Nicosia is the setting for Chris Hudson’s interview with Costas Gunduz and part of the history Costas recounts through his police interrogator, Joe Kyprianou. It is also a city whose division creates an unexpected opening for Costas and his brother Andreas, turning a local criminal trade into one shaped by borders and political change.

Setting and the prison interview

Chris arrives in Cyprus at Larnaca airport, where Joe meets him and drives him to the capital. Their interview takes place in a small room at the Central Prison of Nicosia, with Chris seated opposite Costas, the father of Gianni Gunduz. The room’s fixed concrete chair, bolted to the floor, makes the encounter physically uncomfortable; the prison itself, by contrast, is cool after the heat outside. Nicosia thus enters the narrative both as a working city and as the enclosed setting for an inquiry into Gianni’s whereabouts.

A city in the brothers’ criminal route

Before the political division, Costas and Andreas steal motorcycles in Nicosia and send them to Turkey. Their workshop allows them to file off serial numbers and change registrations, while contacts at the ports help the stolen vehicles pass through. As the business expands from motorcycles to cars, its practical infrastructure grows too: Joe describes bigger workshops, lorries, and crates. The account presents Nicosia not simply as the source of the vehicles but as a point in a route sustained by coordination across ports and borders.

The Green Line and a changed opportunity

The Turkish invasion and the division of Cyprus alter the geography around the brothers. Greek Cypriots in the north move south, while Turkish Cypriots in the south move north. In Nicosia, the Green Line divides the city, with the Turkish side to the north and the Greek side to the south. Costas and Andreas move north—but, as Joe emphasizes, only three streets north. The smallness of that distance contrasts with the scale of its political consequence: they find themselves in a changed environment, and Costas recognizes an opportunity to start a new business. The city’s division therefore becomes a turning point in the brothers’ circumstances, while the interview gives Chris a compressed history of how criminal enterprise adapted to a newly divided Nicosia.