Word: khyber
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Like a tortoise shell on Asia's back, Afghanistan lies athwart the spiny Hindu Kush mountains, sloping northward to the Oxus River and Russia, eastward to the Khyber Pass. Perhaps no land has been so trodden upon by history and yet kept its independence. Darius, Alexander, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Babur all invaded it. In the 19th century the British Empire, following a northwesterly course, approached the Hindu Kush and southward-marching Russians. In the end, Britain and the Czars, fearful of what might happen if their armies met, agreed to keep Afghanistan as a buffer state...
Stewed Fruit. Irked by this Pakhtoon-foolery, Pakistan last week effectively closed the historic Khyber Pass, through which passes 80% of Afghanistan's external trade, including shipments to the U.S. of pistachio nuts, wool, and karakul fur (which becomes "Persian lamb" on Manhattan's Seventh Avenue). At the pass, Pakistani customs stopped grape, peach and pomegranate-laden trucks and told them to await clearance from Karachi-which, they blandly confided, would "take some time." While the truckers fretted, the fruit rotted...
...this point, another country got into the act. India, which has its own grievances against Pakistan, prepared to set up an airlift from Amritsar over the Khyber Pass to Kabul. The ambitious Afghans were grateful, but even more gratified by a handsome offer from the Russians: a five-year transit guarantee for their goods. Glowed Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Naim: "If one door is slammed shut and another is opened, we will go through it." After 100 years, the Russian bear's long vigil on the Oxus was beginning...
...overly spicy episodes. When one movie pictured a man clubbing another over the head with an old water hose the British censors brought out their scissors. "It's an act someone could imitate," they said. A particularly good example is that Cinema scope epic, "King of the Khyber Ribes." In one scene the natives have a rollicking time galloping back and forth as they toss spears into the captive Britishers-no American censor murmured a word of objection. In Europe, however, the "atrocity" found approval for showing in only a few countries. A Hollywood expert has estimated that about four...
...King of the Khyber Rifles (TIME, Jan. 11), the hero (Rock Hudson) is a British officer, who in this case has a Midwestern twang to his speech. He affects to defect to the enemy, but only in order to diddle some secrets out of a raja (Arnold Moss) with a slight New York accent. Add to the linguistic confusion a Hindu girl (Ursula Thiess) who has a German accent, and even the children for whom the movie is intended may suspect that the action is not quite faithful to history...