Word: imam
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...wanted man would be expelled from the threatened village, pursued through the desert, shot down or captured. On other occasions the population would flee the village, which the R.A.F. would then destroy. A fortnight ago in Britain's Aden Protectorate, which has been under desultory attack by the Imam of Yemen, the old technique was tried again...
...Imam of Yemen, who acts like a Borgia Pope, is known to have a minimum of five diseases in various stages of arrested development (rheumatism, heart trouble, bilharziasis, gastritis, syphilis), but this does not prevent him from greedily devouring huge meals consisting of nothing but Russian salad heavily splashed with mayonnaise. The Imam's greatest trouble is psychological: he is under the impression that the British are depriving him of huge oil royalties...
...Arab world, in palaces and refugee camps, he updated the Arabian Nights into Alsop's Fables. In the new palace at Jeddah ("the house that Aramco built"), guarded by blackamoors with gilded scimitars, King Saud of Saudi Arabia entertained 400 dinner guests at once, headed by little Imam Ahmed of Yemen, "who waggles his big, richly turbaned head like a teetotum in a sort of passion of politeness." While the guests drank orange pop, "a court bard, descended straight from the poetic line that sang before Agamemnon at Mycenae . . . recites a long poem in praise of the King...
...hundreds and were slain by the hundreds in return; neither side troubled unduly to spare the innocent. The occasion for the bloodshed was local in nature but worldwide in its implications: Who should be Sultan of Morocco-a French puppet or the man the Moroccans themselves wanted as their Imam (Commander of the Faithful)? Deeper than this ran stronger currents: France's pride of empire, the Moroccans' longing for independence. In this confused situation, the nation that brought modern progress to a sterile land was made to seem oldfashioned, and a backward people's aspirations commanded...
...Roosevelt ever made the remark, the report soon spread that he had told the Sultan: "France is finished. Take back your country. We will help." The Sultan's chief interests lay in his harem (40 concubines), his garage (60 cars), and his afternoon game of tennis. Yet, as Imam (Commander of the Faithful), he became the man around whom Moroccans in the new Istiqlal (Independence) Party centered their hopes...