Word: baraka
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Bolobo -only 180 miles upriver from Leopoldville. Other shipments arrived by sea at Tanzania's capital of Dar es Salaam, were sent in sealed boxcars to the lake port of Kigoma, then were shipped either directly across Lake Tanganyika to the rebel-held area of the Congo around Baraka or through the small kingdom of Burundi...
Early last week a handful of junior army and police officers crept into the white, bougainvillea-shrouded presidential mansion overlooking Libreville's humid harbor. The sleeping President was hauled from his bed with a revolver in his side, then found himself quickly spirited off to the Baraka military camp outside the capital. When Libreville awoke, the rebels had control of the airport, post office, radio station and government buildings. The coup committee announced that "Léon Mba and his acolytes" had been thrown out, named Aubame provisional Prime Minister, and looting got under...
...command of General René Cogny, the hero of Dienbienphu. At 2 p.m. they began landing at the Libreville airport, where the rebels providentially had failed to erect obstacles on the runway. The troopers swept through the city with little resistance, but the coup leaders made a stand at Baraka. Sending Mba off under guard to a village near Dr. Albert Schweitzer's hospital at Lambarene, the rebels prepared to meet the imminent French attack. It came next morning as French fighters stooped like falcons from the tropic sky, sent ball and tracer lashing into the army camp...
...Islamic word baraka is derived from the word meaning knee, hence from the rapture of a worshiper on his knees before his deity, and it can be applied to almost anything to indicate a kind of beauty and virtue. As Poet Robert Graves explained it last week to the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters in Manhattan, a battered brass cooking pot can have baraka, but not a new spun-aluminum one; an old pair of trousers may have it, or a poem, or a wonderful one-hoss shay...
...King James Bible is full of baraka, according to Graves, who has co-authored his own quirky version of Holy Scripture, The Nazarene Gospel Restored. "In Britain today this ancient baraka, and that of a few unrestored churches and cathedrals, keeps the flickering candle of faith alight." he explained. "Yet, in the name of progress, various ecclesiastical bodies are now trying to supplant the King James version with the New English Bible, a translation carefully purged of all baraka. Though it has sold in advance by the million, the verdict of the countryside is: 'We don't like this book...