Word: damascus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Cast as the native villain was Farhan Attassi, 36, a Syrian-born but naturalized U.S. citizen with an American wife and until lately a local salesman of American TV films. The brain was said to be Walter Snowdon, second secretary of the U.S. embassy in Damascus. Hauled before a military court-the proceedings were televised to the accompaniment of John Philip Sousa marches-Attassi testified that "Snow don kept talking about how bad Communism was and wondered if I would help him do something." One night the Snowdons invited the Attassis to dinner. Said Attassi: "As our wives were taking...
When Radio Damascus plays martial music, interspersed with ringing slogans, Syrian businessmen begin to wince. It usually means a coup d'état or a government crackdown...
...Dictator of Syria, Adib Shishekly always feared assassination and took infinite pains to avoid it. He carried one gun in a shoulder holster, kept another in his desk drawer. In Damascus he maintained four homes besides his official palace, slipped from one to the other for a meal or a night's sleep...
Though the revolt was smashed, it caused Shishekly's downfall. Many army officers opposed the ruthlessness of the campaign and, within weeks, the garrison of Aleppo mutinied against "the despot Shishekly, stepson of imperialism." Not waiting to argue the point, Shishekly abandoned his wife and children in Damascus and fled across the Anti-Lebanon range in a snowstorm to the safety of Beirut. During the next few years he vainly plotted a return to power from Saudi Arabia and Switzerland...
...consisted of seizing Christian churches, closing their western entrances, opening new doors to the north, and praying facing south across the aisles toward Mecca. A few decades later, Moslem caliphs began to raise the first authentic mosques, blending Byzantine and Persian architecture, and in 691 A.D. the Caliph of Damascus, Abdul Malik Ibn Marwan, completed the great shrine called the Dome of the Rock...