Word: baksheesh
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Magic Money. Gulbenkian was an Armenian, but he did not rise from rugs to riches. His father. Sarkis. was a prosperous kerosene importer in suburban Constantinople. Calouste adopted an old Arab proverb as his first business maxim while palm-priming the sultan's retinue with baksheesh: "The hand you dare not bite, kiss it." Priming himself with a civil engineering degree at London's King's College, Calouste visited the Baku oilfields in 1888, and in his 20th year wrote an authoritative book on the Baku petroleum industry. It was the overture to decades of what Gulbenkian...
...Buicks and Cadillacs had been imported duty-free in the President's name? El Khoury tried to suppress the scandals, but there weren't enough rugs in all Lebanon to sweep the dirt under. He kept losing supporters. Lebanese resented the nickname their country was getting: the Baksheesh State...