.... That world can be glimpsed in old newsreels from the Arab cities of the 1950s and 1960s.
The cities of the post-war period - Cairo, Beirut and Damascus, Baghdad and Aden - look much the same as many developing countries of the time: American-built cars, European-style suits, a certain easy mingling of men and women.
Unseen is something difficult to describe, but immediately apparent to anyone familiar with the Egypt or Yemen of today: the thick beards of men and the tightly wrapped headscarves of women - symbols of religious devotion, but also symbols of a public expression of Islam - were almost entirely absent from the new urban world then being created. [The National] Read more
