雙語暢銷書《我是馬拉拉》第2章7:奶油
My grandmother kept his spirits up – he was her favourite and she believed great things lay in store for him. She loved him so much that she would slip him extra meat and the cream off the milk while she went without. But it wasn’t easy to study as there was no electricity in the village in those days. He used to read by the light of the oil lamp in the hujra, and one evening he went to sleep and the oil lamp fell over. Fortunately my grandmother found him before a fire started. It was my grandmother’s faith in my father that gave him the courage to find his own proud path he could travel along. This is the path that he would later show me.
而祖母卻總在鼓勵他。父親是她最疼愛的孩子，她相信好運一定會降臨在這個兒子身上。她對父親疼愛至極，寧願自己不吃，也要在父親的盤子裏多塞一片肉，或多給他一點牛奶裏的奶油。當時，村子裏還沒有電力，學習不是一件容易的事。父親往往是在會堂裏點着油燈讀書。有天他去睡覺時，油燈倒了，幸運的是祖母在火災發生前先找到了父親。正是祖母對父親堅定不移的信心，鼓勵他驕傲地走出一條屬於自己的路。而這也是後來父親指引給我的道路。
Yet she too got angry with him once. Holy men from a spiritual place called Derai Saydan used to travel the villages in those days begging for flour. One day while his parents were out some of them came to the house. My father broke the seal on the wooden storage box of maize and filled their bowls. When my grandparents came home they were furious and beat him.
不過，祖母也對父親發過一次脾氣。當時，幾個從聖地迪賴.賽耶登來的聖人常常在村子間遊走，乞求麪粉。有一天，他們在祖父母出門時來到家裏。父親撕開了放着玉米的木箱上的封條，幫他們把碗裝滿。祖父母回到家時，簡直氣炸了，揍了他一頓。
‘It’s not that passing books on is a bad practice, ’ he says. ‘It’s just I so wanted a new book, unmarked by another student and bought with my father’s money.’My father’s dislike of Baba’s frugality has made him a very generous man both materially and in spirit. He became determined to end the traditional rivalry between him and his cousins. When his headmaster’s wife fell ill, my father donated blood to help save her. The man was astonished and apologised for having tormented him. When my father tells me stories of his childhood, he always says that though Baba was a difficult man he gave him the most important gift – the gift of education. He sent my father to the government high school to learn English and receive a modern education rather than to a madrasa, even though as an imam people criticised him for this. Baba also gave him a deep love of learning and knowledge as well as a keen awareness of people’s rights, which my father has passed on to me. In my grandfather’s Friday addresses he would talk about the poor and the landowners and how true Islam is against feudalism. He also spoke Persian and Arabic and cared deeply for words. He read the great poems of Saadi, Allama Iqbal and Rumi to my father with such passion and fire it was as if he was teaching the whole mosque.
“把舊書留給下一個人使用並不是什麼壞事。”父親曾說，“只是我真的好想要一本新書，一本用我父親的錢買的、沒有被別的學生寫過的書。”因爲不喜歡祖父的過於節儉，反而使父親成長爲一個在物質上和精神上都很大方的人。他下定決心從自己這輩開始，結束族人、親戚之間爭鬥的傳統。當校長的太太生病時，我父親捐血救她。校長感到非常震驚，並對自己過去百般的刁難行爲致歉。當父親跟我講起他童年的故事時，他總是告訴我，雖然祖父是個很難相處的人，但他給了他人生最重要的禮物--教育。祖父送父親去念公立學校，學英文，接受現代教育，而不是把他送去念伊斯蘭學校。雖然有些人指責祖父，認爲他身爲毛拉，不應該這麼做，祖父也毫不動搖。祖父的引導使父親對學習和知識產生極度的熱愛，並對人權問題非常關注，父親也把這一點傳給了我。祖父會在週五傳道的時候談論窮人與地主，還有真正的伊斯蘭教爲何反對封建制度。祖父會說波斯語和阿拉伯語，並且非常重視文字。他讀偉大詩人薩迪、阿拉馬.伊克巴爾和魯米的作品給我父親聽時，充滿熱情、激情四溢，彷彿是讀給整個清真寺的聽衆聽一樣。
