好英语网《追风筝的人》作者：“阿富汗远不止如此”
Like so many people, the novelist Khaled Hosseini watched Afghanistan fall to the Taliban over the past few days with horror and sadness.
和许多人一样，小说家卡勒德·胡赛尼(Khaled Hosseini)在过去几天里怀着恐惧和悲伤的心情，看着阿富汗落入塔利班手中。
Though he has lived in the United States since 1980, he was born in Kabul, and his best-known books, like “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns,” are deeply rooted in the country’s history and culture. In a phone interview on Wednesday, he expressed his frustration that Americans, and the rest of the world, have for so long heard about the country in the context of death and destruction, and rarely from the people who live there.
尽管他自1980年以来一直生活在美国，但他出生在喀布尔，他最著名的作品，如《追风筝的人》(The Kite Runner)和《灿烂千阳》(A Thousand Splendid Suns)，都深深植根于这个国家的历史和文化。在周三的电话采访中，他表示，长期以来，美国和世界其他地方的人了解的这个国家都是在死亡和破坏的背景下，很少有来自当地民众的说法，他对此感到沮丧。
2018年，卡勒德·胡赛尼在约旦。这位畅销书作家出生在阿富汗，他的几本书都植根于阿富汗的历史。
“If you look up stories about Afghanistan,” he said, “it’s always about violence, it’s about displacement, it’s about the drug trade, it’s about the Taliban, it’s about the U.S. initiatives. There is precious little about the Afghan people themselves.”
“如果你查阅有关阿富汗的故事，”他说，“总是关于暴力，关于流离失所，关于毒品交易，关于塔利班，关于美国的举措。关于阿富汗人民本身的内容少之又少。”
Millions of readers have turned to his books for this perspective, though he considers that a mixed blessing, saying that neither he nor his fiction should be considered representative of his homeland. “But I do have a perspective, and I do feel strongly about what’s going on in Afghanistan,” he said.
成百上千万的读者从他的书中获得了这样的视角，但他认为这是一件令人喜忧参半的事，他说他和自己的小说都不应该被视为其祖国的代表。“但我确实有自己的视角，而且我确实对阿富汗发生的事情有强烈的感受，”他说。
He shared his thoughts on the country, what people seeking a stronger understanding of it should read and what he sees as America’s moral obligation to the Afghan people. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
他分享了自己对阿富汗的看法、寻求深入理解阿富汗的人们应该阅读什么，以及他认为美国对阿富汗人民的道德义务。以下是经过编辑的对话节选。
How has your sense of Afghanistan’s future changed over the year?
在过去的一年里，你对阿富汗未来的看法发生了怎样的变化？
I was in Afghanistan early in 2003, and in those days, there was virtually no insurgency. There was this very heady optimism about this semi-Jeffersonian democracy, and about where the country was headed — gender equality, rights for girls and women, people being able to participate in an open and representative political process. All of that was in play.
我在2003年初到过阿富汗，在那些日子里，几乎没有叛乱活动。人们对这个半杰斐逊式的民主、对这个国家的发展方向非常乐观——性别平等，女孩和妇女的权利，人们能够参与公开的和有代表性的政治进程。所有这些都在发挥作用。
Over the years we adjusted our expectations, and over time we came to expect that, well, that was all a pipe dream, but at least what we can hope for is a compromised sort of democracy, with corruption and all sorts of issues. But at least Afghans in the cities, for sure, appear to be safe. They know there’s been a lot of progress in the last 20 years in Afghanistan, and that gave me hope. And of course, over the last couple of years, those hopes have declined. And in the last few days, they have been utterly crushed.
多年来，我们调整了自己的预期，随着时间的推移，我们开始期待，好吧，这都是一个白日梦，但至少我们可以期待一种经过妥协的民主，有腐败和各种问题。但至少城市里的阿富汗人看起来是安全的。他们知道在过去的20年里，阿富汗取得了很大的进步，这给了我希望。当然，在过去的几年里，这种希望已经减弱了。在过去的几天里，它们被彻底击垮了。
What should people be reading to better understand Afghanistan and Afghan people right now?
为了更好地了解阿富汗和阿富汗人民，现在人们应该阅读什么书籍？
They should be reading history books. They should be reading people who really know Afghanistan and know it well. A lot of people have relied on my books to kind of get a view into what Afghanistan is, and that’s fine, but I have never intended for my books to be representative of what Afghan life is. I hope people dig much deeper than that and read history books and learn more about Afghanistan in that way.
他们应该读历史书。他们应该读那些真正了解阿富汗，并且非常了解阿富汗的人写的书。很多人靠着我的书来了解阿富汗是什么样子的，这很好，但我从来没有打算让我的书来代表阿富汗的生活。我希望人们能够更深入地挖掘和阅读历史书籍，以这种方式更多地了解阿富汗。
But there has been an uptick in demand for your books. Is there anything you want people to know who are picking up one of them for the first time?
但外界对你的书的需求有所上升。对于那些第一次拿起它的人，你有什么需要告诉他们的吗？
These are stories. This is the perspective of someone who has lived in exile, essentially since 1980. Salman Rushdie said that the viewpoint of the person in exile about their homeland is always through a cracked mirror, and that’s very true for me. I’ve always been very careful about making sure that people don’t mistake me for some kind of Afghan ambassador or Afghan representative. I haven’t lived there in a long time.
它们都是故事。是出自从1980年以来一直流亡的人的视角。萨尔曼·拉什迪(Salman Rushdie)说过，流亡的人总是透过一面破碎的镜子看祖国，这对我来说非常正确。我一直非常注意不要被人误以为是某种阿富汗大使或者阿富汗的代表。我已经很久没有在那里生活了。
But I do have a perspective, and I do feel strongly about what’s going on in Afghanistan, and I have a deep affection and a deep emotional connection with the people there, with the land, with the culture, with the history and the heritage. I hope my books provide a little bit of insight on what Afghanistan is, beyond the usual story lines that we see in the media about Afghanistan as a breeding ground for terrorism or the Taliban, the opium trade, the cycles of war.
但我确实有一定的了解，我确实对阿富汗发生的事情有强烈的感受，我对那里的人民，那里的土地、文化、历史和遗产有着很深的感情和很深的情感联系。我希望我的书能提供一点关于阿富汗的见解，超越我们在媒体上看到的常见故事线，把阿富汗描述为恐怖主义或是塔利班、鸦片贸易乃至周而复始的战争的温床。
There’s so much more to Afghanistan. It’s a beautiful country with a beautiful, humble, kind, welcoming, hospitable and charming people. Everyone who’s been to Afghanistan says, “I’ve been to a lot of places in the world, but I’ve never been to a place like Afghanistan.” We call it the Afghan bug — people who go there become infected with the Afghan bug. It’s a very special place. It’s a beautiful place, both physically and the people themselves, and, once you know that, once you’ve had a taste of that, once you’ve been in touch with those people, and broken bread and had tea, the tragedies, the stuff that you see on television, take on a whole other dimension. It becomes personal, and it just becomes very, very painful.
阿富汗远不止如此。这是一个美丽的国家，有美丽、谦逊、善良、热情、好客和迷人的人民。每个去过阿富汗的人都说：“我去过世界上很多地方，但从来没有去过阿富汗这样的地方。”我们称之为“阿富汗病菌”，人们去过那里就会感染上“阿富汗病菌”。那是一个非常特别的地方，是一个美丽的地方，无论是物质方面还是那里的人民，一旦你知道了，一旦你尝到了那种滋味，一旦你接触到那些人，掰碎过面包、喝过茶，那些悲剧，那些你在电视上看到的东西，就有了一个完全不同的层面。会变得很个人化，而且非常非常令人痛苦。
What else do you want people reading this to know?
你还想让读者知道什么？
Many, many Afghans bought into what the U.S. was selling. They aligned themselves with American objectives, they bought into American initiatives, fully aware that that would make them targets in the eyes of insurgent groups like the Taliban. They did it anyway in the hope of a better future for the country, in the hope of a better future for the children, in the hope that the country would become more stable and more peaceful, more representative of all sections of Afghan society. I believe they were unbelievably courageous to do it.
很多、很多阿富汗人接受了美国推行的东西。他们与美国的目标保持一致，他们接受美国的倡议，并且完全明白这将使他们成为塔利班等叛乱组织的目标。不管怎样，他们还是这样做了，希望这个国家能有一个更好的未来，希望孩子们能有一个更好的未来，希望这个国家能变得更稳定，更和平，更能代表阿富汗社会的各个阶层。我相信他们这样做是带着难以置信的勇气的。
So I want people to reach out to their representatives, to their leaders, and say, We have a moral obligation to those people, we have to evacuate those people. We cannot allow our partners — the U.S. has been calling the Afghan people “our partners” for 20 years — we cannot allow our partners to be murdered. To be imprisoned, to be beaten and tortured and persecuted now that we have left. We have a moral obligation to follow through.
所以我希望大家去找自己的代表，找自己的领导人，告诉他们，我们对这些人有道义上的义务，我们必须把那些人撤出来。我们不能允许我们的伙伴——20年来美国一直称阿富汗人民为“我们的伙伴”——在我们离开后，我们不能允许我们的伙伴被谋杀。被囚禁，被殴打，被折磨，被迫害。我们在道义上有义务坚持到底。