Word: nasser
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...broader world, Nasser may fare better. Islam is, after all, based on the notion of what Arabist Salem calls "a perfect community." Through the unifying force of the Arabic tongue, Nasser the master orator did much to restore that sense of community after centuries of foreign rule had seemingly shattered it for all time...
...worship Mohammed, Mohammed has died. But if you worship Allah, he is alive and never will die." Throughout the Middle East, a variation of that aphorism was broadcast over Arab radios last week: "If you worship Gamal, Gamal is dead. But if you worship the ideas of Gamal Abdel Nasser, they are alive and will never die." Nasser had many ideas, not all of them worth preserving. The future of the Middle East may thus depend on which the Arab world jettisons and which it retains to worship...
...certain that watching Israelis understood, they intermittently switched to Hebrew, "Nasser lo yamut." At the compound enclosing Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, where Mohammed is supposed to have ascended to heaven, mourning Arabs were only a few yards away from Jews gathered at the Wailing Wall for Rosh Hashana prayers marking the start of the Hebrew year 5731. Among the Israeli worshipers was the old antagonist who had twice helped humble Nasser on the battlefield, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan...
...Cairo, the capital of Nasser's own country, that anguish over his death reached its peak. All week long, the lower-class fellahin poured into the city. They came on foot or riding donkeys, aboard bicycles or cars or ancient trucks, clinging precariously to the roofs and sides of trains rolling into the city's Central Station. Like members of some giant caravan at rest, they camped all over Cairo. They watched the comings and goings at the Kubbeh Republican Palace, where dignitaries made solemn calls. They wept at the new Nasr Mosque in the suburb of Manshiet al Bakri...
Finally came the moment for which the caravan had gathered. Flying low over the Nile, four Soviet-built helicopters landed beside a palace on Gezira Island, the original headquarters of Nasser's Revolutionary Command Council. From the lead copter, a flag-draped coffin was unloaded and strapped to a gun carriage pulled by six black horses. A funeral cortege formed, with a troop of lance-bearing cavalrymen leading the way. Six military bands, the morning sun glinting richly off their brass, struck up the melancholy strains of Chopin's Funeral March. Twenty-seven visiting chiefs of state, eleven Prime Ministers...