Word: buraimi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Underground Wants. Forgotten Buraimi is suddenly a land remembered. Reason: oil, seemingly everywhere under the crust of the Arab peninsula. So far, none has been found within 300 miles. But each side wants to stake its claim...
Ninety miles inland from the Persian Gulf, the oasis of Buraimi has slumbered for centuries. Its 8,000 inhabitants subsist on dates, camel meat and milk, and live in eight, mud-walled villages scorched by the gusts of the shamal. No one knows for certain to whom Buraimi belongs. Northward lies Trucial Oman, "protected" by the British; westward lies Saudi Arabia; all around is uncharted waste, so desolate that even the Arabs call it Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter...
Over the centuries many marauders have come-the rulers of Oman, of Abu Dhabi, the Unitarians of Nejd (ancestors of modern Saudi Arabia)-briefly planted flags, then vanished. In 1869 the Trucial sheiks drove off the last of the Saudi tax collectors. Most conscientious modern geographers simply label Buraimi "undefined." It is a land of shifting sands, shifting tribes and shifting allegiances...
Last August a camel caravan lumbered into Buraimi bearing 40 Saudi officials, clerks and armed men headed by a doughty Arabian named Emir Turki Ibn Utaishan. They started wooing the bewildered inhabitants and chiefs with lavish feasts, silver riyals and sweet talk. Immediately, the Trucial Sheik of Abu Dhabi and the Sultan of Muscat appealed to their "protector" Great Britain to repel the "invaders...
...shot has been fired. In bleak, besieged Buraimi, Turki still holds out; he has 800 bags of rice, enough for many meals. Around him circle a busy band of British. Happiest of all are the local sheiks. They figure that all this excitement means oil. One of them has already decided how to spend his first oil royalty check-on a fancy new airplane...