Word: baksheesh
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Hutchison enlisted in the small army of these diesel gypsies, sharing their home cooking and their raunchy exploits. Aside from engine trouble and the occasional stray bullet, his lively memoir records few acknowledgments of the 20th century. Ancient hostilities persist, and bribery remains endemic. Still, customs inspectors prefer modern baksheesh. At one checkpoint, the presentation of a girly magazine "got us all waved out of the compound without further hassle...
...clarity in Arabia, a purity that transformed the unhappy Englishman into a mystic desert hero. Other Englishmen and Americans, aloof, invulnerable, their servants laboring under steamer trunks and their gazes trained on cathedrals and Pyramids, traveled almost as a means of confirming their own moral superiority. They took their baksheesh back in the form of a deeper smugness. In such cases, travel did not broaden, but rather narrowed the mind...
...bribe is a bribe by any name-and the more euphemistic the name for it, the better. Baksheesh, currently in wide use in the Middle East, is a Persian word that is also found in Turkish and Arabic. It actually means a tip or gratuity given by a boss to his underling. The word was first used extensively to mean a bribe in connection with the money that a new sultan gave his troops. In most Spanish-speaking countries, el soborno means a payoff, but in Mexico payola is aptly described as the bite (la mordida...
...Gabor, whose first choice is not a candidate this time: "Nixon would know how to deal with the Iranian militants: get a million dollars baksheesh and pay them off. They steal a ring off your ringer and sell it back to you. Nixon understands...
Kabul does retain some scraps of its former character. Donkeys laden with wicker panniers of fruit plod along the muddy side streets. Women beggars, their faces concealed completely by hoods with mesh eye holes, wail for baksheesh outside rug stores. Turbaned tribesmen from the mountains stride along shouldering huge bundles. Boys offer sticks of lamb shashlik grilled over charcoal at street corners. Outside moviehouses there are garish posters of Afghan-made westerns in which ersatz Omar Sharifs twirl six-shooters in each hand. But the cinemas are open only in the afternoons, and ticket sales are slow because...