The targeting of Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old girl shot two weeks ago by a Pakistani Taliban assassin, brought back memories of my teen-age years in Tehran, where theocratic zealots were similarly in control. The words of the Taliban’s chief spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, had a chillingly familiar echo in my ears. A bullet had Malala’s name on it, he explained to the news media, because “she has become a symbol of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it.” He also called her “the symbol of the infidels and obscenity.”

In the old days, saloon owners would put out a lunchtime plate on the bar so that customers wouldn’t go elsewhere to eat.