Word: nuri
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...land that Nuri presides over, the classic land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, is the size of California. Long known as Mesopotamia, oil-rich Iraq is now shaking itself free from the sand that has drifted over it for centuries...
...Nuri and Nasser now contend for Arab leadership, but the rivalry between the peoples of the Euphrates and the Nile valleys is actually as old as civilization, which first dawned in their valleys. Then, competing empires reached out from Babylon and Thebes into the land between-the land of the Bible-and as the tides of conquest and reconquest ebbed and flowed, the children of Israel and other would-be neutrals were swept off now to Egyptian bondage, now to Babylonian captivity. Today, though faces in the modern Iraqi and Egyptian crowds often show startling similarity to the classic profiles...
Senior Statesman. In a part of the world where the old Ottoman title of Pasha is still popularly bestowed on all sorts of generals and paladins, Iraqis mean only one man when they speak of "The Pasha." His countrymen fear, respect, or stand in awe of Nuri; they do not love him, and though he has been managing their country's affairs since before most of them were born, few Iraqis know him as a human being. He rules them as a dictator, with an indifference to their opinion that verges on contempt...
Hunched over his dusty, paper-piled desk, with his big ears and jet-black bushy brows, Nuri looks like a grizzled old bear. He is ponderous of movement, quickly bored, and constitutionally unwilling to make a show of interest for politeness' sake. He dismisses an aide's idea with a casual wave of the hand that says, "You're a good boy but don't bother me with such nonsense." Worldly, infinitely experienced, he carries himself with the air of one who knows precisely where all the levers of power in his country are located...
...even the Egyptian embassy questions the Pasha's honesty. Syrian and Egyptian broadcasters have shouted "Traitor" and "Satan," denounced him as a stooge of the British and an Ottoman-style tyrant. He pays no heed. Every Iraqi knows how a half-century ago Nuri leagued with the Arab Patriot Jafar al-Askari to conspire against the Ottoman Turks, then fought on camelback for Emir Feisal in World War I's revolt in the Arabian desert...