460
CAIRO TO DAMASCUS
nized. Mixed swimming was now permitted. I walked along
the beach, lost in memories.
As I wandered on toward the church where I had been
baptized, I saw the poverty that had overtaken Alexandropolis.
The entire village of two thousand souls was shabby in appearance—in need of plaster, paint, and repairs. It had seen nothing but war and violence from the time of my birth. There
had been the Balkan War of 1912, and World War I in 1914.
There had been bandit raids in its wake, and then World
War II, and the occupation by Germans and Bulgarians, who
had always hated the Greeks. Now Markos's guerrillas were
raiding the countryside, foraging for food and slaughtering
the cattle. They had once reached the outskirts of Alexandropolis but were driven back. Farmers had deserted their
lands, and fled to the village in terror. It was the same old,
old story. . . .
The population had trebled. Refugees lived in tents, barns,
and shacks, existing on the public dole and on food sent from
America. It was estimated that about fifteen per cent of the
Alexandropolis population was pro-Markos, therefore proCommunist. Overwhelmingly they were against the bandit
chief and Communism. The streets were crowded with soldiers in uniform, or in parts thereof, wasting their manhood
in pursuits of war.
I arrived at the Church of St. Garabed. Adjacent to it was
a long barnlike building now filled with refugees. It was once
the Armenian school. There were less than two hundred Armenians in Alexandropolis now. Every month a priest came
from Athens for religious services. The rectory was now rented
to a Greek peasant whom I found repairing a rusty stovepipe.
The plaster around the church fence had fallen, revealing the
mud bricks and stone foundation. The foundation outside the
wall had gone dry, the piping removed; it was now falling
apart. The belfry, detached from the church, was intact, but
the entrance gate was forlorn and dilapidated. I still thought
it a lovely little village church, with a look of reverence and