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精品文摘：My Safe Child 我那安全的孩子
My Safe Child
By Daphna Baram, Israel
文/Daphna Baram 譯/鄒紅云
I am thirty-three years old, and I am so happy that I am not a mother. I do not hear a biological clock ticking, only the nerve wrecking ticks of bombs yet to explode. My friends are leaping whenever their cell phones ring. "Where are you? No, you can’t go out. No, I don’t care if all the other children are going". How naïve children are when they tell lies. What mother in Israel now would believe that "all the children are going" anywhere?
And where are the children going? Where will their fears take them? In many places in the world children are afraid of the unknown, of the unreal. You know that you live in a war zone when you realize that the greatest fears of the children are of what they know only too well.
Two years ago, when my younger brother was ten, he came home from school, and as he opened the door he heard the familiar sound of explosion rising from the street he just left behind him. Sitting in front of the television five minutes later, he could see his friend wandering blindly in the street, which was covered with body parts and injured people. The friend’s father, who picked him up from school and took him for a pizza, was killed in front of his eyes. My brother refused to talk about it. "This kid wasn’t really a friend of mine," is all he would say, "I don’t really know him that well". That evening he told my father that he is afraid of Freddy Kruger, a monstrous murderer from a common horror film. My father didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I suspect he felt some relief. How good it is to caress your child’s hair and to tell him that Kruger doesn’t really exist.
But the man who exploded himself in the centre of a busy street did exist. And the man who will explode himself in another one of our busy streets in a few years is now my brother’s age. His mother doesn’t have to worry about the dangers which lurk on the way to school. There are no schools anymore. We have demolished them all, when we crushed the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority. His younger brother was killed when our soldiers exploded their home. Our soldiers exploded their home because his older brother was a "wanted person". Exploding his family’s home was our way to insure that he will soon turn from a wanted person into an unwanted body, torn to a thousand pieces, surrounded by his victims.
The young terrorist to be sleeps now in a tent provided by UNRWA. What is he afraid of? Not much to fear anymore. The worst already took place. But the bulldozers are still around, demolishing the neighbours’ homes. Every day a few new tents join the raw. His mother tells him how they were deported from their home in Latrun in 1967. His grandmother tells him it was nothing compared to what she had to go through when she was driven away from Jaffa in 1948, carrying his screaming mother, then a newborn, in her arms.
My grandmother doesn’t understand her plight. It had never occurred to her to go back to her home in Poland, which she had to flee as a refugee, haunted by the rise of Nazism in Europe. The fact that the Palestinians still talk about Jaffa, she says, just proves that they want to exterminate us. Whenever a suicide bombing strikes our cities, my grandmother calls me and tells me of her secret plan. "I am an old woman, and I have nothing to loose," she says in a conspiratorial tone. "I will wear rags like their women, and go and explode myself in the centre of Nablus. This will teach them a lesson. I will show them what it’s like." I am trying to tell her that they already know what it is like, that the number of their dead is three times bigger than ours, that the fear and terror we spread in their lives is much bigger than ours. But my grandmother doesn’t hear me, because she is crying. "They are not human beings," she says. "What people can do such things, kill children like this?" De-humanised people, I want to answer, but I keep my mouth shut, and think about the child that I don’t want to have. 【您現(xiàn)在閱讀的文章來自“中國人才指南網(wǎng)”，請記住我們的永久域名：www.ardmore-hotel.com/ 】
The child I won’t have will never feel the guilt of being an occupier, or the fear of becoming a victim. I will never tell him not to be scared, when fear is the only rational thing to feel. I will not have to teach him that the Palestinian child is a human being just like him, while everybody else will tell him that it is not so. The child I won’t have will keep sleeping, curled in a secret corner of my mind. The child I will never have is going to be the only safe child in the Middle East.
* A news editor and journalist, Daphna Baram was born in Jerusalem and served in the Israeli army as a teacher for two years.
我那安全的孩子
By Daphna Baram (以色列)
我今年三十三歲，很高興沒有成為一名母親。我聽不見生物鐘的滴答作響，只聽到即將爆炸的炸彈那令人神經(jīng)崩潰的走秒聲。我的朋友們一聽到自己的手機鈴響就會驚跳起來。“你在哪里？不行，你不能出去。不行，我才不管是不是別的孩子都去呢�！焙⒆觽�?nèi)鲋e時是多么的天真啊。如今在以色列會有什么母親相信“所有孩子都去”哪個地方呢？
那么，孩子們要去哪兒呢？他們的恐懼會將他們帶往哪兒呢？在世界上許多地方，孩子們害怕的是那些未知的、不真實的東西。而當(dāng)你意識到孩子們最恐懼的恰恰是那些他們最為熟知的事物時，你知道你是生活在戰(zhàn)區(qū)。
兩年前我的弟弟十歲，他放學(xué)回家，剛打開門，就聽見熟悉的爆炸聲從他身后剛剛離開的街上響起。五分鐘后坐在電視機前，他看到了他的朋友在滿是傷者和殘肢斷臂的街上茫然地徘徊。朋友的父親剛把他從學(xué)校接出來還帶他去吃了比薩餅，現(xiàn)在就眼睜睜地被殺死了。我弟弟拒絕談?wù)撨@件事�！斑@個小孩并不真是我的朋友，”他老那么說，“我跟他真的不是很熟�！蹦翘焱砩希腋赣H說他害怕弗萊迪•克魯格，這個人物是一部大家都熟悉的恐怖片里的殺人惡魔。我父親不知道是該笑還是該哭，但我猜想他感到了某種寬慰。撫摸著孩子的頭發(fā)告訴他克魯格并非真的存在，這種感覺有多棒。
然而，那個在繁忙的街道中央將自身引爆的人確實存在。而那個幾年后將要在我們另一條繁忙街道上引爆自己的人現(xiàn)在正是我弟弟的年紀(jì)。他的母親無需擔(dān)心潛伏在上學(xué)路上的危險，因為根本就不再有學(xué)校，在我們破壞巴勒斯坦基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施時已經(jīng)將學(xué)校全部摧毀了。他的弟弟在我們的戰(zhàn)士炸毀他們家時死去了。我們的戰(zhàn)士炸毀他們家是因為他的哥哥是個被通緝的要犯。我們用炸毀他家屋子這個辦法來確保他那位哥哥能很快從一個被通緝的要犯變?yōu)闆]人要的尸體，被炸成了千百片，旁邊都是因他而受害的人。
這個未來的小恐怖分子現(xiàn)在就睡在聯(lián)合國難民救濟及工程局提供的帳篷里。他害怕什么呢？再也沒多少令他害怕的了，最糟糕的事情已經(jīng)發(fā)生。然而，推土機仍然在周圍拆除鄰居家的屋子。每天都有幾頂新的帳篷加入到這種未開化的生活中來。他的母親告訴他，1967年他們是如何被驅(qū)逐出在拉特倫的家的。他的姥姥告訴他，1948年她被從雅法趕出來，懷抱著他那當(dāng)時剛出生不久哇哇直哭的母親，現(xiàn)在的情況比起那時經(jīng)歷的一切算不了什么。
我的祖母不了解自己所處的境況。她在興起的納粹主義肆虐歐洲時以難民的身份逃離了波蘭，之后她從未想過要重返那里的家。她說，巴勒斯坦人仍在談?wù)撗欧ㄖ皇钦f明了他們想消滅我們。每當(dāng)我們城市發(fā)生一起自殺性爆炸，我祖母就會打電話跟我講她的秘密計劃�！拔沂莻�老太婆，沒有什么放不下的�！彼躁幹\策劃的語氣說道，“我穿上他們女人那樣的破衣服，到納布盧斯市中心去引爆自己，給他們個教訓(xùn)，讓他們看看這象什么樣子�！蔽以噲D告訴她他們已經(jīng)知道這象什么樣子，告訴她他們的死亡人數(shù)比我們多三倍，告訴她我們在他們生活中播撒的害怕和恐怖要比我們自己生活中的多得多。但祖母聽不見我的話，因為她在哭。“他們不是人，”她說，“什么人會做這樣的事，象這樣殺孩子？”沒有人性的人，我想回答，但我沒有張嘴，心里想著我那不想生養(yǎng)的孩子。
我不想生養(yǎng)的這個孩子將永遠不會為自己成為占領(lǐng)者而感到有罪，也不會為自己可能成為受害者而感到害怕。我將永遠不用告訴他不要怕，盡管害怕是現(xiàn)在唯一合乎理性的感受。我將不必教導(dǎo)他巴勒斯坦孩子也是象他一樣的人，而其他所有人都會告訴他并非如此。這個我不想生養(yǎng)的孩子將蜷縮在我的大腦內(nèi)一個秘密角落里一直睡大覺。這個我不想生養(yǎng)的孩子將是中東地區(qū)唯一安全的孩子。
* Daphna Baram是一名編輯兼新聞記者，出生于耶路撒冷，曾在以色列軍隊里服役當(dāng)教員兩年。
(鄒紅云，中國科學(xué)技術(shù)大學(xué)外語系）
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