Word: sarkhan
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Dates: during 1958-1958
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There is, to begin with, the American ambassador to a Southeast Asian nation called Sarkhan. Louis ("Lucky Lou") Sears is a political hack who does not speak Sarkhanese ("Fifty percent of the entire Foreign Service officer corps do not have a speaking knowledge of any foreign language"). He loathes the people, the place, the climate. By contrast, the Soviet ambassador is a carefully trained career diplomat who reads and writes Sarkhanese, has studied Buddhism. To show his appreciation of the Sarkhanese ideal of slimness, he diets away 40 Ibs.; to indicate his enthusiasm for Sarkhanese music, he becomes "a fairly...
...there is, after all, the wife of the "ugly American," a lady readers will enjoy meeting. Looking over the situation in Sarkhan, she decides that the people's backs are bent because they use short brooms. Hustling into action, she discovers a 5-ft. reed instead of a 2-ft. reed to be used for broom handles, a technological revolution for which the villagers reward her with a small shrine bearing the inscription. "In memory of the woman who unbent the backs of our people...