some-
thing which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light’
(Freud 1995: 241). In the instance of the Turkish and Greek communi-
ties, the mapping of Nicosia by the two authorities, and the voids repre-
sented within these maps, reveals the repressed nature of the traumatic
past shared by these two communities, a collective past the two authori-
ties will not allow to be reintegrated into the lives of its inhabitants.
These maps fail to recognize the existence of the other community.
Instead, they promote a culture of condemnation and denunciation. The
result of such practices is, according to Judith Butler, to establish the
other as ‘non-recognisable’, resulting in the destruction of the capacities
needed for ethical reflection and conduct, which in turn generate self-
knowledge (Butler 2005: 46–9). Most importantly, these maps also
attempt through their visual hegemony to erase the shared sensorium of
the city, which its inhabitants, irrespective of ethnicity and religion,
share. Instead, the maps become the models for, rather than being a
model of, what they are supposed to represent. As such, they define and
impose hegemonic, nationalistic discourses. These discourses then
become embedded within the space of Nicosia and its streets, alleyways,
monuments and museums (Zesimou 1998: 254).

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Figure 3: Top: Turkish Cypriot Map of Nicosia, Bottom: Greek Cypriot Map
of Nicosia, n.d.

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5. It is important to A walk in the city

stress at this point
that the war of In order to examine the ways in which these discourses permeate the fab-
independence was ric of the city, I will take a tour of Nicosia. I want an embodied experience
instigated by the of the city; as Juhani Pallasmaa puts it, I want to ‘experience myself in the
Greek Cypriots with
the ultimate aim of city’, I want the city to exist ‘through my embodied experience’ since ‘the
the unification of the city and my body supplement and define each other’ (Pallasmaa 2005:
island with Greece. 40). The tour concentrates on the west side of the city, and starts at the
The Turkish Cypriot
population was west gate of the Venetian walls, the Paphos Gate. Here is Hermes Street,
against this and it the old commercial street that runs from east to west and along which
was during this the Green Line is situated. Its original Turkish name, Chinar, meaning
time that the two
communities became plane tree, was erased and replaced by the name of the Greek god
deeply divided. It is Hermes. The irony is that Hermes was the god that accompanied the souls
also important to of the dead to Hades, the place of the dead. Hermes Street has itself become
stress that the British
Government, under the ‘Dead Zone’, the other name by which the dividing line is known to the
their policy of ‘divide inhabitants of Nicosia (Papadakis 1998: 320). In the few coffee shops that
and rule’, supported are left in the area, the smell of Cypriot coffee, or rather Greek coffee as it
and encouraged the
separation of the two is known on this side of the city, lingers in the air. The voices of street ven-
communities. dors and the noise of crickets mingle with the heat of the summer, produc-
6. Makarios was one of ing a distinct sound, familiar to those who have visited hot, dry climates
the main protagonists during the summer months. Somewhere in the distance, from the area
of the war of that does not exist on the Greek map, the voice of the imam announces the
independence from
British rule and was prayers.
exiled by the British to The road outside the old wall, Markos Drakos Street, was named after
the Seychelles during one of the men who died during the war of independence from British
the latter part of the
war. He then became rule.5 Markos Drakos Street leads to the Ledra Palace Hotel checkpoint, the
the first president of only entrance to the north part of the city, which has been open only since
the republic until 2003. Just before the checkpoint, the smell of kebabs hits me. With the
1974, when he was
deposed during a smell of coffee, these are the most distinctive smells of the city. In order to
military coup and cross to the other side I walk through the buffer zone, the Dead Zone. This
then reinstated as is an overgrown area, controlled by United Nations forces. On each side of
president until his
death in 1977. the passage that leads through the Dead Zone are the ruins of what used to
be some of the best examples of early twentieth-century Cypriot architec-
ture. This area of about two hundred metres feels like walking through the
open wound of the city. The wound touches my body. It makes me feel the
pain of the city. I do not want to linger around here for too long. Once on
the other side, the same smells, sounds and heat greet me. And the voice
of the imam. I am now in Istanbul Street, which then leads me to the
Girne Gate situated at the north part of the old city. Here at the entrance of
the city stands Kemal Ataturk’s statue. Ataturk was the founder of mod-
ern Turkey; one of his phrases is engraved on the pedestal: ‘How Happy [I
am] to Say I am a Turk’. This clearly expresses identification with Turkish
history and identity. Around the square there are coffee shops with men
drinking coffee. The smell of coffee is ever present in the air. On this side of
the city it is called Turkish coffee, although it smells and tastes the same as
in the south.
Moving back across the border to the south side of Nicosia, another
male Cypriot leader, Archbishop Makarios, is commemorated outside the
Archbishop’s palace.6 The gigantic monument visually arrests the eye and
imposes on the cityscape the uncomfortable marriage of politics and reli-
gion, a marriage that proved catastrophic throughout the world in general

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and Cyprus in particular. What do these monuments give to the space of

Nicosia? Together with the names of the streets they provide a transforma-
tion of the city space into a ‘site of memory’. Pierre Nora argues that such
sites defend memories that are threatened (Nora 1989: 12). On both sides
these are memories created around issues of nationalism and constructed
on false claims of historical lineage with Turkey and Greece. The senso-
rium of the city provides a testimony to these forged claims. Whether I stood
by the statue of Makarios or Ataturk, the smells and sounds of the city
were the same.
Such sites embody and objectify the fragmented narratives that satu-
rate the space of Nicosia (cf. Antze and Lambek 1996: xvii). My narrative
is a fragmented one. Its streets come to sudden unexpected ends that bring
me in direct confrontation with a void, the Dead Zone. The sites of
memory that hegemonically provide the inhabitants of the city with a nar-
rative also furnish a possibility of coherence for the fragmented landscape
of the city. However, such coherence ignores the traumatic experiences of
the inhabitants of the city, embedded in memories ‘full of fleeting images,
the percussion of blows, sounds, and movements of the body’ (Culbertson
1995: 1784). Can these traumatic memories find a solace and reintegra-
tion within the space of the city and its totalizing, nationalistic discourses?
Walking in the main shopping street in Nicosia, Ledra Street, from
south to north, leads me to an abrupt stop. Looking through the outpost
one sees no-man’s-land. Next to the outpost is a small exhibition that
shows the photographs of those missing in action and the anguish of the
relatives. The images of dead, mutilated bodies adorn this border post. The
mutilated dead body is also ever present in the two museums that I discuss
below; they reveal further the significance of nationalistic discourses in
Nicosia and, most importantly, the trauma of war and its representation
that forms the main part in the construction of the Other and the trauma-
tized self.

Two museums
The National Museum of Struggle in Nicosia, situated next to the
Archbishop’s Palace, commemorates the four-year war of independence
from British colonial rule (1955–9) and was founded in its aftermath, in
1960. A spiral walkway leads me through the four levels of the museum.
The entrance level introduces the war of independence. The first level
associates the history of Cyprus with ancient Greek civilization, thus
establishing a firm historical background on which to lay claim for what
follows – and also for the main protagonists of the events, Makarios and
General Grivas Digenis. The second level provides an iconography of the
demonstrations that were an almost daily occurrence during the period.
The third level provides a very different visual picture that details guer-
rilla-style warfare and its consequences. The photographs of mutilated
bodies of the dead line the walls. This procession of dead bodies leads to
the last level, which has been transformed into a shrine to all those who
died. A candle burns in front of each photograph. Also in this room are
three ropes, which hang in the middle. They represent the ropes used by
the British colonial forces to execute those classed as terrorists during the
uprising.

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I now turn to the Museum of Barbarism in the north part of the city. It
is situated in a residential area outside the perimeter of the walled city. The
museum opened its doors to the public in 1978. Its symbols and historical
narratives express identification and continuity with the Turkish nation. It
is situated in a house where, according to Turkish Cypriots, a woman and
her three children were murdered in their bath during the troubles of
1963. The guide explains that the room has been left intact since the mur-
ders took place and pieces of hair, brain and blood can still be seen stain-
ing the walls. Blood and destruction become once again symbolic of the
community.
What becomes apparent from my experience of the ways in which the
space of Nicosia constructs ‘imagined communities’ (see Anderson 1991:
163–85) is the relationship between the geography of the city and the rep-
resentation of death and destruction. The museum spaces, the monu-
ments to the dead that adorn both parts, the streets and their names, they
are all insistent on the trauma of war and the unrecognizability of the
community on the other side of the border. Death is ever present in
Nicosia, as is the Dead Zone, and it separates the two communities. In
what follows, I investigate, through a number of narratives from both sides
of the dividing line, the possibility of narrating the self in a place where
such possibilities are restricted by the hegemonic narratives that prevail
on each side of the border.

Personal narratives
Butler argues that when the ‘I’ seeks to give an account of itself, it can
start with itself, but it will find that this self is already implicated in a
social temporality that exceeds its own capacities for narration. If the ‘I’
is not at one with moral norms, this means that the subject must delib-
erate upon these norms, and that part of this deliberation will entail a
critical understanding of their social genesis and meaning (Butler 2005:
7–8). What kinds of negotiation take place in attempts to narrate the self
in Nicosia? What I hope will become apparent is that these narratives
rely to a great extent on memories of smell, taste and touch: memories
shared by all ethnic communities in Cyprus. It is also through these
memories that the Other is recognized and available norms are chal-
lenged and re-evaluated.
In 1977, three years after the events of 1974, the writer, Agne Michaelidi,
wrote:

Nicosia was mercilessly hit. It was not only the new Nicosia, however, that
suffered but the old town, the Chora, the heart of Nicosia was engulfed in
large columns of smoke from its burning buildings. For a minute it looked
like the whole old city was lost.
(Michaelidi 1977: 399)

She continues: ‘Nicosia is dreaming of when its streets will cease to be

divided and its silent churches will open their doors again’ (Michaelidi
1977: 399). The writer relives the trauma of the destruction of Nicosia but
also sees a way forward. However, the future is steeped in nationalist dis-
course. Her private memories of Nicosia and her hopes become identified

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with the Greek Church and its strong associations with the Greek Cypriot
state. Her narrative shows the difficulty of creating a personal place within
a unified Nicosia.
The space of Nicosia is a place constructed through death and trauma.
Like the mutilated dead bodies that adorn the walls of the two museums,
the city itself is torn apart, resulting in an open wound. The body, and in
this instance it is very much the male body, becomes the body politic. For
Henry Lefebvre, space

is first of all my body and then it is my body counterpart or ‘other’, its

mirror-image or shadow: it is the shifting intersection between that which
touches, penetrates, threatens or benefits my body on the one hand and
all other bodies on the other.
(Lefebvre 1991: 405)

How do the inhabitants of Nicosia imagine a space for themselves in a

place where the male body has become the body politic? The interconnec-
tion of the mental and social space is evident in the work of Turkish and
Greek Cypriot artists. However, their work moves away from hegemonic
totalizing discourses in order to translate and de-totalize the space of
Nicosia into a place of personal experiences, and most importantly a place
where the trauma of the cityscape can be interrogated and integrated into
a personal narrative that offers possibilities for the body to emerge by
re-incorporating traumatic memories and by questioning totalizing mas-
culine discourses. These narratives offer what Butler calls a ‘desire for
recognition’ of the Other and they result in the ‘interrogation of available
norms’ (Butler 2005: 24).
For a number of women, an intervention with the divided space of
Nicosia, and particularly the physicality of the line, is the only option. For
the political activist Katie Cliridis the dividing line became an obsessive
reality; she said to the British sociologist and feminist activist Cynthia
Cockburn: ‘I think I can’t be away from the buffer zone for more than a
month. It’s like a psychosis’ (Cockburn 2004: 171). For Bahire (full name
omitted for reasons of security), a member of the women’s group ‘Hands
Across the Divide’, the line represents an emotional reality: ‘I want to cry.
It’s a small island, my island, and it’s divided into two so we are penned in,
just like sheep and dogs, it’s like a fence’ (Cockburn 2004: 170). Although
the line was meant to protect each community from the other, for Bahire
and many other women this is a useless exercise. Bahire said: ‘How can a
wall protect you? Our ideas could protect us, if we learn how to be human
beings’ (Cockburn 2004: 170). For the poet Neshe Yasin, the divided space
of Nicosia provides a dilemma that very much addresses the psychic split
that trauma implies:

They say a person should

love their homeland
that’s also what
my father often says
My homeland
has been divided in two

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7. Constantinople is which of the two pieces

the name by which should I love?
Greeks still refer to
Istanbul. This was (Yasin 1995a: 79)
the name of the
city until it fell into For Yasin, this simple questioning, more than anything else, reveals the
Ottoman hands
following the collapse complexity that the space of Nicosia creates for its inhabitants. The patri-
of the Byzantine archal imposition of patriotism accentuates the psychic split that the
Empire. The use divided space creates. It is through an imaginary lover on the other side of
of ‘Constantinople’
signifies a refusal to the border, an impossible act under the strict restrictions that divide the
accept the death of two communities, that Yasin creates the imaginary space that allows her
the Byzantine Empire. to transcend the spatial restriction of the line:

I will come barefoot as everyone sleeps

in the same city
walls cut across my path
wait on the other side to run and embrace
since love is a bird.
(Yasin 1995b: 81)

Cliridis, during her all-night wanderings along the dividing line, would
look for holes along the fence. She would watch the cats to see which
route they took across the line. For Yasin, the cat and its flexible body also
offers the only possibility of transcending physical barriers, imagining that
she will walk through the line dressed like a cat. However, this imaginary
space is not free of the influences of the spatial reality of the city. The con-
tinued presence of the dividing line is threatening:

I fear that this forbidden hope might end

Every fire will become ash
I have gone mad and I am coming to you.
(Yasin 1995b: 81)

Moreover, the language that Yasin speaks is an alien language in a society

that segregates love on religious and ethnic grounds. She asks: ‘Who will
understand my language/The love of a peasant girl’? (Yasin 1995b: 81)
Hers is a language very much alien to the masculine language of the
politicians that rule the two communities.
Niki Marangou provides further evidence as to the intrusion of the
dividing line in the daily lives of the inhabitants of the city. The line cre-
ates a ‘tension’. However, it is through this tension that, Marangou
argues, a ‘passion is created in the city’. This passion makes the city
unlike any other Greek cities and more akin to Constantinople
(Marangou 2005: 17).7 It is in the old city that Marangou feels more at
home. This is a space that ‘determines’ her through the many memories
that the ancient walls carry, including memories of wholeness. Most
importantly for Marangou it is in this space that she can feel the geo-
graphical nearness of Nicosia to the East (Marangou 2005: 21). As in the
previous narratives, Marangou has a compulsion to visit the line. She
writes: ‘I kept going to the Turkish quarter, when roadblocks were put up,
on each side. A young girl on a bike, no one thought of stopping me. […]

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I often walk in the old city, the half that is left. All the roads come to a 8. The words hodja
and imam are used
dead end’ (Marangou 2005: 19). interchangeably in
Gardens provide a microcosm for the inhabitants of Nicosia. This is the Cyprus in order to
space where one can escape from the dead ends of the city and the insis- denote the person
who announces the
tent summer heat. For Marangou the gardens provide the best opportunity daily prayers.
to enjoy the city, especially in the evening when a west wind comes and
‘the burning city breathes out’. (Marangou 2005: 21) The inhabitants of
Nicosia then go ‘out to their balconies and gardens’ (Marangou 2005: 21).
It is within these protected spaces that one can sense the city through its
smells. Marangou feels that the whole world has ‘gathered in my garden’.
(Marangou 2005: 21) In this garden, memories of scents come together,
memories from the history of Cyprus and the divided city:

I have planted roses in the garden this year

instead of writing poems
the centifolia from the house in mourning at Ayios Thomas
the sixty-petalled rose Midas brought from Phrygia
the Banksian that came from China
cuttings from the mouchette surviving
in the old city,
but especially Rosa Gallica, brought by the Crusaders
With the exquisite perfume
[…]
we shall be sharing leaves, petals, sky,
in this incredible garden,
both they and I transitory.
(Marangou 2005: 21)

The garden and its smells not only represent the embodiment of memories
from different corners of the history of Cyprus but also offer the possibility
of reconciliation. It is through these shared historical memories of smell
that the ‘I’ can express itself as a subject and a Cypriot.
This is a pattern that repeats itself in the work of other authors. For
Stephanos Stephanides, the sounds and smells of the city form the mem-
ory of the city. In his poem ‘Broken Heart. For the Old City’, death and
mourning are dealt with through a sensory journey that takes the poet
into his grandmother’s lemon garden, where he remembers her stitching
together a quilt that will shield his body. The most vivid memory is ‘a
memory of a fragrance of ancient smoking leaves and wailing prayers of
unseen hodjas to the north’ (Stephanides 2005a: 23). The sound of the
hodja8 announcing the daily prayers is a recurring theme in the memories
of many writers. For Marangou the memory associated with relaxing on
the veranda is the voice of the imam. For Nora Nadjarian, when the hodja’s
voice ‘clings to the summer evenings’ she tries to ‘imagine his face and
weigh the importance of his syllables’ (Nadjarian 2005: 27).
Tactile memories form the focus of Stephanides’ recollections of his
childhood in Trikomo, the village in which he grew up and which is now in
the Turkish part of the island. The poet’s body is exposed to the revelations
of memory. Through this bodily encounter he ‘absorbs and expels the world’
(Stephanides 2005b: 37). He seeks ablution in ‘rivers lit with [the] smell of

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camphor’ where he can ‘experience its infinite flesh without words’

(Stephanides 2005b: 37). Through this ritual of remembering, he is:

feeling the fingers of breeze

touching me with diesel and jasmine.
And heat of stones
Sending me running
To the random sensuality of seas.
(Stephanides 2005b: 37)

I did not define the ethnic group of these authors on purpose. They are all
Cypriots who come from different ethnic communities, Greek, Turkish,
Armenian, or others who were born and brought up in the United
Kingdom, Australia, Canada and subsequently returned to Cyprus. They all
write in different languages. For Mehemet Yasin, language poses a problem.
Turkish was, according to the author, ‘dangerous’ and Greek was ‘forbid-
den’ (Yasin 2005: 57). English was the ‘middle’ language, a ‘slender paper-
knife for cutting schoolbooks’ and a language to be used at certain times,
‘especially with the Greeks!’ (Yasin 2005: 57). However, the language prob-
lem was manifested when one wanted to express emotions: ‘I was often
unsure in which language to shed tears’ (Yasin 2005: 57), Yasin states.
The life he lived was one of ‘translation’: ‘My mother-tongue one thing, my
motherland another, and I, again, altogether different’ (Yasin 2005: 57).
I would argue that there is a common language that is used throughout the
work I quoted above. It is a language that moves away from the confines of
linguistic barriers in order to use touch, smell, hearing and their embodi-
ments to deal with the trauma of war and division, and to look forward to
recognize the existence of the Other across the border. In doing so, these
narratives and sense impressions re-totalize the fragmented landscape of
the city by resurrecting the submerged, buried coherence of the city in
order to provide a new totality far removed from the totalizing hegemonic
discourses that permeate the two ethnic communities.
The red-stained aprons that Loizidou uses in her installation force us to
acknowledge the existence of blood and destruction in the fabric of the
city, again using sensual memories from the cityscape. The exhibition itself
is, like the city of Nicosia, full of dead ends and fragmented narratives.
Space, always present in Loizidou’s work, open to the world, is at the same
time enclosed within its own mourning. It is the void that mirrors and at
the same time transgresses the void of the border, the Dead Zone, but also
incorporates it, works through it and transgresses it. Moving further into
her installation, I am faced with the Monument to the Dead to which I am
led from the Passage of Time. Here, I encounter a mechanical carousel from
which perfectly tailored dresses hanging from empty rib cages gyrate end-
lessly. This macabre merry-go-round, the monument to the dead, with its
incessant mechanical repetition provides the connecting link to sketches of
the body exhibited nearby and also to a group of headless torsos embroi-
dered and stitched together. By presenting memories as stitched-together
objects, Loizidou makes them appear as scraps or bits of a past that hover
on the undecidable yet profound divide between memory and trauma.
Another example of this is A Mountain Where I Hide My Dream in a Tent.

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The tent, with its strong connotations of refugee camps and displacement, 9. Following a military
coup to overthrow
becomes a place of psychic refuge where one can protect the dreams/ Makarios on 15 July
nightmares of a traumatic past. The tent, with its mechanical lifting and 1974, Turkish troops
lowering, attempts to rehabilitate these nightmares, yet also keeps in its invaded the island on
20 July, claiming
folds the traces of memory. as an excuse their
In another corner, The Pillows of my Nightmare or the Bloody Years of the powers as one of
History of a War takes the issue of traumatic recall a step further. The pil- the three guarantors
of the peace of the
lows, a symbol of comfort and restful sleep, are presented in gigantic island and the need
forms. Contrary to the miniature that can be incorporated, the gigantic to protect the
version refuses such incorporation. The pillows no longer offer solace and Turkish-speaking
population of Cyprus.
sleep can no longer be a restful escape. Instead, they bring back those
traumatic moments of parachute troops landing on the island on a hot
morning in July 1974.9 The artist’s anguish is transferred to the visitor
who witnessed these events through somatic memories, stitched together
with highly visible needlework so that the real appears unreal and the
invisible prevails. This invisibility, however, brings to the surface a sensual
relation with the objects we encounter. We are invited not only to touch
them but also, as in the case of Measure of Blows, Costumes for All, where
dummies are in the form of punchbags, to punch them in order to relieve
our frustration and anger.
Irony is another technique that the artist uses here. Grotesque
mechanical limbs, The War Machines, are scattered next to a piece entitled
In the Name of the Father. The Lacanian concept faces its double self, the
war machine, which in another corner is transferred to a heap of soft toys,
The War Loot, while video screens cut off by a barbed-wire construction
provide snapshots of lost places, husbands, sons. However, the images do
not stop there; they also provide images of women embroidering, weaving,
baking, creating. What does the artist achieve by these video images that
repetitively flicker in front of our eyes? The unreal, grotesquely stitched-
together dolls are finally replaced by these positive images of women per-
forming creative jobs, offering a possibility for reconciling the two
communities. Their strong affect and power of meaning production sug-
gest precisely the kind of subjectivity that would generate what Walter
Benjamin termed ‘ungrasped symbolism’ (Bal 1999: 122) and what psy-
choanalyst Christopher Bollas termed ‘the unthought known’ (quoted in
Bal 1999: 122). According to Mieke Bal, this is something the subject
senses, and upon which it acts, but which it cannot articulate in a fully
rational discourse. The installation also shifts narrative even more promi-
nently into a different temporality. This aspect is grounded in the sense-
based bodiliness of the specific present that each act of viewing produces
and shapes (Bal 1999: 125).
Antoniou adopts a similar approach. The Rose Wall reveals behind it a
collection of tables. However, the surfaces of these household objects have
been transformed by the use of a thick paste on tortured surfaces. They
reveal a multiplicity of traces and marks. The artist imprinted her memo-
ries on the skin of these tables. It is as if the history of the land has touched
these surfaces in order to produce a memory surface that will narrate
through touch their/her history. As in the narratives previously discussed,
the artist uses a sensory memory in order to narrate the past through her
body. In another mixed media work, Memory of Contact, Antoniou draws

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her hand on a crumpled piece of paper painted red. Rose petals are scat-
tered in the centre of the paper. The hand touches the rose petals. Touch
and smell transform the visuality of the work into a play of the senses. In
Incise, scissors cut through a rough surface scattered with petals on which
faces are painted. One can feel the pain of the shredding of the surface.
The household object acquires yet another meaning through the forceful-
ness of the act. The juxtaposition of rough surface and smooth petals is
also disturbing, unsettling the senses. Some of the faces stare at us with
anguished expressions. Unlike Loizidou’s work, where the numerous dolls
have no faces, here I am confronted with the face: the face of the Other
screaming to be recognized. Butler, drawing on Levinas, argues that the
face communicates an enormous prohibition against aggression through
the exposure of the vulnerability of the Other. Faced with this vulnerabil-
ity, one recognizes that self-preservation cannot be the highest goal. Such
exposure of the face becomes a reminder of a common vulnerability
(Butler 2005: 100).

Ending
One hot summer morning, when I first met Neshe Yasin, we were having
coffee in the main square of north Nicosia under the ever-present card-
board figure of Ataturk and his intrusive gaze. We both agreed that we
were having a Cypriot coffee. Yasin said, ‘One day I would like to trans-
form that building into an arts centre,’ pointing to the main police station
and prison opposite us. ‘I was imprisoned there,’ she said, ‘for giving
refuge to a young couple. Their only crime was that they were from oppos-
ing sides of the dividing line’ (conversation with Neshe Yasin).
The city for these artists becomes a space of possibilities by looking
beyond the abrupt dead ends of its streets, its masculine monuments and
their totalizing discourses, and the continued presence of abject death in
its museums and streets. By doing so, they de-masculinize the cityscape
and de-totalize hegemonic discourses. Most importantly, they recognize
the existence of the Other and the possibilities that such recognition offers.
As Butler argues, we need to ‘risk ourselves precisely at moments of
unknowingness, when what forms us diverges from what lies before us,
when our willingness to become undone in relation to others constitutes
our chance of becoming human’ (Butler 2005: 135). This recognition also
leads to the re-totalization of the city’s sense impressions and the resurfac-
ing of the coherence of the city.
While this article was being finalized, the Ledra Street outpost was
demolished after agreement between the Greek- and Turkish-speaking
communities. For the first time since 1974, the street has become one
continuous road, partly uniting, once again, the sensorium of the city.

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Suggested citation
Koureas, G. (2008), ‘Trauma, space and embodiment: the sensorium of a divided
city’, Journal of War and Culture Studies 1: 3, pp. 309–324, doi: 10.1386/
jwcs.1.3.309/1

Contributor details
Dr Gabriel Koureas is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Visual Culture in the
School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck College, University of
London. Koureas’ research interests are in the relationship of memory, conflict and
commemoration in the construction of national and gender identities. His past
research and recently published book concentrate on the commemoration of the
First World War in relation to the visual culture of the 1920s and offers an innov-
ative way of looking at ways in which intimacy, cultural expressions of sexuality,
emotion and affect are encoded in diverse forms in visual culture and commemo-
rative objects with particular emphasis on the performative nature of gender and
various sites of memory. Current research interests concentrate on issues of con-
flict and commemoration in relation to postcolonial memory and gender as well as
the possibilities of reconciliation offered through visual culture with special
emphasis on trauma and the senses.
Contact: School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck College,
43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD.
E-mail: g.koureas@bbk.ac.uk

324 Gabriel Koureas