Word: niles
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...They stared incredulously at the marble, the gold, the diamonds, the pearls, the barrels of whisky, the mountains of rare coins, the statues of nudes. Outside the view was in striking contrast. The newsmen looked out over one of the world's worst agricultural slums: the Nile delta. The peasants toiling there-like most Egyptians-live in mud huts, dress in rags and eat the bread of the poor (Egypt has two kinds of bread; the rich, white variety is available only to the rich). Three out of four own less than an acre of land...
...fertile Nile, cradle of a once-great civilization, is today one of the world's great slums. Desert covers 96% of Egypt, leaving less than six million acres of arable land, clinging in a narrow green strip to the winding Nile. There live 12 million hapless people, in the most densely populated rural area in the world. The wealthy one-tenth of one percent of Egypt's landowners hold almost 60% of the land. The army proposes to break up all estates of more than 200 acres, sell the surplus acreage to fellaheens with less than two acres...
...stirrings of emancipated women rocked Islam's elders most, for it took place in the very shadow of the mosques and chambers where the high priests of Islam hold their greatest sway. Well-to-do Egyptian women formed the Feminist National Party. Another group, Daughters of the Nile, led by smart and young (34) Doria Shafik, a philosophy graduate of the Sorbonne, signed up more than 1,000 upper-class Egyptian women. They prowl Cairo fixing politicians with the same gimlet stare on which Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt once impaled squirming U.S. Senators...
Britain's great sea pride seems to be fighting a losing battle against U.S. demands. "Mark Antony was beaten on the Nile when his attention was divided," warned the Manchester Guardian. "Britain ought to give way, even if that does mean placing the Mediterranean fleet under an American...
...undermanned British garrison of Khartoum in 1884, hacked to death its famed commander, General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon. Thirteen years later Kitchener avenged Gordon's death by smashing the dervishes at Omdurman. The Mahdi was already dead, but Kitchener ordered his tomb razed, his bones thrown into the Nile...