Marrakech 马拉喀什见闻(中英)
Marrakech xx见闻
1、As the corpse went past the flies left the restaurant table in a cloud and rushed after it,but they came back a few minutes later.尸体被抬过去的时候，成群的苍蝇嗡嗡地飞离了餐馆的饭桌，尾随尸体去，几分钟后又嗡嗡地飞了回来。
2、The little crows of mourners –all me and boys,no women –threaded their way across the marker place between the piles of pomegranates and the taxis and the camels,wailing a short chant over and over again.What really appeals to the flied is that the corpses here are never put into coffins; they are merely wrapped in a piece of ray and carried on a rough wooden bier on the shoulders of four friends. When the friends get to the burying-ground they hack an oblong hole afoot or two deep, dump the body in it and fling over it a little of the dried-up, lumpy earth, which is like broken brick. No gravestone,no name,no identifying mark of any kind.The burying-ground is merely a huge waste of hummocky earth.Like a derelict building-lot. After a month or two no one can even be certain where his own relatives are buried.
一支人数不多的送葬队伍-其中老老小小全是男的，没有女人-挤过一堆堆的石榴，穿行在出租车和骆驼之间，迂回着穿过市场，嘴里还一遍遍地哀号着一支短促的悲歌。真正令苍蝇感兴趣的是这里的尸体从来都不装进棺材，而是只用一块破布裹着，放在一副粗糙的木制担架
上，有死者的四位朋友抬去送葬。达到坟场后，朋友们首先挖出一块一两英尺深的长方形的坑，将尸体扔入坑中，再在上面丢一些像碎砖头一样的干土块。没有墓碑，没有留名，也没有任何身份标志，坟场只不过是一片巨大的如同一块废弃的建筑工地般土丘林立的荒原。一两个月之后，就谁也找不到自己亲人的坟墓之处了。
3、When you walk through a town like this – two hundred thousand inhabitants of whom at least twenty thousand own literally nothing except the rags they stand op in –when you see how the people live,and still more how easily they die, it is always difficult to believe that you are walking among human beings.All colonial empires are in reality founded upon this fact. The people have brown faces –besides,there are so many o them! Are they really the sane flesh as your self?Do they
even have names?Or are they merely a kind of undifferentiated brown stuff,about as individual as bees or coral insects? They rise out of the earth, they sweat and starve for a few years,and then they sink back into the nameless mounds of the graveyard and nobody notices that they are gone.And even the graves themselves soon fade back into the soil. Sometimes, out for a walk as you break your way through the prickly pear, you notice that it is rather bumpy underfoot,and only a certain regularity in the bumps tells you that you are walking over skeletons.
当你徒步走过这样的城镇-在20万当地居民中，至少有2万人除了罩
在身上的一身破布外，其他一无所有-当你看到这些人如何生存，又如何轻易地死去时，你永远难以相信自己是在人类中穿行。但事实上，这正是所有殖民帝国赖以建立的基础。这些人有着棕色的脸孔-而且，他们人数众多！他们果真和你一样是人类吗？他们也有名有姓吗？或者他们只是一种棕色的、像蜜蜂或珊瑚虫那样难以区分的生物呢？他们生于土地，挥汗如雨，忍饥挨饿地过上几年过后，就被埋到坟场里不知名的坟堆下。没有人注意到他们的离去，甚至这些无名坟堆本身也很快会变成一片平地。有时，当你外出散步穿过仙人掌丛时，你会注意到脚下的土地格外不平，只有这些有规则的突起的土包才会告诉你：
你正踩在死人骷髅的上面。
4、I was feeding one of the gazelles in the public gardens.
在公园里，我正在给一只瞪羚喂食。
5、Gazelles are almost the only animals that look good to eat when they are still alive, in fact, one can hardly look at their hindquarters without thinking of a mint sauce. They gazelle I was feeding seemed to know that this thought was in my mind,for though it took the piece of bread I was holding out it obviously did not like me.It nibbled rapidly at the bread, then lowered its head and tried to butt me, then took another nibble and then butted again. Probably its idea was that if it could drive me away the bread would somehow remain hanging in mid-air.
瞪羚几乎是唯一一种活时就让人觉得很美味的动物。实际上，光是看
到它的两条后腿就会令人联想到薄荷酱。我正在喂食的这只瞪羚几乎已经看出我的这点心思，尽管它叼走了我手上的面包，但它显然对我这个人并没有好感。它迅速地轻咬了一口面包，然后低下头，试图用脑袋顶我，然后又啃了口面包，又顶了一次。它大概以为，如果把我撵跑，面包仍会在半空中。
6、An Arab navy working on the path nearby lowered his heavy hoe and sidled slowly towards us. He looked from the gazelle to the bread and from the bread to the gazelle, with a sort of quiet amazement, as though he had never seen anything quite like this before. Finally he said shyly in French:
“I could eat some of that bread.”
在附近小路上干活的一个阿拉伯民工放下笨重的锄头，慢慢地侧着身子走向我们。他那诧异的目光从瞪羚移向面包，又从面包移向瞪羚，好像他是第一次见到这样的情形。最后他用法语怯怯的问道：
“那面包我能吃点吗？”
7、I tore off a piece and he stowed it gratefully in some secret place under his rages. This man is an employee of the municipality.我撕下一片面包，他感激涕零地把面包收在破衣服下的隐蔽地方。这个人是市政当局的一名雇工。
8、When you go through the Jewish quarters you gather some idea of what the medieval ghettoes were probably like.Under their Moorish rulers the Jew were only allowed to own land in certain restricted areas,and after centuries of this kind of treatment they
当你经过犹太人居住区时，你可能就会了解中世纪的犹太人区大概是个什么样子。在摩尔人的统治下，犹太人只允许在几个规定的区域内拥有土地，而经历过几个世纪这样的待遇后，犹太人已不再为过度拥挤而头痛了。这儿的许多街道还不及六英尺宽；而房子则没有窗户；眼睛红肿的孩子成群结队，像一群群的苍蝇，四处可见，多得令人难以置信。沿着街中心向下走，往往尿流成河。
9、In the bazaar huge families of Jews, all dressed in the long black robe and little black skull-cap,are working in dark fly-infested booths that look like caves.A
carpenter sits cross-legged at a prehistoric lathe, turning chair-legs at lightning speed. He works the lathe with a bow in his right hand and guides the chisel with his left foot, and thanks to a lifetime of sitting in this position his left leg is warped out of shape.At his side his grandson,aged six,is already starting on the simpler parts of the job.
在集市上，一大家的犹太人都穿着黑色长袍，头上戴着黑色便帽，在看起来如同洞穴一般光线暗淡、苍蝇遍布的货摊里干活。一个木工盘腿坐在一架古老的车窗旁，速度极快地旋制着椅子腿。他右手
拿弓开动车床，左手引动凿子。由于长期都保持这样的坐姿，他的左腿已经弯曲变形了。他六岁的孙子则坐在旁边，已经开始帮着做些简单的活了。
10、I was just passing the coppersmiths’booths when somebody noticed that I was lighting a cigarette. Instantly, from the dark holes all round,there was a frenzied rush of Jews,many of them old grandfathers with flowing grey beards, all clamouring for a cigarette.Even a blind man somewhere at the back of one of the booths heard a rumour of cigarettes and came crawling out, groping in the air with his hand. In about a minute I had used op the whole packet. None of these people, I suppose, works less than twelve hours a day, and every one of them looks on a cigarette as a more or less impossible luxury.当我正要走过铜匠铺子时，有人注意到我正点着一支香烟。刹那间，大批疯狂的犹太人从四面八方的黑洞窟里钻了出来，其中还有很多胡子斑白的老人，他们都争着要讨支香烟。甚至一位盲人也从铺子后面爬了出来，手在空中胡乱摸索着。不到一分钟的时间，我的整包香烟就全分完了。我想这些人中没有谁每天工作少于12个小时，但每个人都视一根香烟为一种无法承担的奢侈品。
nothing but Jews. As a matter of fact there are thirteen thousand of them, all living in the space of a few acres. A good job Hitler wasn’t here. Perhaps he was on his way, however. You hear the usual dark rumours about Jews,not only from the Arabs but from the poorer Europeans.
由于犹太人生活在一个自给自足的社会里，他们与阿拉伯人从事一样的行业，农业除外。他们当中有水果贩子、陶制工、银匠、铁匠、屠夫、皮匠、裁
缝、运水工、乞丐、脚夫等-放眼望去，到处都是犹太人。事实上，在这块仅几亩大的土地上，竟然生活着13000个犹太人。
幸运的是，希特勒并未光顾过这里。或许他曾经想过来这里。你常听到的有关犹太人的不利传言，不仅来自阿拉伯人，还来自较穷的欧洲人。
12、“Yes mon vieux, they tool my job away from me and gave it to a Jew.Tee Jews!They’re the real rulers of this country,you know.They’ve got all the money.They control the banks,finance –everything.”
“老兄啊，他们夺走我的工作给了犹太人。这些犹太人啊！你知道吧，他们才是这个国家真正的统治者。他们卷走了全部的钱，他们还控制了银行、财政-一切的一切。”
13、“But”, I said,“isn’t it a fact that the average Jew is a labourer working for about a penny an hour?”
“但是”我说道，“事实上一般的犹太人不是都在为每小时一便士的
微博工钱而劳作吗？”
14、“Ah,that’s only for show!They’re all money lenders really.They’re cunning, the Jews.”
“啊，那只不过是装装样子。他们其实都是放债的债主，犹太人狡诈得很呢。”
15、In just the same way, a couple of hundred years ago, poor old women used to be burned for witchcraft when they could not even work enough magic to get themselves a square meal.
想想与这相同的一幕吧：
好几百年前，常有些可怜的老妇人因为拥有巫术而被烧死，但她们却甚至没办法利用自己的巫术让自己饱餐一顿。
16、All people who work with their hands are partly invisible, and the more important the work they do, the less visible they are. Still, a white skin is always fairly conspicuous.In northern Europe,when you see a labourer ploughing a field, you probably give him a second glance. In a hot country, anywhere south of Gibraltar or east of Suez,the chances are that you don’t even see him. I have noticed this again and again.In a tropical landscap e one’s eye takes in everything except the human beings. It talks in the dried-up soil, the prickly pear,the palm tree and the distant mountain,but it always misses the peasant hoeing at his patch. He is the same colour as the earth, and a great deal less interesting to look at.
所有那些靠自己的双手劳动的人都不太引人注意，他们干的活越辛苦，就越不引人注目。然而，白皮肤却总是那么显眼。在北欧，当你看到一个农民在耕地，你可能会多看他两眼。而在一个热带国家，直布罗陀以南或者苏伊士运河以东，同样的情况下，你甚至根本注意不到耕地的人。我一次又一次地注意到了这个情形。在热带地区，一切自然景色尽收眼底，唯独看不到人。人们可以看到干巴巴的土地、仙人掌、棕榈树，还有远处连绵的群山，但往往遗漏了在地里耕作的农夫。他们的肤色接近土壤的颜色，却远远不及土壤耐看。
17、It is only because of this that the starved countries of Asia and Africa are accepted as tourist resorts. No one would think of running cheap trips to the Distressed Areas.But where the human beings have brown skins their poverty is simply not noticed.What does Morocco mean to a Frenchman?An orange grove or a job in Government service.Or to an Englishman?Camels,castles,palm trees,Foreign Legionnaires,brass trays,and bandits.One could probably live there for years without noticing that for nine-tenths of the people the reality of life is an endless back-breaking struggle to wring a little food out of an eroded soil.
正因如此，一些贫困潦倒的亚非国家倒是成了旅游胜地。没人会想组织游客去贫民窟旅游，尽管费用低廉。但在居住着棕色皮肤的人的地方，贫困却完全无人在意。摩洛哥对法国人而言意味着什么呢？无非就是一片橘园或者一份政府部门的差事。对于英国人呢？不过是骆
驼、城堡、棕榈树、外国军团、黄铜托盘和土匪。即使一个人在那里生活多年，他可能都无法意识到：
对于当地百分之九十的居民而言，生活是一场为了从贫瘠的土地上榨出一点食物而进行的无休无止、艰苦卓绝的抗争。
18、Most of Morocco is so desolate that no wild animal bigger than a hare can live on it. Huge areas which were once covered with forest have turned into a treeless waste where the soil is exactly like broken-up brick.Nevertheless a good deal if it is cultivated,with frightful labour.Everything is done by hand.Long lines of woman,bent double like inverted capital Ls, work their way slowly across the fields, tearing up the prickly weeds with their hand, and the peasant gathering lucerne for fodder pulls it up stalk by stalk instead of reaping it, thus saving an inch or two on each stalk. The plough is a wretched wooden thing, so frail that one can easily carry it on one’s shoulder, and fitted underneath with a rough iron spike which stirs the soil to a depth of about four inches.This is as much as the strength of the animals is equal to. It is usual to plough with a cow and a donkey yoked together. Two donkeys would not be quite strong enough, but on the other hand two cows would cost a little more to feed.The peasants possess no harrows,they merely plough the soil several times over in different directions,finally leaving it in rough furrows, after which the whole field has to be shaped with hoes into
small oblong patches to conserve water. Except for a day or two after the rare rainstorms there is never enough water.Along the edges of the fields channels are hacked out to a depth of thirty or forty feet to get at the tiny trickles which run through the subsoil.
摩洛哥的大部分土地都荒无人烟，能够在这里侥幸存活的野生动物没有比野兔更大的。大片曾经覆盖着森林的土地现在已经变成寸草不生的荒野，那土壤如同碎砖头一般。即使在这种条件下，还是有相当多的土地被开垦出来，所有的活儿都是手工完成的，劳动的艰辛程度可想而知。排着长队的女人们像倒着的大写字母“L”一样弯着腰，一边沿着田地慢慢地移动着身体，一边用手拔掉带刺的野草。为了喂养牲口，农民们采集紫花苜蓿时还要收集剩下的根茎，他们用手一株株地拔，这样就可以多留下来一两村的根茎。犁是木头制的劣等品，一点都不结实，一个人轻而易举就能抗在肩上。犁的底部安着一个粗糙的铁钉，它可以翻地约四英寸深。这和拉犁牲口的力量差不多大。拉犁时通常是把一头牛和一头驴套在一起。用两头驴的话力气往往不够大，用两头牛的话，
所需的饲料有太多了。农民们都没有耕地用的耙，他们只能顺着不同的方向把地犁上几遍，犁出一道道不平的垄沟，最后再用锄头把整块地整成一块块用来蓄水的长方形小畦。除了罕见的暴风雨过后的一两天之外，其余时间这里都缺水。农民们沿着田边挖出一道道深达30-40英尺的沟渠，以便把下层土壤的涓
涓细流汇聚起来。
19、Every afternoon a file of very old women passed down the road
我家门口的那条路上每天下午都会有一对老妇人背着柴火走过。因为年纪大了和风吹日晒的缘故，她们个个都变得如木乃伊般干瘪、身材瘦小。在原始社会里，妇女们到底一定年龄后，身材通常会缩成孩子般大小。有一天，一个不超过四英寸高的可怜的家伙背着重重的木头，从我面前缓缓走过。我拦住她，往她手中塞了一个面值五个苏的钱币（约多于四分之一便士）。她的反应竟是一声近乎尖叫的哭喊，这部分是出于感激，但多半是诧异。我想，在她看来，我这样注意到她就不是人之常情似得。她接受了自己既是老妇人，也是“负重牲口”的
社会地位。在这里通常可以看到这样一幕：
每当一家人远行时，父亲和已成年的儿子骑着驴子走在前面，而一位老妇人则背着重重的行囊步行跟在后面。
20、But what is strange about these people is their invisibility.For several weeks,always at about the same time of day,the file of old women had hobbled past the house with their firewood, and though they had registered themselves in my eyeballs I cannot truly say that I had seen them. Firewood was passing-that was how I saw it. It was only that one day I happened to be walking behind them,and the curious up-and-down motion of a load if wood drew my attention to the human being beneath it. Then for the first time o noticed the poor old earth-coloured bodies, bodies reduced to bones and leathery skin,bent double under the crushing weight. Yet I suppose I had not been five minutes on Moroccan soil before I noticed the overloading of the donkeys are damnably treated.The Moroccan donkey is hardly bigger than a St.Bernard dog, it carries a load which in the British Army would be considered too much for a fifteen-hands mule,and very often its packsaddle is not taken off its back for weeks together.But what is peculiarly pitiful is that it is the most
willing creature on earth, it follows its master like a dog and does not need either bridle or halter. After a dozen years of devoted work it suddenly drops
dead,whereupon its master tips it into the ditch and the village dogs have torn its guts out before it is cold.
然而这些人的奇特之处就在于他们几乎像是透明人。几个星期以来，几乎每天在同一个时候，都会有一对老妇人背着柴火从我房前蹒跚而过。尽管我的眼睛已经记录下这一幕，但仍然不能说我真正看到了她们。我所看到的只是成捆的柴火在慢慢地向前移动。直到有一天我碰巧走在他们后面到时候，看到一捆柴火很奇怪地时上时下，这才让我注意到原来下面还有人。这是我第一次注意到这些可怜的老妇人土色的躯体，一些在重压之下弯曲变形、瘦骨嶙峋的躯体。但是我觉得我来到摩洛哥还不到五分钟就已经注意到驴子的负荷过重，并为此颇感愤怒。毫无疑问，这儿的驴子受到了虐待。摩洛哥的驴子身形几乎和圣伯纳犬一样大小，但它承受的负荷在英国军队里让一头高约一点五米的骡子驮都嫌重，而且，它身上的驮鞍经常一连几个星期都不卸下。
但是，让人觉得尤其可悲的是，摩洛哥的驴子是地球上在温顺的动物，不需要安上笼头或者缰绳，它就如同一条狗一样听从主人的吩咐。拼命工作几十年后，它便一下子倒地死了，这时它就会被主人丢进沟里，在尸体变冷之前，它的五脏六腑早已被村狗掏出来吃掉了。
这类事情真是令人义愤填膺。然而，一般人来说，人类的困境却没有引起同样的反响。我并不是在发表议论，而仅仅是在陈述一个事实。
棕色人近乎于无形。人人都会去同情一头脊背磨伤的驴子，但若要注意到柴火堆下的老妇人，只能归于某种巧合。
22、As the storks flew northward the Negroes were marching southward- a long, dusty column, infantry, screw- gun batteries, and then more infantry, four or five thousand men in all, winding up the road with a clumping of boots and a clatter of iron wheels.
白鹤展翅北飞时，黑人军队却正挥军南下—一列长长的、满面灰尘的行军队伍，步兵，炮兵，接着是人数更多的步兵，总共有四五千人，正在晚宴前进，伴随着靴子的哐当声和铁轮的辘辘声。
23、They were Senegalese, the blackest Negroes in Africa, so black that sometimes it is difficult to see whereabouts on their necks the hair begins. Their feet squashed into boots that looked like blocks of wood, and every tin hat seemed to be a couple of sizes too small.It was very hot and the men had marched a long way.They slumped under the weight of their packs and the curiously sensitive black faces were glistening with sweat.
他们是非洲肤色最黑的塞内加尔人，黑得有时让人难以分辨出他们的头发是从何而生的。他们壮硕的身体上穿着旧的卡其布制服，脚上套着一双像木块似得靴子，头上戴着一顶尺码过小的钢盔。天气异常炎热，这些黑人已经走了很长一段路了。他们疲惫不堪地背着沉重的行
李，在他们异常敏感的黑色脸颊上，汗水闪闪发光。
24、As they went past, a tall, very young Negro turned and caught my eye. But the look he gave me was not contemptuous, not sullen, not even inquisitive. It was the shy, wide-eyed Negro look, which actually is a look of profound respect.I saw how it was. This wretched boy,who is a French citizen and has therefore been dragged from the forest to scrub floors and catch syphilis in garrison towns,actually has feelings of reverence before a white skin. He has been taught that the white race are his masters, and he still believes it.
他们正经过时，一个年轻高大的黑人转过头，正好和我目光相遇。但是他的神情完全出乎我的意料。其中没有敌意，没有轻蔑傲慢，没有温怒愤恨，更没有好奇无知。那腼腆羞涩、双眼圆睁的神情，实际上蕴涵了深厚的敬意。我了解这种情况。这个可怜的男孩是法国公民，因此他从森林里被拖出来，去给驻军所在的城镇檫洗地板，并染上了梅毒。事实上他对白人充满敌意。别人给他灌输白人是主子的思想，对此他一直深信不疑。
25、But there is one thought which every white man(and in this connection it doesn’t matter twopence if he calls himself a socialist)thinks when he sees a black
army marching past.“How much longer can we go on kidding these people? How long bef ore they turn their guns in the other direction?”
但是每个白人（包括那些自称是社会学家的人）在看到这群黑人行军
经过时，心中总会冒出这样的想法。“我们还能继续愚弄这些人多久？还要多久他们的枪口就会对准我们？”
26、It was curious really.Every white man there had this thought stowed somewhere or other in his mind.I had it,so had the other onlookers,so had the officers on their sweating chargers and the white NCOs marching in the ranks. It was a kind of secret which we all knew and were too clever to tell; only the Negroes didn’t know it.And really it was like watching a flock of cattle to see the long column,a mile or two miles of armed men,flowing peacefully up the road,while the great white birds drifted over them in the opposite direction,glittering like scraps of paper.
这种想法真够奇怪的，在场的每个白人心里都隐藏着这种想法。我有，其他旁观者有，骑在汗水兮兮的战马上的军官有，走在行军队伍中的军士有。这是我们大家心照不宣的秘密，只有黑人不知道。的确，看到这列一两英里长的队伍静静地前行，就好比在观看一列牛群一样，掠过他们头顶的大白鹤正朝着相反的方向飞去，好像片片白色碎纸片一样闪闪发光。
(from Reading for Rhetoric, edited by Caroline Shrodes,Clifford
A. Josephson, and James R. Wilson)
（选自卡洛琳·什罗茨、克利福德·A·约瑟夫森以及詹姆士·R·威尔逊合编的《修辞读物》）