FOUR

In 1933, the year Baba was born and the year Zahir Shah began his forty-year reign of Afghanistan, two brothers, young men from a wealthy and reputable family in Kabul, got behind the wheel of their father’s Ford roadster. High on hashish and mast on French wine, they struck and killed a Hazara husband and wife on the road to Paghman. The police brought the somewhat contrite young men and the dead couple’s five-year-old orphan boy before my grandfather, who was a highly regarded judge and a man of impeccable reputation. After hearing the brothers’ account and their father’s plea for mercy, my grandfather ordered the two young men to go to Kandahar at once and enlist in the army for one year—this despite the fact that their family had somehow managed to obtain them exemptions from the draft. Their father argued, but not too vehemently, and in the end, everyone agreed that the punishment had been perhaps harsh but fair. As for the orphan, my grandfather adopted him into his own household, and told the other servants to tutor him, but to be kind to him. That boy was Ali.

父母被人所害，Ali成了孤儿，最后被好心的爷爷给收养了。

Zahir Shah n. 查希尔·沙阿（Mohammed，1914—2007，阿富汗前国王，1932—1973在位）

behind the wheel v. 掌管， 控制

roadster n. 跑车，敞篷车

hashish n.以印度大麻提炼的麻药

Paghman 地名，帕格曼，位于阿富汗首都喀布尔的郊区

contrite adj. 悔悟的，由悔悟引发的

impeccable adj. 无缺点的，无瑕疵的;不会做坏事的

Kandahar 地名，阿富汗第二大城市

vehemently adv. 激烈地;强烈地;暴烈地;热烈地

Ali and Baba grew up together as childhood playmates—at least until polio crippled Ali’s leg—just like Hassan and I grew up a generation later. Baba was always telling us about the mischief he and Ali used to cause, and Ali would shake his head and say, “But, Agha sahib, tell them who was the architect of the mischief and who the poor laborer?” Baba would laugh and throw his arm around Ali.

But in none of his stories did Baba ever refer to Ali as his friend.

爸爸和Ali一起长大，一起玩耍，却不曾拿Ali当朋友。

Agha sahib 【尊称】老爷

The curious thing was, I never thought of Hassan and me as friends either. Not in the usual sense, anyhow. Never mind that we taught each other to ride a bicycle with no hands, or to build a fully functional homemade camera out of a cardboard box. Never mind that we spent entire winters flying kites, running kites. Never mind that to me, the face of Afghanistan is that of a boy with a thin-boned frame, a shaved head, and low-set ears, a boy with a Chinese doll face perpetually lit by a harelipped smile.

Never mind any of those things. Because history isn’t easy to overcome. Neither is religion. In the end, I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, I was Sunni and he was Shi’a, and nothing was ever going to change that. Nothing.

我也没把Hassan当作朋友，终归还是主仆有别，种族有别，宗教有别。

perpetually adj. 不断地;永恒地;终身地

But we were kids who had learned to crawl together, and no history, ethnicity, society, or religion was going to change that either. I spent most of the first twelve years of my life playing with Hassan. Sometimes, my entire childhood seems like one long lazy summer day with Hassan, chasing each other between tangles of trees in my father’s yard, playing hide-and-seek, cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, insect torture—with our crowning achievement undeniably the time we plucked the stinger off a bee and tied a string around the poor thing to yank it back every time it took flight.

前12年，年少的我们形影不离。

tangle n. 纠缠，纠纷;混乱，慌乱;昏乱的状态;争论

crowning adj. 至高无上;最高的，无比的

pluck v. 拔掉;采，摘;鼓起（勇气等）;弹（乐器）

stinger n. 螫针;刺激者，讽刺者;蜇针

yank v. 快而有力地拉，急拉;[俚语] 突然地移动

We chased the Kochi, the nomads who passed through Kabul on their way to the mountains of the north. We would hear their caravans approaching our neighborhood, the mewling of their sheep, the baaing of their goats, the jingle of bells around their camels’ necks. We’d run outside to watch the caravan plod through our street, men with dusty, weather-beaten faces and women dressed in long, colorful shawls, beads, and silver bracelets around their wrists and ankles. We hurled pebbles at their goats. We squirted water on their mules. I’d make Hassan sit on the Wall of Ailing Corn and fire pebbles with his slingshot at the camels’ rears.

我们常对路过的商旅队伍搞恶作剧，我出鬼点子，哈桑出力。

Kochi is one of the major port cities located on the West Indian coastal areas.

caravans n. 篷车;（可供居住的）拖车（通常由机动车拖行）( caravan的名词复数 );（穿过沙漠地带的）旅行队（如商队）

mewling v. 啜泣( mewl的现在分词 )

plod v. 沉重缓慢地行走;孜孜不倦，勤苦地工作

shawl n. 围巾，披肩

pebble n. 卵石;水晶;水晶透镜;卵石花纹 

squirt v. 注射;喷射，喷湿 

We saw our first Western together, Rio Bravo with John Wayne, at the Cinema Park, across the street from my favorite bookstore. I remember begging Baba to take us to Iran so we could meet John Wayne. Baba burst out in gales of his deep-throated laughter—a sound not unlike a truck engine revving up—and, when he could talk again, explained to us the concept of voice dubbing. Hassan and I were stunned. Dazed. John Wayne didn’t really speak Farsi and he wasn’t Iranian! He was American, just like the friendly, longhaired men and women we always saw hanging around in Kabul, dressed in their tattered, brightly colored shirts. We saw Rio Bravo three times, but we saw our favorite Western, The Magnificent Seven, thirteen times. With each viewing, we cried at the end when the Mexican kids buried Charles Bronson—who, as it turned out, wasn’t Iranian either.

我和哈桑一起看了第一部西方电影，真是大开眼界。

gales n. 大风( gale的名词复数 );（突发的）一阵

voice dubbing n. 配音

tattered adj. 破烂的，衣衫褴褛的

We took strolls in the musty-smelling bazaars of the Shar-e-Nau section of Kabul, or the new city, west of the Wazir Akbar Khan district. We talked about whatever film we had just seen and walked amid the bustling crowds of bazarris. We snaked our way among the merchants and the beggars, wandered through narrow alleys cramped with rows of tiny, tightly packed stalls. Baba gave us each a weekly allowance of ten Afghanis and we spent it on warm Coca-Cola and rosewater ice cream topped with crushed pistachios.

看完电影，我们到集市闲逛。

stalls n. 货摊;托辞;畜栏;（房间内的）小隔间

pistachios n. 开心果， 阿月浑子树，阿月浑子果实，淡黄绿色( pistachio的名词复数 )

During the school year, we had a daily routine. By the time I dragged myself out of bed and lumbered to the bathroom, Hassan had already washed up, prayed the morning namaz with Ali, and prepared my breakfast: hot black tea with three sugar cubes and a slice of toasted naan topped with my favorite sour cherry marmalade, all neatly placed on the dining table. While I ate and complained about homework, Hassan made my bed, polished my shoes, ironed my outfit for the day, packed my books and pencils. I’d hear him singing to himself in the foyer as he ironed, singing old Hazara songs in his nasal voice. Then, Baba and I drove off in his black Ford Mustang—a car that drew envious looks everywhere because it was the same car Steve McQueen had driven in Bullitt, a film that played in one theater for six months. Hassan stayed home and helped Ali with the day’s chores: hand-washing dirty clothes and hanging them to dry in the yard, sweeping the floors, buying fresh naan from the bazaar, marinating meat for dinner, watering the lawn.

上学时，哈桑是我仆人，照顾我的生活起居。

marmalade n. 果子酱，果酱

foyer n. 休息室;（戏院或旅馆的）门厅，前厅

nasal n. 鼻的;鼻音的

marinating v. 海水腌制

After school, Hassan and I met up, grabbed a book, and trotted up a bowl-shaped hill just north of my father’s property in Wazir Akbar Khan. There was an old abandoned cemetery atop the hill with rows of unmarked headstones and tangles of brushwood clogging the aisles. Seasons of rain and snow had turned the iron gate rusty and left the cemetery’s low white stone walls in decay. There was a pomegranate tree near the entrance to the cemetery. One summer day, I used one of Ali’s kitchen knives to carve our names on it: “Amir and Hassan, the sultans of Kabul.” Those words made it formal: the tree was ours. After school, Hassan and I climbed its branches and snatched its bloodred pomegranates. After we’d eaten the fruit and wiped our hands on the grass, I would read to Hassan.

放学后，我和哈桑碰头，爬石榴树吃石榴。

pomegranate n. 石榴;石榴树

sultan n.  苏丹;巨头，强人

Sitting cross-legged, sunlight and shadows of pomegranate leaves dancing on his face, Hassan absently plucked blades of grass from the ground as I read him stories he couldn’t read for himself. That Hassan would grow up illiterate like Ali and most Hazaras had been decided the minute he had been born, perhaps even the moment he had been conceived in Sanaubar’s unwelcoming womb—after all, what use did a servant have for the written word? But despite his illiteracy, or maybe because of it, Hassan was drawn to the mystery of words, seduced by a secret world forbidden to him. I read him poems and stories, sometimes riddles—though I stopped reading those when I saw he was far better at solving them than I was. So I read him unchallenging things, like the misadventures of the bumbling Mullah Nasruddin and his donkey. We sat for hours under that tree, sat there until the sun faded in the west, and still Hassan insisted we had enough daylight for one more story, one more chapter.

树下，我读书给哈桑听。哈桑求知若渴，比我还聪明，我只挑些没劲的读给他听。

riddles n. 谜（语）( riddle的名词复数 );猜不透的难题，难解之谜

bumbling  adj. 装模作样的

My favorite part of reading to Hassan was when we came across a big word that he didn’t know. I’d tease him, expose his ignorance. One time, I was reading him a Mullah Nasruddin story and he stopped me. “What does that word mean?”

“Which one?”

“‘Imbecile.’”

“You don’t know what it means?” I said, grinning.

“Nay, Amir agha.”

“But it’s such a common word!”

“Still, I don’t know it.” If he felt the sting of my tease, his smiling face didn’t show it.

“Well, everyone in my school knows what it means,” I said. “Let’s see. ‘Imbecile.’ It means smart, intelligent. I’ll use it in a sentence for you. ‘When it comes to words, Hassan is an imbecile.’ ”

“Aaah,” he said, nodding.

I would always feel guilty about it later. So I’d try to make up for it by giving him one of my old shirts or a broken toy. I would tell myself that was amends enough for a harmless prank.

捉弄哈桑的无知是我的乐趣所在，事后也会有点后悔，给点补偿打发了事。

Imbecile n. 低能者，傻瓜

Hassan’s favorite book by far was the Shahnamah, the tenth-century epic of ancient Persian heroes. He liked all of the chapters, the shahs of old, Feridoun, Zal, and Rudabeh. But his favorite story, and mine, was “Rostam and Sohrab,” the tale of the great warrior Rostam and his fleet-footed horse, Rakhsh. Rostam mortally wounds his valiant nemesis, Sohrab, in battle, only to discover that Sohrab is his long-lost son. Stricken with grief, Rostam hears his son’s dying words:

哈桑最爱的故事，是一个父亲手刃儿子的悲剧。

Shahnamah 波斯语，书名，The Book of Kings，波斯诗人写的伊朗史诗。

Rostam and Sohrab，一个悲剧故事，未曾谋面的亲生父子在战场上兵戎相见，父亲杀死了儿子之后，才发现儿子带的护身符正是他多年前留给孩子母亲的。

nemesis n. 报应;公正的惩罚;天罚;不可逃避的惩罚

If thou art indeed my father, then hast thou stained thy sword in the life-blood of thy son. And thou didst it of thine obstinacy. For I sought to turn thee unto love, and I implored of thee thy name, for I thought to behold in thee the tokens recounted of my mother. But I appealed unto thy heart in vain, and now is the time gone for meeting . . .（假如你的确是我父亲，那你的剑上沾染的，就是你儿子的鲜血。你的固执让你下了手。我多么渴望唤醒你的爱，我恳求你的名字，我以为带着你的护身符，会让你念起妈妈。但是，想让你心软竟是徒劳，我该走了，去见。。。）

儿子临终的话令人动容。

thou （古）你

thou art 即 you are,对一人讲话时用

hast （古）have的第二人称单数现在式

thy （旧式用法）你的

thou didst <古>（与thou一起使用），do的第二人称单数过去式

thine obstinacy 你的固执

“Read it again please, Amir agha,” Hassan would say. Sometimes tears pooled in Hassan’s eyes as I read him this passage, and I always wondered whom he wept for, the grief-stricken Rostam who tears his clothes and covers his head with ashes, or the dying Sohrab who only longed for his father’s love? Personally, I couldn’t see the tragedy in Rostam’s fate. After all, didn’t all fathers in their secret hearts harbor a desire to kill their sons?

每每听到这段，哈桑就会热泪盈眶，我不理解，他的泪为谁而流。

One day, in July 1973, I played another little trick on Hassan. I was reading to him, and suddenly I strayed from the written story. I pretended I was reading from the book, flipping pages regularly, but I had abandoned the text altogether, taken over the story, and made up my own. Hassan, of course, was oblivious to this. To him, the words on the page were a scramble of codes, indecipherable, mysterious. Words were secret doorways and I held all the keys. After, I started to ask him if he’d liked the story, a giggle rising in my throat, when Hassan began to clap.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“That was the best story you’ve read me in a long time,” he said, still clapping.

I laughed. “Really?”

“Really.”

“That’s fascinating,” I muttered. I meant it too. This was . . . wholly unexpected. “Are you sure, Hassan?”

He was still clapping. “It was great, Amir agha. Will you read me more of it tomorrow?”

“Fascinating,” I repeated, a little breathless, feeling like a man who discovers a buried treasure in his own backyard. Walking down the hill, thoughts were exploding in my head like the fireworks at Chaman. Best story you’ve read me in a long time, he’d said. I had read him a lot of stories. Hassan was asking me something.

“What?” I said.

“What does that mean, ‘fascinating’?”

I laughed. Clutched him in a hug and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“What was that for?” he said, startled, blushing.

I gave him a friendly shove. Smiled. “You’re a prince, Hassan. You’re a prince and I love you.”

有一次，我变着法儿地捉弄哈桑，装作读书却胡编乱造，他却很喜欢。误打误撞，我发现了自己的写作天赋。

oblivious adj.健忘的;忘却的;不注意的;不知道的

startle v. 使震惊，使大吃一惊;使惊跳，使惊吓

That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife’s slain body in his arms.

那天晚上，我写下了生平的第一个故事。

slain v. 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 );(slay的过去分词)

That evening, I climbed the stairs and walked into Baba’s smoking room, in my hands the two sheets of paper on which I had scribbled the story. Baba and Rahim Khan were smoking pipes and sipping brandy when I came in.

“What is it, Amir?” Baba said, reclining on the sofa and lacing his hands behind his head. Blue smoke swirled around his face. His glare made my throat feel dry. I cleared it and told him I’d written a story.

Baba nodded and gave a thin smile that conveyed little more than feigned interest. “Well, that’s very good, isn’t it?” he said. Then nothing more. He just looked at me through the cloud of smoke.

I probably stood there for under a minute, but, to this day, it was one of the longest minutes of my life. Seconds plodded by, each separated from the next by an eternity. Air grew heavy, damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks. Baba went on staring me down, and didn’t offer to read.

我把故事拿给爸爸看，他却不想看。

feigned v. 假装，伪装( feign的过去式和过去分词 );捏造（借口、理由等）

plodded v. 沉重缓慢地走（路）( plod的过去式和过去分词 );

As always, it was Rahim Khan who rescued me. He held out his hand and favored me with a smile that had nothing feigned about it. “May I have it, Amir jan? I would very much like to read it.” Baba hardly ever used the term of endearment jan when he addressed me.

Baba shrugged and stood up. He looked relieved, as if he too had been rescued by Rahim Khan. “Yes, give it to Kaka Rahim. I’m going upstairs to get ready.” And with that, he left the room. Most days I worshiped Baba with an intensity approaching the religious. But right then, I wished I could open my veins and drain his cursed blood from my body.

又是Rahim叔叔出来打了圆场。我真希望我不是爸爸的儿子。

endearment n. 表示爱慕的话语，亲热的表示

An hour later, as the evening sky dimmed, the two of them drove off in my father’s car to attend a party. On his way out, Rahim Khan hunkered before me and handed me my story and another folded piece of paper. He flashed a smile and winked. “For you. Read it later.” Then he paused and added a single word that did more to encourage me to pursue writing than any compliment any editor has ever paid me. That word was Bravo.

Rahim叔叔写给我一些东西，还夸我很棒。

hunker v. 盘坐

When they left, I sat on my bed and wished Rahim Khan had been my father. Then I thought of Baba and his great big chest and how good it felt when he held me against it, how he smelled of Brut in the morning, and how his beard tickled my face. I was overcome with such sudden guilt that I bolted to the bathroom and vomited in the sink.

我真希望Rahim叔叔是我父亲，唉，内疚到吐。

tickled v. （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 );（使）愉快，逗乐

Later that night, curled up in bed, I read Rahim Khan’s note over and over. It read like this:

Amir jan,

I enjoyed your story very much. Mashallah, God has granted you a special talent. It is now your duty to hone that talent, because a person who wastes his God-given talents is a donkey. You have written your story with sound grammar and interesting style. But the most impressive thing about your story is that it has irony. You may not even know what that word means. But you will someday. It is something that some writers reach for their entire careers and never attain. You have achieved it with your first story. My door is and always will be open to you, Amir jan. I shall hear any story you have to tell. Bravo. 

Your friend, Rahim

Rahim在信中夸我写得好，会运用“讽刺”手法。

hone v. 用磨刀石磨;磨孔放大

irony n. 反语; 讽刺，冷嘲; 具有讽刺意味的事; [语] 反语法;

Buoyed by Rahim Khan’s note, I grabbed the story and hurried downstairs to the foyer where Ali and Hassan were sleeping on a mattress. That was the only time they slept in the house, when Baba was away and Ali had to watch over me. I shook Hassan awake and asked him if he wanted to hear a story.

He rubbed his sleep-clogged eyes and stretched. “Now? What time is it?”

“Never mind the time. This story’s special. I wrote it myself,” I whispered, hoping not to wake Ali. Hassan’s face brightened.

“Then I have to hear it,” he said, already pulling the blanket off him.

被夸的心花怒放，我跑去叫醒睡梦中的哈桑，要把故事念给他听。

buoyed 支持;使浮起( buoy的过去式和过去分词 );为…设浮标;振奋…的精神

foyer n. 休息室;（戏院或旅馆的）门厅，前厅

I read it to him in the living room by the marble fireplace. No playful straying from the words this time; this was about me! Has-san was the perfect audience in many ways, totally immersed in the tale, his face shifting with the changing tones in the story. When I read the last sentence, he made a muted clapping sound with his hands.

“Mashallah, Amir agha. Bravo!” He was beaming.

“You liked it?” I said, getting my second taste—and how sweet it was—of a positive review.

“Some day, Inshallah, you will be a great writer,” Hassan said. “And people all over the world will read your stories.”

“You exaggerate, Hassan,” I said, loving him for it. 

我认真念完故事，哈桑对我赞不绝口。

“No. You will be great and famous,” he insisted. Then he paused, as if on the verge of adding something. He weighed his words and cleared his throat. “But will you permit me to ask a question about the story?” he said shyly.

“Of course.”

“Well . . .” he started, broke off.

“Tell me, Hassan,” I said. I smiled, though suddenly the insecure writer in me wasn’t so sure he wanted to hear it.

“Well,” he said, “if I may ask, why did the man kill his wife? In fact, why did he ever have to feel sad to shed tears? Couldn’t he have just smelled an onion?”

哈桑问我，为什么那个男人非得杀死自己的老婆？

verge n. 边，边缘;界限;范围;起始点

I was stunned. That particular point, so obvious it was utterly stupid, hadn’t even occurred to me. I moved my lips soundlessly. It appeared that on the same night I had learned about one of writing’s objectives, irony, I would also be introduced to one of its pitfalls: the Plot Hole. Taught by Hassan, of all people. Hassan who couldn’t read and had never written a single word in his entire life. A voice, cold and dark, suddenly whispered in my ear, What does he know, that illiterate Hazara? He’ll never be anything but a cook. How dare he criticize you?

“Well,” I began. But I never got to finish that sentence.

Because suddenly Afghanistan changed forever.

我竟无言以对。连我都没有想到的漏洞，他却想到了？

utterly adv.十分;全然，完全地;彻底地，绝对的;十足地