Sir, Ben Macintyre writes of the sad decline of the Shatt al-Arab waterway (Opinion, June 22). As a young man in 1946 I travelled by motorboat from Basra to Abadan on the last leg of a journey to take up a job. We travelled through the most prolific date palm plantations in the world, and the harvest was in full swing.
We observed groups of workers stamping on piles of dates in small enclosures in their bare feet so that they could cut up the sticky mass into chunks to be packed into tins for distribution. We understood they would be labelled: “Best Basra Dates — untouched by human hand”. So much for health and safety.
Pat David
Sandhurst, Glos