(CHAPTER XXIV)
ISRAEL, AND GOING HOME
For a thousand years the Armenians have dreamed
of a sovereign, democratic homeland, to which one
might come and go freely. . . . We, too, are a patient people. We, too, can wait. We, too, can pray.
We, too, can dream and hope and live in the eternal
faith of a resurrected homeland.
HERE, in Nicosia, capital of the British colony of Cyprus, a
vitally strategic military base one hundred and fifty miles off
the Lebanese coast, I planned to leave almost immediately for
Alexandropolis. I had lived for nearly six months as a native
among Arabs: I felt I had an understanding of the Arab world
given to few Americans; I wanted to move on. But plans are
only plans, and kismet, which had intervened in my affairs
time and again, decided to do so again.
I went to visit the Jewish Displaced Persons camps in
Famagusta, Cyprus's main seaport, while waiting for a plane
to Greece. The men and women I saw were on the last lap of
their long journey to the Promised Land, and now, in the
British camps, suffering a more civilized form of purgatory.
"We want only to go to Eretz Israel," they said. "We sit on
our bags and wait our turn."
I regretted that I had not really been in Israel. In Jerusalem
I had been isolated (because of the war), with no possibility