Word: beggars
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...BEGGAR by F. M. Esfandiary. 141 pages. Ivan Obolensky...
...telling critique of social and political conditions in modern Iran that in recent years the author has "found it inadvisable to live in Iran." His second book is a ferocious satire that attacks a fundamental assumption of civilization: the concept of justice. Composed in remarkably stylish English, The Beggar presents in an appalling parable the ancient argument of mercy: that one man's guilt is shared by all men inextricably, that punishment is itself a crime. The parable...
Alms & the Man. This kid could Armed with $600 in traveler's checks and a beguiling blend of corn and con ("I'm a beggar seeking alms of knowledge, and people have to help me"), he flew to Europe, took a two-month motor-scooter tour of Britain and the Continent and parlayed a school first-aid course into a job as hospital attendant on a U.S. freighter leaving Genoa for Hong Kong. In Saigon, dauntless Dwight flashed a letter from the Providence Journal promising to consider publishing any dispatches he might send home-and was accredited...
Things got no better with age. Whatever he did offended somebody. On breadlines he asked for toast. When President Johnson declared war on poverty, he went out and threw a hand grenade at a beggar. To lose weight he started eating saccharin-and got artificial diabetes. He fell in love with a promiscuous girl, so promiscuous she became a hostess in an alley...
...Beggars & Bedpans. Other romance languages are no better off. In parts of eastern Italy, priests have had to keep the phrase "body of Christ" in Latin, because saying it in Italian is a common local curse. In Tuscany, clerics find it embarrassing to end the Mass with Andate in pace (Go in peace)-locally the most common way to shoo away a beggar. Trying to come up with a common Mass text for Brazil and Portugal, translators discovered that they could not use the most common Brazilian word for servant (servidor): in Portugal it means bedpan...