{"id":113,"date":"2006-01-15T03:13:13","date_gmt":"2006-01-15T08:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=113"},"modified":"2018-08-24T01:06:43","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T05:06:43","slug":"14544-%c2%a0%c2%a0-jonny-bealby-for-a-pagan-song-travels-in-india-pakistan-and%c2%a0afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=113","title":{"rendered":"14544.&nbsp;(Jonny Bealby) For a Pagan Song: Travels in India, Pakistan and&nbsp;Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!-- \t\t@page { margin: 2cm } \t\tP { margin-bottom: 0.21cm } --><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This trav\u00adel nar\u00adra\u00adtive, focus\u00ading on the remote region of Afghanistan called Nuris\u00adtan, has a won\u00adder\u00adful back-sto\u00adry. Beal\u00adby had been a bright, but book-hat\u00ading Eng\u00adlish youth with a seri\u00adous read\u00ading dis\u00adabil\u00adity. But his girl\u00adfriend was an avid read\u00ader, and when she gave him a copy of Kipling\u2019s <em>The Man Who Would Be King <\/em>, he forced him\u00adself to read it. The sto\u00adry appealed to him, and even\u00adtu\u00adally he became both an adven\u00adtur\u00adous trav\u00adeler and a pub\u00adlished writer. His girl\u00adfriend came to a sud\u00adden acci\u00adden\u00adtal death on one of their trips. Lat\u00ader, still griev\u00ading, he found him\u00adself watch\u00ading the won\u00adder\u00adful John Hus\u00adton film of Kipling\u2019s sto\u00adry. He vowed to under\u00adtake a jour\u00adney par\u00adal\u00adlel\u00ading that of the fic\u00adtional Peachy Car\u00adna\u00adhan and Dan\u00adny Dravot, to the remote land of \u201cKafiris\u00adtan\u201d, beyond the Hin\u00addu Kush. This of course, is a per\u00adfectly real place, the long, nar\u00adrow prong of Afghan ter\u00adri\u00adtory that kept Pak\u00adistan from bor\u00adder\u00ading the for\u00admer Sovi\u00adet Union. Bealby\u2019s adven\u00adture took place in the 1990\u2019s, the Pak\u00adistan of the smol\u00adder\u00ading bor\u00adder war with India, and the Afghanistan of the Tal\u00adiban. He had lit\u00adtle appar\u00adent inter\u00adest in pol\u00adi\u00adtics. What comes across in this book is his abil\u00adity to make him\u00adself at home among strangers, and to instant\u00adly grasp the human ele\u00adment in a place that is for\u00adeign to him. My friend Fil\u00adip, in Prague, is rather like him in this. I would glad\u00adly trav\u00adel any\u00adwhere with such a person.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;\"><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This trav\u00adel nar\u00adra\u00adtive, focus\u00ading on the remote region of Afghanistan called Nuris\u00adtan, has a won\u00adder\u00adful back-sto\u00adry. Beal\u00adby had been a bright, but book-hat\u00ading Eng\u00adlish youth with a seri\u00adous read\u00ading dis\u00adabil\u00adity. But his girl\u00adfriend was an avid read\u00ader, and when&nbsp;she&nbsp;\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=113\">Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[946,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-b-reading","category-bu-reading-2006"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9801,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/9801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}