Word: persianism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...from the Baghdad Pact, driven Britain's R.A.F. from its Habbaniyah base near Baghdad. Unless the slide toward Communism is halted, the Soviet Union will penetrate the very heart of the Middle East, outflank staunchly pro-Western Turkey and increasingly shaky Iran. Encamped at the head of the Persian Gulf, the U.S.S.R. could then render the rest of the Middle East militarily-and perhaps politically -indefensible by the West...
...Merv for a three-cornered theological debate with a dervish and a Talmudic scholar. Arriving in Bokhara with its Tower of Death, verminous dungeons and treacherous Emir, Wolff grandly ordered that the British prisoners be handed over to him. "How extraordinary," exclaimed the Emir. "I have 200,000 Persian slaves here-nobody cares for them; and on account of two Englishmen, a person comes from England and single-handedly demands their release." Wolff was jolted to discover that the two officers had already been executed, and was lucky to escape Bokhara with his own head still on his shoulders...
What Is a Farm? The Smouha affair, or the Smouhaha, as London wags inevitably called it, arose over the fanciest deal struck in a lifetime of shrewd dealing (cotton, moneylending, land speculating) by one Joseph Smouha, longtime operator in the Persian Gulf, Lancashire and the Levant, and known as the richest British subject in Egypt. This was his acquisition of 700 swampy acres on Alexandria's outskirts. He got Farouk's father, Fuad I, to proclaim it "Smouha City" and, while holding about half as low-tax "farm land" for future speculative profit, turned the other half into...
...Blonde Vicky Autier, one of the three French singers who seem to have taken over Manhattan night life, appears at the St. Regis Maisonette in a $1,000 spangled black velvet gown, and she sings the song with gay sophistication. Blonder Lilo bounces about the Plaza's Persian Room in brief white tights, and sings La Vie with brassy triumph. But tiny (4 ft. 10 in.), frizzle-topped Edith Piaf wears a shapeless black silk dress and sings the tune (which she herself wrote twelve years ago) as a lament for everything that ever went wrong with love...
Palace of One's Own. In honor of the young couple, the happy Nizam proudly recited three Persian odes that he had composed himself. He garlanded them with flowers, after first pointing out that never before had a Nizam so bedecked a bride and groom, and in a burst of generosity made a cash grant of $21 a month to two local orphanages. The Nizam also promised to build the couple a palace next to his own, and settled on them a trust fund of undisclosed size-something he did not do for any of the five other begum...