PBS高端访谈:阿富汗妇女采用古诗歌讲述现代生活

 　　JEFFREY BROWN:And finally tonight, we end where we began, with Afghanistan, but this time through a very different lens, one of language and culture.

　　For many Americans, Afghanistan is a country shrouded² in mystery, particularly its women, literally³ shrouded under a burka, silent and seemingly impenetrable.

　　ELIZA GRISWOLD, Journalist: As a Westerner, I would look for years at these blue burkas, thinking, those women beneath are chattel⁴. They have nothing to say, because they're not—I don't hear them saying anything.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Journalist Eliza Griswold has reported from Afghanistan for the last 10 years. She wanted to get beyond the headlines, and especially to understand the lives of rural women, mostly illiterate⁵ Pashtuns living along the border areas with Pakistan, amid the daily realities of war.

　　Her way in was through short poems called landays, each just two lines long, with 22 syllables⁶.

　　WOMAN:"Separation, you set fire in the heart and home of every lover."

　　ELIZA GRISWOLD:This is rural folk poetry. This is poetry that's meant to be oral. It's passed mouth to mouth, ear to ear. And the women have recited these poems for centuries.

　　So they have gone from talking about the riverbank, which is the place you gather water and, of course, the place men go to spy on the women they have crushes on, to Facebook, to the Internet. And so they really reflect the currents that women in Afghanistan are encountering today.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:A poet herself, Griswold collaborated⁷ with photographer and filmmaker Seamus Murphy. Poetry magazine is devoting its entire June issue to their work.

　　And as part of the project, Murphy has made a short documentary featuring the landays.

　　WOMAN:"I could have tasted death for a taste of your tongue, watching you eat ice cream when we were young."

　　JEFFREY BROWN:As with poetry everywhere, one theme is love. But there's a whole lot more.

　　WOMAN:Slide your hand into my bra. Stroke a red and ripening⁸ pomegranate of Kandahar.

　　ELIZA GRISWOLD:Pull that burka back, and she will talk to you about the size of her husband's manhood. She will go right for it: sex, raunch, kissing, rage. She will talk about the rage of what it is to be cast in this role of subservient⁹, in a way that's really startling.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:The rage Griswold speaks of is another theme, aimed at the unequal and often harsh treatment of women.

　　WOMAN:"When sisters sit together, they always praise their brothers. When brothers sit together, they sell their sisters to others."

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Griswold says landays are a way to subvert¹⁰ a social code in which many rural women are prohibited from speaking freely.

　　ELIZA GRISWOLD:They're a way to be very outspoken¹¹, but not to own the authorship of that statement, because, being collective and anonymous¹², a woman can say this and she can say, well, of course, I just heard that on the phone, or I just heard that in the market. I didn't make that up.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:That's in a society where they are otherwise not allowed to speak, not allowed to write poems.

　　ELIZA GRISWOLD:At all.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:With real danger, dangerous consequences.

　　ELIZA GRISWOLD:Exactly.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:In fact, this project began after Griswold wrote a magazine article on a young woman who'd been beaten for writing poems, and later killed herself.

　　Given stories like that, it was also tricky¹³ to collect the landays.

　　ELIZA GRISWOLD:Frequently, to meet these women, I had to be undercover to some extent. I had to wear a burka of their request. "Please come dressed as one of us. We will gather on Saturday afternoon. Our husbands will be out."

　　We started in refugee camps around Kabul, and we would hit situations like—first of all, Seamus and I were never able to work together, because it is impossible for him as a man to witness women singing or saying these landays.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:They just won't do it?

　　ELIZA GRISWOLD:They would be killed to be found out to do it.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Another major theme of the landays is the pain and sorrow of war.

　　WOMAN:"In battle, there should be two brothers, one to be martyred, one to wind the shroud¹ of the other."

　　ELIZA GRISWOLD:There's a lot of anger at the Taliban, a lot of rage at the hypocrisy¹⁴ of the Taliban, and an equal amount, if not more, rage at the hypocrisy of the Americans and what their influence has left behind.

　　Many of the women who were sharing them with us were survivors¹⁵ of very recent bombing attacks. One woman had shared a landay about her cousin, a Talib who'd just been killed by a drone strike.

　　WOMAN:"The drones have come to the Afghan sky. The mouths of our rockets will sound in reply."

　　JEFFREY BROWN:The mention of drones is also an example of how landays respond to changes in society. Verses that once mentioned the British now substitute Americans. And today, landays are shared on the Internet and in social media, and those new technologies make their way into the updated verses.

　　WOMAN:"How much simpler can love be? Let's get engaged now. Text me."

　　JEFFREY BROWN:What happens to this form in the future? What—is it your sense that it might die off because of changes in the country? Or does it have a life?

　　ELIZA GRISWOLD:So, I asked one of the leading novelists in Afghanistan, a guy named Mustafa Salek, what he thought. What will happen to the landay now they talk about the Internet, Facebook, drones? It will kill them. And he said just the opposite. They're being traded and they are changing, right, being remixed like rap is, at a rapid speed, and people love them.

　　The landay is supposed to communicate in the most natural language the truth of Afghan life. So, I found my assumptions about the death of the landay being absolutely confounded by what Afghans said themselves.

　　JEFFREY BROWN:Just another assumption confounded in this rare look behind the veil.

　　And, for the record, Poetry magazine, which is featuring the landays this month, is produced by the Poetry Foundation, which helps support our coverage¹⁶.

　　And there's more on all of this online, where photographer Seamus Murphy narrates¹⁷ a slide show of his images for the project.

1 shroud   

n.裹尸布，寿衣；罩，幕；vt.覆盖，隐藏

参考例句：

• His past was enveloped in a shroud of mystery.他的过去被裹上一层神秘色彩。
• How can I do under shroud of a dark sky?在黑暗的天空的笼罩下，我该怎么做呢？

2 shrouded   

v.隐瞒( shroud的过去式和过去分词 )；保密

参考例句：

• The hills were shrouded in mist . 这些小山被笼罩在薄雾之中。
• The towers were shrouded in mist. 城楼被蒙上薄雾。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

4 chattel   

n.动产；奴隶

参考例句：

• They were slaves,to be bought and sold as chattels.他们是奴隶，将被作为财产买卖。
• A house is not a chattel.房子不是动产。

5 illiterate   

adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲

参考例句：

• There are still many illiterate people in our country.在我国还有许多文盲。
• I was an illiterate in the old society,but now I can read.我这个旧社会的文盲，今天也认字了。

6 syllables   

n.音节( syllable的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a word with two syllables 双音节单词
• 'No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables.' “想不起。不过我可以发誓，它有两个音节。” 来自英汉文学 - 双城记

7 collaborated   

合作( collaborate的过去式和过去分词 )； 勾结叛国

参考例句：

• We have collaborated on many projects over the years. 这些年来我们合作搞了许多项目。
• We have collaborated closely with the university on this project. 我们与大学在这个专案上紧密合作。

8 ripening   

v.成熟，使熟( ripen的现在分词 )；熟化；熟成

参考例句：

• The corn is blossoming [ripening]. 玉米正在开花[成熟]。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• When the summer crop is ripening, the autumn crop has to be sowed. 夏季作物成熟时，就得播种秋季作物。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 subservient   

adj.卑屈的，阿谀的

参考例句：

• He was subservient and servile.他低声下气、卑躬屈膝。
• It was horrible to have to be affable and subservient.不得不强作欢颜卖弄风骚，真是太可怕了。

10 subvert   

v.推翻；暗中破坏；搅乱

参考例句：

• The rebel army is attempting to subvert the government.反叛军队企图颠覆政府统治。
• They tried to subvert our state and our Party. This is the crux of the matter.他们是要颠覆我们的国家，颠覆我们的党，这是问题的实质。

11 outspoken   

adj.直言无讳的，坦率的，坦白无隐的

参考例句：

• He was outspoken in his criticism.他在批评中直言不讳。
• She is an outspoken critic of the school system in this city.她是这座城市里学校制度的坦率的批评者。

12 anonymous   

adj.无名的；匿名的；无特色的

参考例句：

• Sending anonymous letters is a cowardly act.寄匿名信是懦夫的行为。
• The author wishes to remain anonymous.作者希望姓名不公开。

13 tricky   

adj.狡猾的，奸诈的；(工作等)棘手的，微妙的

参考例句：

• I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手，你能帮我吗？
• He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题，只做了个笼统的表述。

14 hypocrisy   

n.伪善，虚伪

参考例句：

• He railed against hypocrisy and greed.他痛斥伪善和贪婪的行为。
• He accused newspapers of hypocrisy in their treatment of the story.他指责了报纸在报道该新闻时的虚伪。

15 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者

16 coverage   

n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖

参考例句：

• There's little coverage of foreign news in the newspaper.报纸上几乎没有国外新闻报道。
• This is an insurance policy with extensive coverage.这是一项承保范围广泛的保险。

17 narrates   

v.故事( narrate的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• It narrates the unconstitutional acts of James II. 它历数了詹姆斯二世的违法行为。 来自辞典例句
• Chapter three narrates the economy activity which Jew return the Occident. 第三章讲述了犹太人重返西欧后的经济活动。 来自互联网