The village of Pyla is described as the only mixed village on the island of Cyprus. A courtesy visit to the village police station is rewarded by a smiling, colourful portrait of President Mary McAleese. It hangs where you would possibly expect to find President Clerides, if you are coming from the south, or the ubiquitous Ataturk, if you have arrived from the north. Near the McAleese portrait there is a poster of multi-coloured balloons in the blue skies over Sydney marking the Australian bi-centenary.
Pyla is located in the Buffer Zone separating the Turkish Cypriot controlled north of Cyprus from the rest of the island. It is also part of the Dhekelia Sovereign Base Area, one of two areas of Cyprus still controlled by Britain. The Buffer Zone stretches from east to west on the island and marks the de facto partition that has come about since Turkey's military intervention in 1974.
Reaching the village involves a welter of bureaucracy and, coming from the north, a two-hour delay in the Turkish Cypriot village of Beyarmudu while passports are checked. The interlude provides time to chat to men sipping Turkish coffee and taking the November sun outside a Spartan village cafe.
Their main preoccupation is not security or politics, they tell us; since 1974, they say, there has been peace. The island's dwindling water supply is their main worry. On the island as a whole the water table is getting lower each year, a deterioration which particularly threatens an economy based on horticulture. The Beyarmudu villagers' hopes for the future are pinned not on developments in New York or Helsinki, but on a proposed water pipeline to Cyprus from the Turkish mainland. However, after the recent earthquakes, Turkey has its own problems and priorities, they admit.
The village doctor and mayor, Dr Huseyin Beyar, joins the conversation. To illustrate our location he invites us to look at maps in his surgery. These show we are in one of those cartographic loops - space warps, perhaps - almost totally surrounded by no man's land.
Eventually officialdom relents and we are cleared to continue towards Pyla, minus passports and one disposable Fuji camera which the border guards have temporarily confiscated on the grounds that the UN does not welcome people photographing the Buffer Zone. While this is later confirmed, I form the distinct impression my northern hosts do not share my enthusiasm to visit Pyla.
To the Greek Cypriots, Pyla is a model of integration: it shows how Greek and Turkish Cypriots can occupy the same space if allowed to do so. The mosque's minaret and Orthodox steeple stand almost side by side. The village is not cordoned off into zones and, while each community has its own municipal administration - a legacy of the 1960 partnership constitution - the mukhtars (council elders) from both sides occasionally work together on inter-communal projects.
But there the mixing appears to end. Differences of language, currency, culture and political allegiance are discernible in the simplest places. The village has its Greek Cypriot cafe-bar, with blue-and-white table cloths and a menu that makes no concession to the other community's language or currency; across the road, a Turkish Cypriot establishment shows a similar lack of cross-community concession.
When taken ill the Turkish Cypriot residents of Pyla are treated by our doctor friend from the village north of the Buffer Zone; Dr Beyar says he has no Greek Cypriot Pyla citizens on his books, though he knows them all socially.
However, one thing the villagers of Pyla have in common is the United Nations Civilian Police Force (Uncivpol), responsible for policing the village - as well as other townlands in the Buffer Zone and the coastal resort of Famagusta. Uncivpol consists of 15 gardai and 20 Australian police officers and its duties are described by Chief Supt Michael Fitzgerald, deputy commander of the force, as "comparatively stress free".
Det. Garda Bridget Shelly, from Tipperary, is civil affairs liaison officer for the Pyla village unit. She echoes the super-intendant's account: "There is no violence in Pyla," she says over Cyprus coffee (not called Turkish, note) in the blue-and-white village cafe. "Turning up for work each day, I don't expect overnight surprises like I was used to in the detective unit in Whitehall in Dublin."
Occasionally there are transgressions of the divide, usually by Turkish Cypriots driving south. Since the government in the south claims jurisdiction over the entire island, an errant Turk is likely to be detained in the south for nothing more serious than driving without a (recognised) licence or car tax. On these occasions Uncivpol is called on to liase with the police authorities and return the offender north.
Incursions in the other direction tend to be more political in nature - an assertion by Greek Cypriots of their non-recognition of the self-styled Turkish Republic of North Cyprus. Greek Cypriots crossing to the north without permits are regarded as illegal immigrants and can be deported south on that basis - muddier waters for the UN police force when it intervenes.
However, Inspector John Galvin, the force's civil affairs liaison officer, says there is widespread recognition that their work is humanitarian. The police on both sides co-operate fully with Uncivpol, he says and the others agree.
It is clear the UN force is studiously neutral and has to be so. One of its most sensitive roles is to accompany Christian pilgrims from the south and Muslim pilgrims from the north on agreed annual pilgrimages to shrines from which they have been separated by the Turkish partition. These can number up to 1,000 or 1,200 people at a time in "hostile territory" and the security implications are obvious.
At this time of year, Chief Supt Fitzgerald says, the force sometimes finds it necessary to keep an eye on game hunters and prevent them straying into the Buffer Zone with shotguns and cartridge belts, a mistake that could have peace-shattering consequences.
My final question was the ultimate test of UN neutrality: where would they recommend for lunch? Not surprisingly the gardai suggested two restaurants, one Greek and one Turkish, and left the final choice to us.
Declan Burke-Kennedy can be contacted at dbkennedy@irish-times.ie