Word: ottoman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Today's rivalry for Arab leadership is in many respects frankly unequal. After almost four centuries of Ottoman misrule and neglect, Iraq counts fewer than 6,000,000 inhabitants; Egypt has more than 22 million. Egypt is Mediterranean, with a long record of Western influence; Iraq still feels the strong pull of its tribal past...
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...
...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...
Blue-eyed Nuri asSaid ("Nuri the Happy One"), born in Baghdad in 1888, was the only son of Lowlow's descendant, Said Effendi al-Mudakikchi ("Mr. Said the Auditor"). For a boy of good family growing up in Ottoman Baghdad, the army was the only fit career, and Nuri went to a local Turkish military school that prepared candidates for the military academy in Constantinople. At twelve he nearly died of typhoid, but Baghdad's only doctor nursed him through, and in 1903 he was ready to make the hard trip to Constantinople and the three-year course...
...Jafar became convinced that advancement was being systematically denied them because they were Arabs. "If we are foreigners, then let's be foreigners," said Nuri. He took over leadership of a cell in the secret Covenant society plotting Arab independence from the decadent and dying Ottoman empire. All cell members wore hooded red gowns at meetings to keep their identity secret from each other -except Nuri whose identity had to be known. Once one of the officers sent word to Nuri that he could not attend because of illness. Because his illness was known and his absence would betray...