Word: boudiaf
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...tells the story of a Saïd Boudiaf, a gifted Algerian boxer whose career peaks during the late 1950s in Paris. Still a colony of France at the time, Algeria's National Liberation Front (FLN) had begun a series of bombings to oust the occupiers. Upon arriving at the Paris train station Boudiaf gets immediately harassed by gendarmes who suspect any Arab of being a terrorist. Desperately trying to stay neutral in an atmosphere that insists on polarization, he declares, "I'm on the side of boxing." But when he defeats the French champion the stadium erupts...
...happens way too fast, with little subtlety or character development. Boudiaf's neutrality has no grounding and seems unlikely. The story gets so busy that the title, for example, remains a mystery. Boudiaf arrives in America for a page and a half and immediately returns to Paris having done little more than pose for pictures. Then just as suddenly, the books ends with a big, unsatisfying question mark. Even the boxing matches are reduced to little more than didactic description accompanied by snapshot-like panels. Unlike last year's masterful "Golem's Mighty Swing," (see the TIME.comix review), about...
...seconds after Mohammed Boudiaf spoke the words "We are all going to die," an assassin in uniform raised his submachine gun and fired, killing the 73-year-old Algerian head of state. Boudiaf may have thought he was merely making a philosophical point in his address to a crowd at a cultural center in the Mediterranean port city of Annaba. It was his first trip outside Algiers since he took office after a military coup in January. In the confusion and panic that followed, 41 other people were wounded by gunfire and grenades...
...spite of the presumption that the fundamentalists were behind the killing, some Algerians speculated that factions inside the army could have been nervous about Boudiaf's announced intention to investigate and punish high-level corruption. Others thought members of the National Liberation Front, the socialist party overthrown by the army, might have ordered the assassination...
...Kafi, secretary-general of the organization of veterans of the war for independence from France, was appointed to replace Boudiaf as president of the five-member Supreme State Council. But the armed forces remain in charge, and Defense Minister Khaled Nezzar is really Algeria...