雙語暢銷書《我是馬拉拉》第5章4:安撫和鼓勵

My father consoled me by telling me about the mistakes great heroes made when they were children. He told me that Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.’ At school we had read stories about Mohammad Ali Jinnah. As a boy in Karachi he would study by the glow of street lights because there was no light at home. He told other boys to stop playing marbles in the dust and to play cricket insTead so their clothes and hands wouldn’t get dirty. Outside his office my father had a framed copy of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to his son’s teacher, translated into Pashto. It is a very beautiful letter, full of good advice. ‘Teach him, if you can, the wonder of books . . . But also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and the flowers on a green hillside, ’ it says. ‘Teach him it is far more honourable to fail than to cheat.’

爲了安撫和鼓勵我，父親跟我講了許多偉人在小時候曾犯下過錯的故事。他告訴我甘地曾說：“人若不能自由地犯錯，那麼這自由就不值得擁有。”我們在學校裏讀過穆罕默德.阿里.真納的故事。當他還是個小男孩，住在卡拉奇時，因爲他家裏沒有電燈，會藉着路燈的光線讀書。他告訴其他男孩子不要在塵土裏玩彈珠，改打板球，這樣就不會把全身弄得髒兮兮的。父親在他的辦公室外掛着一幅摹本，是林肯寫給他兒子老師的一封信，已翻譯成普什圖語。那封信寫得極好，全是極好的建議。“如果可以，請你教他書本的美好，但也給他時間，讓他去思考永恆的謎題：天上的小鳥、陽光下的蜜蜂和翠綠山頭上的花朵。”信裏寫道，“讓他知道失敗遠比作弊光榮得多。”

I think everyone makes a mistake at least once in their life. The important thing is what you learn from it. That’s why I have problems with our Pashtunwali code. We are supposed to take revenge for wrongs done to us, but where does that end? If a man in one family is killed or hurt by another man, revenge must be exacted to restore nang. It can be taken by killing any male member of the attacker’s family. Then that family in turn must take revenge. And on and on it goes. There is no time limit. We have a saying: ‘The Pashtun took revenge after twenty years and another said it was taken too soon.’

我想，每個人一輩子裏至少都犯過一次錯誤，重要的是你從中學到了什麼。這就是爲什麼我對我們普什圖習俗有着不同的看法。按習俗規定，若受委屈，我們定要採取報復手段。但這樣冤冤相報，何時能了？如果家族中的男人被另一個人傷害了或殺了，他們必定要採取報復，殺死加害者家庭中的任何一個男性，以維護榮譽。這一來一往不停循環下去，沒有止息。我們甚至有句諺語說：“一個普什圖人花二十年復仇，其他人會說這還早着呢。”

We are a people of many sayings. One is ‘The stone of Pashto does not rust in water, ’ which means we neither forget nor forgive. That’s also why we rarely say thank you, manana, because we believe a Pashtun will never forget a good deed and is bound to reciprocate at some point, just as he will a bad one. Kindness can only be repaid with kindness. It can’t be repaid with expressions like ‘thank you’.

有很多說法可以用來形容我們的民族，其中一種是“普什圖的石頭不會在水裏變鈍”。意思是說，我們既不會遺忘，也不會原諒。這就是爲什麼我們很少說“謝謝”，因爲我們相信普什圖人是不會忘記別人的恩情的，並且時候到了一定會報恩，就和一定會報仇是一樣的。恩情只能用恩情來還，而不是用一句“謝謝”說說就行了。

Many families live in walled compounds with watchtowers so they can keep an eye out for their enemies. We knew many victims of feuds. One was Sher Zaman, a man who had been in my father’s class and always got better grades than him. My grandfather and uncle used to drive my father mad, teasing him, ‘You’re not as good as Sher Zaman, ’ so much he once wished that rocks would come down the mountain and flatten him. But Sher Zaman did not go to college and ended up becoming a dispenser in the village pharmacy. His family became embroiled in a dispute with their cousins over a small plot of forest. One day, as Sher Zaman and two of his brothers were on their way to the land, they were ambushed by his uncle and some of his men. All three brothers were killed.

爲了防禦敵人，許多家庭住在四面裝有柵欄和瞭望臺的屋子裏。我們也認識很多糾紛的受害者。其中一位是希爾.扎曼，我父親班上的同學，他總是在考試時贏過我父親。祖父和大伯總是以此調侃我父親，把他氣得抓狂，並說：“你比不上希爾.扎曼。”父親甚至一度希望山上有落石掉下來把扎曼壓扁。但是希爾.扎曼沒有去念大學，而是在村裏的藥房當上了藥劑師。後來，他們家爲了森林裏的一小塊地和親戚起了衝突。有天，希爾.扎曼和他的兩個兄弟要去那塊土地時，被他的叔叔和手下人偷襲，三兄弟全都死了。