He ran Sudan’s most legendary hotel. Then he had to leave everything behind.

Even as fighter jets ripped through the skies of Khartoum in April and the streets became a dystopian war zone amid a confrontation between rival Sudanese fighters, Thanasis Pagoulatos had no intention of fleeing.

Born 79 years ago to a Greek immigrant father and a mother from the Greek diaspora in Egypt, Pagoulatos had only known one home: Sudan.

There his family had laid deep roots and grown a business, the Acropole Hotel, that prospered through decades of near-constant turmoil. They were part of a thousands-strong Greek community that became integrated in the Sudan and survived after the country’s independence from British colonial rule in 1952.

Through it all, life in that vast land went on – and so did the Acropole.

Housed in a nondescript mustard-colored building in the center of Khartoum, the hotel was teeming with archaeologists, journalists, philanthropists and adventure travelers.

Pagoulatos’ father, Panaghis, opened it in 1956, after arriving in Sudan in search of a better life, as his native Greek island of Kefalonia lay in the ruins of World War II.

But the elder Pagoulatos died suddenly, leaving the hotel and other affairs in the hands of his powerful wife, Flora, and their three sons, Thanasis, then 19, and the younger George and Makis.

The brothers, under their mother’s guidance, focused on family hospitality rather than luxury, establishing the Acropole Hotel as a vital hub in Sudan’s interactions with the outside world.

While they offered basic accommodations — pristine but bare rooms, three square meals, constant air conditioning in temperatures regularly rising above 100 degrees Fahrenheit — the family made the place a home. Guests flocked and returned, rejecting fancier, larger hotels.

Flora Pagoulatos died in 2010, but Mr. Pagoulatos and his brothers, their wives and later their children continued to run the hotel. Regular guests remembered each brother’s unique personality.

George, the middle one, was charming and discreet, an imperturbable problem solver. Makis, the youngest, was energetic and tenacious, and when Greece closed its embassy in 2015, he became honorary consul, and the Acropole, the consulate. Thanasis was gentle and meticulous, paying attention to detail.

In his eight decades in Khartoum, Thanasis Pagoulatos – a tall man with soft white hair, blue eyes and a gentle voice – has seen it all: coups d’état (nearly a dozen), wars (civil and with neighbours), famines (two).

In May 1988, he was at the hotel when a terrorist detonated a bomb, killing seven guests. Together with his brothers, he moved the entire business to the hotel annex across the street and continued.

When heavy fighting broke out between the country’s army and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in mid-April, Mr. Pagoulatos locked himself in the hotel with his sister-in-law Eleonora, three staffers and four guests, and waited. Makis was in Greece at the time and the hotel’s 50 rooms were mostly empty, partly due to security concerns.

“We thought, ‘It will pass, it always does,'” he said in a recent interview in Athens, where he reluctantly evacuated to join the rest of his family.

The loss of his beloved brother George, Eleonora’s husband, months earlier, had already made this a terrible period for the Pagoulatoses. How much worse can it get?

It turned out, quite a lot.

During the first few days of the fighting, encouraged by Mr. Pagoulatos, the group – a Sudanese and two Filipino staffers, two German tourists and a Brazilian and an Italian archaeologist – remained calm.

They had no running water or electricity, but the kitchen had a basic supply of food and drinking water. Mr. Pagoulatos couldn’t quite fathom the chaos spreading across his beloved city, but he knew it was at his doorstep.

Fighters entered demanding food or drink and Mr. Pagoulatos committed to keep the group safe. At night, he recalled with terror, men rattled the padlocked front door.

Responsibility for his guests and staff weighed on him. “I felt that these people stayed with us and that they were in this situation through no fault of their own,” he said. “Who would take care of them? It had to be us.”

While citizens in Khartoum desperately sought help and embassies rushed to free their personnel, a small global tribe, linked by the Acropole, sought news of Mr. Pagoulatos.

At the center of this was Roman Deckert, a German researcher who first stayed at the hotel in 1997 and returned over the years to bond with the family and record their history.

During their childhood in Khartoum, the Pagoulatos brothers often visited their father’s ancestral land in Greece. But Mr Pagoulatos said he always longed to return to Sudan. When he and his brothers were grown and married, they all lived near the hotel in the same building, and their children were raised as siblings, not cousins.

Mr. Pagoulatos was brought up with Greek, Arabic and English. But he also learned French and Italian, which served him well at the hotel, as the family’s worldliness and interest in culture made the Acropole a center and symbol of Sudan’s cosmopolitanism over the decades. Before Islamic law came into effect, the hotel regularly hosted music events and movie nights on the airy terrace.

“They made it easy for Westerners and other Africans to fall in love with Sudan and the Sudanese,” Deckert said. “They played a big role in passing on a better side of Sudan to the world.”

For travelers like Dale Raven North, a Canadian lawyer who stayed at the Acropole last November, Mr. Pagoulatos and his family provided a haven. “It became, I think, my favorite place I’ve ever stayed because of the Pagoulatos family and the environment they’ve created,” she said.

For international correspondents, the Acropole was a home. Lindsey Hilsum, the British broadcaster, said in an interview from eastern Ukraine that she stayed on the Acropole in the 1980s, drawn by reasonable rates, security and a telex machine over which correspondents fought to submit messages.

For archaeologists, Mr. Pagoulatos and his brothers created a launch pad for decades of expeditions that uncovered treasures and secrets of human evolution.

“It is no exaggeration to say that almost none of the foreign archaeological projects in Sudan would have functioned without them,” says Munich-based archaeologist Kate Rose.

After being locked up in the Acropole for 10 days, Mr. Pagoulatos and the others with him ran out of food and drink. They had been put on an evacuation list through a contact at the Italian embassy and he was given permission by the militias to venture out into the heat and dust of devastated Khartoum on foot. The group of nine walked past decomposing bodies, slowly taking in the full magnitude of the disaster.

On the way, an elderly Sudanese man – “an angel,” Mr. Pagoulatos said – invited them to his home. The next morning he found a car for them to take them to an evacuation assembly point.

Mr. Pagoulatos and his sister-in-law were flown by the French army to neighboring Djibouti. Since they reached Athens, Mr. Pagoulatos, still shocked and emotional, felt relief, but also a desire to go home to Khartoum.

“We left behind an icon of Jesus who survived the 1988 terrorist attack, and the large collage that the non-governmental organizations gave us for our help during the famine,” said Mr Pagoulatos.

“We have to get them,” he said. “We just thought we’d help the guests leave and get back to work two or three days later.”