Background: "Ode to Billie Joe" is a 1967 song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a singer-songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. The single, released in late July, was a number-one hit in the United States, and became a big international seller. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 3 song for 1967 (the other two were #2 "The Letter" by the Box Tops and #1 "To Sir With Love" by Lulu). The song is ranked #412 on Rolling Stone's list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" and at #144 in Pitchfork's 200 Best Songs of the 1960s.
Context: The song is a first-person narrative to "sparse" musical accompaniment. It reveals a tale, mostly in the form of brief dialog extracts by the narrator's family at dinnertime, on the day that a local boy - and apparently friend of the narrator - jumped to his death from a nearby bridge. Throughout the song, the suicide and other tragedies are contrasted against the banality of everyday routine and polite conversation. The final verse conveys the quick passage of events and other deaths in a year's time. The song begins with the narrator, her brother and her father returning, after agricultural morning chores, to the family house for dinner (on June 3). After cautioning them about tracking in dirt, "Mama" says that she "got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge" that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge". At the dinner table, the narrator's father appears unmoved and almost dismissive; he comments that "Billie Joe never had a lick o' [meaning, any] sense", and asks for the biscuits to be passed to him, and comments that he has "five more acres in the lower forty" to plow. Her brother seems somewhat taken aback ("I saw him at the sawmill yesterday ... And now you tell me Billie Joe has jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"), but follows the comment by asking for a second slice of pie. He recalls a prank that he and his friends played on the narrator, and that he saw her and Billie Joe talking after church a few days previously. The only person who seems genuinely upset is the narrator. Her mother - who eventually notices the narrator's abrupt and complete change of mood at the news - seems unable to realize she is affected by the news ("Child, what's happened to your appetite? I been cookin' all mornin' and you haven't touched a single bite"). She shares other news instead, that a local preacher visited earlier in the day, and almost as an aside, that the preacher had mentioned seeing Billie Joe and a girl who looked very much like the narrator herself "throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge" - the object they were throwing is not identified. But again, the narrator's mother fails to connect this in any way to her daughter's emotional distress. In the song's final verse, a year has passed, and brought more harm and pain. The narrator's brother has married Becky Thompson, but they have moved away to another town ("bought a store in Tupelo"). Their father died from an unspecified viral infection, and their mother has been depressed and despondent, and "doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything". The narrator is also affected by the malaise; the main change she describes in her own life, is that she often visits Choctaw Ridge and picks flowers there to drop from the Tallahatchie Bridge into the murky waters of the river where Billy Joe jumped to his death.
Question: what was the story about?
Answer: The song is a first-person narrative to "sparse" musical accompaniment. It reveals a tale, mostly in the form of brief dialog extracts by the narrator's family at dinnertime,

Background: Mohammed Hussein redirects here; for the Muslim cleric, see Muhammad Ahmad Hussein. Babrak Karmal (Dari/Pashto: bbrkh khrml, born Sultan Hussein; 6 January 1929 - 1 or 3 December 1996) was an Afghan politician who was installed as president of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union when they invaded in 1979. Karmal was born in Kamari and educated at Kabul University.
Context: Imprisoned from 1953 to 1956, Karmal befriended fellow inmate Mir Akbar Khyber, who introduced Karmal to Marxism. Karmal changed his name from Sultan Hussein to Babrak Karmal, which means "Comrade of the Workers'" in Pashtun, to disassociate himself from his bourgeois background. When he was released from prison, he continued his activities in the student union, and began to promote Marxism. Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time; two of the four were established by Karmal. When the 1964 Afghan Provisional Constitution, which legalised the establishment of new political entities, was introduced several prominent Marxists agreed to establish a communist political party. The People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA, the Communist Party) was established in January 1965 in Nur Muhammad Taraki's home. Factionalism within the PDPA quickly became a problem; the party split into the Khalq led by Taraki alongside Hafizullah Amin, and the Parcham led by Karmal. During the 1965 parliamentary election Karmal was one of four PDPA members elected to the lower house of parliament; the three others were Anahita Ratebzad, Nur Ahmed Nur and Fezanul Haq Fezan. No Khalqists were elected; however, Amin was 50 votes short of being elected. The Parchamite victory may be explained by the simple fact that Karmal could contribute financially to the PDPA electoral campaign. Karmal became a leading figure within the student movement in the 1960s, electing Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal as Prime Minister after a student demonstration (called for by Karmal) concluded with three deaths under the former leadership. In 1967, the PDPA unofficially split into two formal parties, one Khalqist and one Parchamist. The dissolution of the PDPA was initiated by the closing down of the Khalqist newspaper, Khalq. Karmal criticised the Khalq for being too communist, and believed that its leadership should have hidden its Marxist orientation instead of promoting it. According to the official version of events, the majority of the PDPA Central Committee rejected Karmal's criticism. The vote was a close one, and it is reported that Taraki expanded the Central Committee to win the vote; this plan resulted in eight of the new members becoming politically unaligned with and one switching to the Parchamite side. Karmal and half the PDPA Central Committee left the PDPA to establish a Parchamite-led PDPA. Officially the split was caused by ideological differences, but the party may have divided between the different leadership styles and plans of Taraki versus Karmal. Taraki wanted to model the party after Leninist norms while Karmal wanted to establish a democratic front. Other differences were socioeconomic. The majority of Khalqists came from rural areas; hence they were poorer, and were of Pashtun origin. The Parchamites were urban, richer, and spoke Dari more often than not. The Khalqists accused the Parchamites of having a connection with the monarchy, and because of it, referred to the Parchamite PDPA as the "Royal Communist Party". Both Karmal and Amin retained their seats in the lower house of parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election.
Question: What did he do to promote Marxism?
Answer:
Karmal spent the rest of the 1950s and the early 1960s becoming involved with Marxist organizations, of which there were at least four in Afghanistan at the time;