好英语网苏莱曼尼之死对伊朗人意味着什么
The last time I wrote seriously about a war with Iran was in 2012. It had been an especially fraught year, with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards running naval exercises in the Persian Gulf, Israel and the United States conducting joint drills, and the safety of oil shipping lanes looking entirely unassured. Oil prices rattled skittishly, everyone suddenly monitored ships, and headlines speculated that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear sites.
我上次认真地写与伊朗的战争是在2012年。那是尤其令人焦虑的一年，伊朗革命卫队在波斯湾举行海军演习，以色列与美国进行联合军演，石油运输航道的安全似乎完全没有保障。油价波动不定，各方都突然跟踪船只往来，新闻大标题都是对以色列可能攻击伊朗核设施的猜测。
My assignment was to consider “the day after” — to imagine how Iranians would react if their country was bombed by Israel. My piece featured scenes of distraught young people gathering on crowded intersections singing the national anthem — suddenly everyone a terrified Iranian citizen rather than an aspiring guitarist or a day laborer or whatever they were the day before — and a screaming mother buying formula to stockpile from a supermarket. I don’t even remember writing it. How many times can you write, predict and analyze your country’s destruction before your mind begins to dissolve the traces?
分派给我的任务是考虑“那天之后”——想像一下如果他们的国家遭到以色列轰炸后，伊朗人会作何反应。我在文章中展现的场景是心神狂乱的年轻人聚集在拥挤的十字路口唱国歌，大喊大叫的妈妈从超市买奶粉囤积——突然间，每个人都成了惊恐的伊朗公民，而不是有志成为吉他手的人、打短工的人，或他们前一天曾有的身份。我自己都不记得写过这篇文章了。你能写多少次预测和分析你的国家遭毁灭的文章，而你的大脑不会开始消除写过这些东西的痕迹呢？
周六，一场抗议美国暗杀苏莱曼尼的示威活动。
That rehearsal feels like it was all in preparation for today. Last week an American drone strike incinerated Iran’s top general and national war hero Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, along with a senior Iraqi militia commander, in what can only be understood as an act of war.
那次排演给人的感觉就像是为今天做准备。上周，美国的发动无人机袭击，将伊朗高级将领、国家战争英雄卡西姆·苏莱曼尼(Qassim Suleimani)少将和一名伊拉克民兵高级指挥官化为灰烬，这次袭击只能被当作一种战争行为来理解。
Being here again makes me feel that I — an American citizen of Iranian origin — have been here so often before. The cycles of imminent war and upheaval Iranians seem destined to face every few years, cycles often driven by the whims of the United States and the increasing boldness of Iran, now feel like a civilizational inheritance, a legacy that my mother bore before me, her mother before her, and that I will pass down to my children. Every Iranian family’s history is touched with this past, in its own way.
作为一个伊朗裔美国人，再次身临其境让我觉得自己以前就经常处于这种境地。似乎每隔几年，伊朗人就要面临一次迫在眉睫的战争和动荡的循环，这种往往是由美国的冲动以及伊朗越来越大的胆子所驱动的循环，现在感觉像是一种文明的遗产，我母亲在我之前从她母亲那里继承而来，而我也将留给我的孩子。每个伊朗家庭的历史都以各自的方式被这个过去所触及。
The American-backed 1953 coup destroyed both my grandfather and great uncle’s careers, until then in service of the government, and sent the latter into exile. America’s support for, and then eventual abandonment of, the Shah helped shape the 1979 revolution, disrupted all of our lives, with the new authorities expropriating our assets, and landing an uncle in prison for belonging to that educated, pro-Western class that built modern Iran and saw the revolution as its demise.
1953年美国支持的伊朗政变，摧毁了原本在政府工作的祖父和叔祖父的职业，后者被迫流亡。美国对巴列维王朝的支持以及最终抛弃，帮助塑造了1979年的伊朗革命，这场革命扰乱了我们所有人的生活，新当局没收了我们的资产，将我的一个叔叔投入监狱，因为他属于受过良好教育的亲西方阶层。那个阶层建设了现代伊朗，并把革命看成是现代伊朗的灭亡。
The years that followed only deepened the American-Iranian chasm. There was the 1979-81 hostage crisis at the American Embassy in Tehran, which killed nobody in the end but poisoned relations to this day. The United States scarcely concealed its support for Iraq in the devastating years of the Iran-Iraq War. And in 1988, as the war dragged to a close, continued skirmishing resulted in the U.S. Navy shooting down an Iranian passenger plane flying over Iran’s territorial waters, killing 290 people. Deeply regrettable, lamented President Ronald Reagan, but honors and medals for the naval officers.
接下来的时间里，美伊之间的分歧越来越大。1979年至1981年，美国驻德黑兰大使馆发生人质危机，虽然最终并没有人死亡，但让两国关系直到今天仍处于紧张状态。在破坏性极大的两伊战争年代，美国几乎毫不掩饰其对伊拉克的支持。1988年，随着战争接近尾声，持续不断的小冲突导致美国海军击落了一架在伊朗领海上空飞行的伊朗客机，造成290人死亡。罗纳德·里根(Ronald Reagan)总统一边哀叹，这令人深感遗憾，一边给海军军官授予荣誉和勋章。
For decades now, the United States has often seemed driven to hurt Iran, at times through interventionist policies that were careless and transactional, and then after 1979, with a fierce determination out of proportion to whatever challenge the new system posed.
几十年来，美国似乎常常受到想伤害伊朗的驱使，有时是通过草率的、交易性的干涉主义政策，到了1979年以后，则是一种与伊朗新体制所构成的任何挑战都不成比例的狂热决心。
At a certain point, Iran started retaliating: In the 1980s, it cultivated regional groups and militias hostile to Washington, and encouraged them to take Westerners hostages and staged attacks through these networks. In later years, Iran challenged American roles in wars in the region and interventions in bordering countries — the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 — by backing nonstate allies that rose to become formidable powers in their own right. This lifted Tehran’s game of asymmetrical leverage into a regional influence it had probably never conceived of achieving. General Suleimani was behind much of this strategy.
到了一定时候，伊朗开始了报复：20世纪80年代，它扶植与华盛顿有敌意的地区组织和民兵，鼓励他们劫持西方人作人质，并通过这些网络发动袭击。在后来的几年里，伊朗通过支持那些凭借自身实力成为强大力量的非国家盟友，挑战了美国在该地区战争中的角色和对周边国家的干预，比如美国2001年对阿富汗的入侵和2003年对伊拉克的入侵。这加强了德黑兰在这场砝码不对称的博弈中的力量，提升了它可能从未想过要实现的地区影响力。苏莱曼尼则是这个战略背后的主要策划者。
Many consider him responsible for the deaths of thousands, for his intervention in salvaging Bashar al-Assad’s rule in Syria. But to many Iranians, Iraqis, Kurds and others, he was a pivotal figure in vanquishing the Islamic State, helping repel its rapid march across Iraq in 2014. In Syria, for the many Syrians who endured the industrial-scale brutality of the Assad regime, the general led what could only be understood as an offensive force. But Iran’s leaders always reminded their people that Syria, the lone Arab country that sided with Iran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, could not be abandoned, that without it, Iran would be vastly more vulnerable in the region.
由于苏莱曼尼为挽救叙利亚巴沙尔·阿萨德(Bashar al-Assad)的统治进行干涉，许多人认为他应为成千上万人的死亡负责。但对许多伊朗人、伊拉克人、库尔德人及其他人来说，他是击败伊斯兰国的关键人物，在2014年帮助击退了伊斯兰国在伊拉克的快速挺进。在叙利亚，对于许多忍受了阿萨德政权工业化规模暴行的叙利亚人来说，这位将军领导的是一支只能被理解为进攻性的力量。但伊朗领导人总是提醒他们的人民，不能放弃叙利亚这个在长达八年的两伊战争中唯一站在伊朗一边的阿拉伯国家，没有叙利亚，伊朗在该地区会变得脆弱得多。
It is for these maneuvers, in part to provide Iran some deterrence against relentless American hostility, that General Suleimani is remembered. He had become a patriarch for an ambivalent country adrift, forgiven, at least by the hundreds of thousands who turned out for his funeral, for the hard excesses of the force he commanded because he secured the land in a time of the Islamic State’s butchery, seen as a man of honor and merit among political contemporaries who were usually neither. (Of course, he certainly did not impress all Iranians in this way; he had detractors who did not support his regional stratagems.)
这些策略部分是为了给伊朗提供一些抵抗美国无情敌意的威慑，苏莱曼尼正是因为这些策略而被人铭记。他已成为一个充满矛盾、漫无目的的国家德高望重的长者，至少那些参加了他葬礼的几十万人宽恕了他指挥那支力量时过分强硬的做法，因为他在伊斯兰国滥杀无辜时保护了那片土地上的安全，他被视为同时代政客中有荣誉和功绩的人，而那些政客们通常两者全无。（当然，他肯定不是以这种方法让所有的伊朗人钦佩；他的批评者们并不支持他的地区战略。）
Iran’s leaders have rallied around his legacy; Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed “severe revenge” and assured that his killing would “double” resistance against the United States and Israel. Even the reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi, an octogenarian who is confined under permanent house arrest, issued condolences.
伊朗领导人已团结起来继承他的遗志；伊朗最高领袖最高领袖阿亚图拉阿里·哈梅内伊(Ayatollah Ali Khamenei)誓言要进行“严厉的报复”，并保证，杀死苏莱曼尼会让人“加倍”抵抗美国和以色列。甚至已被永久软禁的改革派教士、八十多岁的迈赫迪·卡鲁比(Mehdi Karroubi)也表示了哀悼。
Beyond this official show of unity, newspapers across the political spectrum darkened their front pages, and ran full-cover photos of General Suleimani in all his guises, from brassy military uniform to slick dark suit jacket, with even the most liberal-minded running lachrymose headlines like “the sorrow is inconceivable.”
除了官方展示的团结外，各个政治派别的报纸都在头版上用了深颜色，并用整版篇幅刊登穿着不同服装的苏莱曼尼将军的照片，从耀眼的军装到华丽的深色西装，就连最自由主义思想的报纸也用了如“难以想像的悲伤”这种哀恸的标题。
“What to do with a thorn lodged in the heart? Is this the fate of all the distinguished descendants of this land, regardless of thought and affiliation?” wrote Iran’s most prominent and oft-censored contemporary novelist, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, of the man he said “built a powerful dam against the bloodthirsty onslaught of ISIS and secured our borders from their calamity.”
“怎么对付插在心上的刺儿呢？这是这片土地上所有杰出后代的命运吗？不管他有什么思想、属于什么宗派？”伊朗最著名的、经常遭审查的当代小说家马哈茂德·道拉塔巴蒂(Mahmoud Dowlatabadi)写道，苏莱曼尼“修建了一座抵御ISIS血腥攻击的强有力大坝，确保了我们的边境免遭灾难”。
Iranians have turned out to mourn him on an extraordinary scale, in scenes unmatched since the funeral of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini himself in 1989. A sea of people fills Isfahan’s 17th Century central square, the seat of Persian history, and pours across the bridges and streets of Ahvaz, men and women from all backgrounds of Iranian society.
伊朗人以空前的规模出来哀悼他，这种场景自1989年阿亚图拉鲁霍拉·霍梅尼(Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini)本人的葬礼以来还未有过。伊斯法罕17世纪的中心广场是波斯历史的所在地，这里人山人海，阿瓦士的桥和街道上人流不断，哀悼者是来自伊朗社会各个背景的男人和女人。
The mourning for the general, it could be said, is Iran’s first act of retaliation: what amounts to an extraordinary four-day state funeral in not one but two countries. The cavalcade has twinned two nations in shared public grief and indignation, as the procession moved deliberately across a crescent of Shiite historical memory. First came the cities of the Iraqi south that Saddam Hussein kept cowed and squalid, the holy shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, through to the Iranian province of Khuzestan, which saw the bloodiest fighting of the Iran-Iraq war, an indigenously Arab region where mourning congregations chant in Arabic, and whose inclusion in this spectacle of transnational identity and power has clear unifying purpose.
可以说，为这位将军的哀悼是伊朗的首个报复行动：这是在两个而非一个国家举行的为期四天、非同寻常的国葬。随着哀悼的队伍沿着什叶派历史记忆的弧线缓缓而行，哀悼活动已经将两个国家用共同的公开悲痛和愤怒凝结起来。先是在遭到萨达姆·侯赛因压制和不让发展的伊拉克南部圣地城市纳杰夫和卡尔巴拉，然后是在两伊战争中经历了最血腥战斗的伊朗胡齐斯坦省，这是一个阿拉伯原住民居住的地区，哀悼的人群用阿拉伯语吟咏，他们被纳入这场跨国家认同和政权的壮观场面中，是有着明确统一意图的。
Nearly 40 years ago, General Suleimani began his career in the trenches of the Iran-Iraq War, the formative drama of the Islamic Republic, where heroism was applauded by most Iranians who felt their country was the victim of external attack and isolation. Today’s Iranians, who will most suffer whatever fallout there is from his death, remain economically blockaded, in a suspended state of siege in all but name. Their country remains, by the design of American policy, sanctioned and cash-strapped, their horizons and potential extinguished by visa bans, medicine shortages and inflation. Pinned between a system that increasingly feels it has little to lose, and the all-out vengeance of a zero-plan United States, Iran has endured what feels like a war economy for decades.
将近40年前，苏莱曼尼在两伊战争的战壕中开始了他的职业生涯，这是一场对伊朗伊斯兰共和国有持续重大影响的战争，这场战争中表现出的英雄主义受到大多数伊朗人的赞扬，他们觉得自己的国家是外部攻击和孤立的受害者。今天的伊朗人仍在经济上被封锁，处于一种实际存在但未得到正式认可的被围困的未决状态，无论苏莱曼尼的死亡会带来什么后果，他们都将是承受这些后果的最大受害者。他们的国家，按照美国政策的设计，仍受到制裁并缺少资金，他们的眼界和潜力被签证禁令、药品短缺和通货膨胀毁灭。被夹在一个越来越不考虑得失的体制和一个全力复仇的零计划的美国之间，伊朗已经忍受了几十年让人觉得是战争经济的状态。
I remember as a child, during the years of war with Iraq, my mother telling me about relatives in Iran who gave away their jewelry to aid the war effort. This time, in the face of President Trump’s tweets threatening to attack Iran and destroy its sites of cultural heritage, I needn’t conjure the unity that comes the day after. The country has gathered to mourn. It is already here.
我记得小时候，那还是两伊战争期间，母亲告诉我，一些伊朗的亲戚为了帮助战争，捐出了他们的珠宝。这一次，在特朗普总统威胁要打击伊朗并摧毁其文化遗产地点的推文面前，我不必去幻想打击发生的后一天出现的团结。这个国家已为哀悼聚在一起。它已经团结起来了。