Word: amirate
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...blue uniform, twinkling with medals, cased the little, compact royal body. The oval, shapely head bore proudly a black shako topped with aigrette plumes. The left hand rested, militantly graceful, on the jeweled hilt of a sword. The right arm snapped to a correct salute as Amir Amanullah beheld upon the platform small, slim King Vittorio Emanuele of Italy, and burly but suave Prime Minister Benito Mussolini...
Since the public eye must focus on the "Peace of God," and since the vox populi must cheer him, Signor Mussolini withdrew the competition of his own presence. Having greeted the Amir at the station, Il Duce slipped out a side door, sped away down back streets in his bullet-proof limousine. Meanwhile Amir and King stepped into an open carriage. Outriders cracked their whips. The pageant moved...
Craning from countless small balconies, Romans peered and cheered ecstatically. They cheered the Amir, peered at his consort and their daughters. So there were Afghan amazons, the kind of women who, when a soldier is wounded, "come out to cut up what remains." After a short peer, Romans delightedly readjusted their impressions. Her Majesty, Queen Badsha of Afghanistan, is a slender, lovely woman with ivory skin, bright dancing eyes, and a quick queenly smile. She wore, last week, a close, black Parisian fur coat, a chic cloche hat. She and her daughters had never before appeared unveiled in public. Brave...
Thence the Amir was obliged to move to the Grand Hotel. Reason: He wished to call upon "The Prisoner of the Vatican," and no caller is received who comes directly from official premises of the Italian State, the hypothetical "jailer" of His Holiness. Amir Amanullah, although a Mohammedan, accepted amid pomp from the Beatissimus Pater, Pius XI, the "Order of the Golden Spur...
Amazed Italians wondered. How came this Amir of a fabled realm to be so nonchalant, so easily and intelligently apprehensive of both modernity and Eternal Rome? Is not Afghanistan the exotic and backward land of castor oil beans, asafoetida plants, and "fat-tailed sheep"?* Is it possible that a country without railways, a people whose chief exports are the wool and skins of "fat-tailed sheep" can have achieved sophistication...