By Michael Leo

In Homer’s day (the ancient hero, not the cartoon dunce), Kyrenia was an important hub for water transportation in the eastern Mediterranean. Although a commute for the Phoenician Ferry Service a thousand years ago was measured in weeks not minutes, plying local waters for the purpose of gaining money and/or sex was the same then and there as it is here and now.

Kyrenia is situated on the northern coast of the island of Cyprus, which has been a political chancre sore in the crotch of the Mediterranean for hundreds of years. Most recently in 1974, Turkish troops invaded Cyprus, taking the port of Kyrenia in the first hours of the campaign. The Turkish government actually had UN approval for the military action as a necessary step to protect the ethnic Turkish minority from a junta of Greek Cypriot militants who had seized power in a bloody coup five days earlier, during which the U.S. ambassador to Cyprus was killed by a) a stray bullet, or b) an assassin’s bullet, take your pick. Between 1945 and 1948 the British, who controlled the island as a protectorate, used it as a detention area for Jews who were caught trying to illegally immigrate to Palestine, only a quick ferry trip away. And prior to this, Richard the Lion Hearted used it as a launching pad for the Crusades, a convenient equivocation for the slaughter of thousands in the name of Christ. Today, Kyrenia is a sleepy port town in an area occupied by 30,000 Turkish regular troops. Few real Turkish Cypriots remain. On the other side of the Green Line are Greek Cypriots who have done well by turning their part of the island into a secretive offshore banking center for Russian mobsters, Lebanese cigarette dealers and anyone else who doesn’t need a receipt. Kyrenia, you can get there from the San Francisco Bay in 41 days traveling at 10 knots, by way of Panama, only 9,876 miles.