Another Berlin Wall is opened

It's been nearly fourteen years since the opening of Berlin Wall, an event that led with astonishing rapidity to the end of communism in most places where it had once seemed secure and impregnable. It's difficult to imagine what it might be like to have one's own city bisected in such a way. I live in Hamilton, Ontario. Imagine a wall topped with barbed wire extending down the middle of, say, James Street, with the city's population forced to remain within their respective zones.

Here is an article from The International Herald Tribune about two families in Nicosia, Cyprus, living on the same street but on different sides of the Green Line: "Cypriots finally see what lay behind wall." And here is what the Green Line looked like eight years ago in another bisected street, Ledra Street, in Nicosia: