Word: nile
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Located astride the headwaters of the Nile River, the Sudan is rich in history but little else. It was the home of the dervishes who defeated and put to death Britain's General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon in 1885, and who were in turn defeated by a punitive expedition under General Herbert Kitchener. Until 1956, the Sudan was nominally ruled by Britain and Egypt. Then it asserted independence and took possession of the largest land area of any African nation. Independence brought a bitter civil conflict, now 13 years old, between the 10 million Arabs of the north...
...season of blazing desert heat, the Sudan's moderate but often corrupt civilian leaders were overthrown in a coup that was brought off with the suddenness of a Khartoum haboob. In the early morning, telephone and cable lines were cut, troop carriers rolled across the White Nile bridge and along Palace Avenue. Tanks took up positions at the front gates of the Republican Palace, built on the site and in the mold of the palace where General Gordon was slain. By morning, a new government was installed, one that conforms more closely to the modern Arab pattern of army...
...Nasser's Egypt. The city police have changed their blue flannel uniforms to summer whites. Jacaranda trees are blooming richly purple in suburban Heliopolis, remnants of the district's lost elegance. While the triple peaks of the pyramids of Giza shimmer on the horizon, stately feluccas sail down the Nile as silently as they have done for centuries. Overhead, hawks wheel lazily in gyres. The pace of the people in their flowing gallabia robes, never very fast, has grown a step or two slower...
...public buildings are heavily sandbagged. Windows and car headlights are painted blue?the ancient color for warding off the evil eye?to conform to blackout regulations. In erratic fashion, street lights are out in various places. Soldiers slouch in the shade of girders on each of the Nile bridges, and guard the Cairo airport, the railroad terminal and key road junctions on the sprawling city's edges. Sonic booms occasionally rattle the windows of Cairenes as MIG fighters scramble daily on simulated interception missions. Through the clear air, as gun crews perfect their skills in the nearby desert, come...
...city preparing for war. The government is gradually extending a blackout of neon signs, house lights and auto headlights. Since blackouts are tactically obsolete in an age of electronic detection instruments, the objective seemed to be to bring home to Cairenes the possibility that they might be bombed. All Nile bridges, train stations, telegraph offices and key installations are protected by guards in sandbagged redoubts. Brick blast walls have been built in front of thousands of doorways. MIG-21s make practice scrambles over the city and on the ground are protected by concrete revetments against a surprise attack like...