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Sometimes a New Year really is a new year. “It’s a new thing for us,” says Aziz Altaany. “It’s a new thing. We lived 50 years with the same ...

For a while, this article on Swami Jyothirmayah – and the three-day course he conducted at the Indian High Commission in Nicosia a couple of weeks ago – was lacking only one ...

There are times, admits George Rotos, when he’ll run into someone he knows and pretend not to see them – not because he doesn’t want to talk to them ...

They’ve got 20.6k followers on Instagram. They’re identical twins and they’ve got a contagious passion for food. Katerina and Georgia Fella, known as The Fella Twins, have ...

The little boy doesn’t hesitate once. He’s only 10 years old – the video was shot in Kakopetria in 2015 – but the piece of charcoal flies across the paper, adding lines ...

“The fact that you’re essentially dealing with people that are facing your own trauma or the trauma that your parents experienced means that every day, it’s like I’...

Furen is the name of the place – situated right on Eleftheria Square, the most prominent location in all Nicosia – offering “a real taste of Lebanon”. But which Lebanon? The war-torn ...

Kids do it constantly, at least till they become jaded teenagers. ‘Look!’ they’ll exclaim, ‘A dog!’, pointing at a rocky protuberance (that does look a bit like a dog’...

Sakis Lazarides doesn’t live in Nicosia (or even Cyprus). That’s just where we happen to meet, at the Arabica Coffee House in a nondescript corner of the capital – ...

It could happen to anybody. Although those with a family history of Parkinson Disease (PD) are at a higher risk, a risk that is quite substantial as its prevalence has ...

Two very different men with vaguely similar surnames haunt the living room of Sarah Dawoodi’s house in Avgorou. “Know only that which makes the unknown known,” wrote Rumi, the 13...

All the Same are having orange-and-pomegranate juice at Hoi Polloi in north Nicosia when a 200-lira note (about €6) appears on the cobbled street beside them. Obviously it doesn’t just ‘...

Aliki Hadjigeorgiou met Loukia (in a church, quite randomly) about 12 years ago, shortly after the publication of her first book. Aliki and Loukia – even their names are near-mirror-images of each ...

The story goes that the great rembetika player Markos Vamvarakis was walking the streets of Piraeus and Athens in the late 1940s with his fellow musicians on the lookout for ...

Monica Gavrielides is someone you remember. She talks loudly – so loud she’ll often embarrass more self-conscious companions – in a musical accent honed by 40 years in Brazil and America. She’...

It’s around 12 midday in the foyer of the Cyprus Theatre Organisation (Thoc) building in Nicosia, and one middle-aged chap in a white shirt and navy-blue jacket greets another warmly. “...

Leto Cariolou’s CV is easy to find. Go online – whether to her law firm in Cyprus, or Garden Court Chambers in London – and you can read about her years ...

Agnieszka Rakoczy meets DJ, artist, former hotel manager, political analyst and Cyprus expert Mete Hatay, and is not at all surprised to learn he reads four books at a time ...

From partying in LA to a semi-rural life in Larnaca, one man is always dressed to impress. THEO PANAYIDES finds him where art and engineering meet There’s a phrase ...

The ancient art of contortion led one headstrong child out of her home nation to the circus and on to balancing business with wellness. THEO PANAYIDES meets her For best ...

From a Birmingham fish and chip shop to the Cyprus village of Kato Drys, everyone knows Panayiota. THEO PANAYIDES meets a restless lacemaker mourning the loss of local traditions I ...

A rock-star restaurateur in Larnaca is taking it slow after being given a second chance at life. THEO PANAYIDES finds out what is scary on the outside and beautiful on ...

Using the body itself as art, one local man with a curated look is both playful and serious. THEO PANAYIDES meets a man (once half fish) who trusts his instincts ...

In the creator of award-winning adverts, THEO PANAYIDES meets a driven, cool man who sees things other people can’t and believes the world should fight for Gaza, not feel ...