IF you know of Famagusta, the city on the eastern seaboard of the small island of Cyprus, located beneath Turkey in the Mediterranean Sea, it is probably because you have heard about a beautiful ghost town within it called Varosha, frozen in time for 40 years now. You may have heard about its once-regal status as the Middle East's Mayan Riviera, of its crescent white sand beach that lured 10,000 tourists at a time, from all over the world. Movie stars like Elizabeth Taylor and pop groups like ABBA. You may have heard that the region's waterfront hotels are now empty and rotting, crawling with snakes, fenced off at each end of the beach and guarded by young conscripts of the Turkish army who whistle sharply at tourists daring to flaunt the signs that ban anyone from aiming even a camera into the ghost city, much less stepping on the wrong side of the fence. You may have seen haunting photographs on the Internet, and maybe you thought, Wow, I wonder what it's like in the...