"In this serene space, unspoiled by the modern age, I consider the legacy of the 1960s travellers. Only a generation ago, English girls hitch-hiked alone across Iran. Free-spirited teenagers from Berlin and Boston were welcomed as honoured guests in Baghdad. The hundreds of thousands of footloose westerners, in flares and open-toe sandals, may have been the first movement of people in history who travelled to be colonised rather than to colonise. But their values and comparative wealth did change the places they visited. The host societies, especially those of rural Iran and Afghanistan, were for the most part defiantly conservative. I begin to wonder if the casual morality and humanism of those first independent travellers could have further polarised these countries, encouraging urban liberal minorities while insulting - even enraging - traditionalists and zealots. Might this not even have helped to stir the stern Islamic reawakening?"
On the turntable: Chick Corea, "Now He Sings, Now He Sobs"
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