When I was growing up in Magdaluna, a small Lebanese village in the terraced /ˈterəst/ 階地的；有平臺的, rocky mountains east of Sidon, time didn't mean much to anybody, except maybe to those who were dying. In those days, there was no real need for a calendar or a watch to keep track of 記錄；與…保持聯繫 the hours, days, months, and years. We knew what to do and when to do it, just as the Iraqi geese knew when to fly north, driven by the hot wind that blew in from the desert. The only timepiece /ˈtaɪmpiːs/ 鍾等各種計時器 we had need of then was the sun. It rose and set, and the seasons rolled by and we sowed /soʊ/ 播種 seed and harvested and ate and played and married our cousins and had babies who got whooping /ˈwuːpɪŋ;/ 發咳嗽聲的 cough and chickenpox /ˈtʃɪkɪnpɑːks/ [內科] 水痘—and those children who survived grew up and married their cousins and had babies who got whooping cough and chickenpox. We lived and loved and toiled /tɔɪl/ 苦幹，辛勤勞動 and died without ever needing to know what year it was, or even the time of day.我在馬格達路納長大，那是位於西頓東部梯田環繞的多石山區的一個黎巴嫩小村莊。時間對於任何人來說都是無關緊要的，也許那些垂死的人除外。那時，人們實在不需要用日曆或者手錶來計時、計日、計月、計年。我們知道什麼時候該做什麼事情,就像伊拉克大雁根據沙漠裡刮來的熱風就知道什麼時候該飛往北方樣。那時我們唯一需要的計時器就是太陽。日升日落,季節更替,我們播種、收穫、吃飯、玩耍、與我們的表兄弟姐妹結婚生子。孩子患上了百日咳和水痘一那些存活 下來的孩子們長大後又與他們的表兄弟姐妹結婚生子,他們的孩子又患上了百日咳和水痘。我們生活、相愛、辛勤勞作直至死去,從不需要知道這些事發生在哪一年,甚至是哪一天的幾點鐘。
It wasn't that we had no system for keeping track of time and of the important events in our lives. But ours was a natural or, rather, a divine /dɪˈvaɪn/ 天賜的—calendar, because it was framed by acts of God: earthquakes and droughts and floods and locusts /ˈloʊkəst/ [植保] 蝗蟲 and pestilences /ˈpestɪləns/瘟疫. Simple as our calendar was, it worked just fine for us.
這並不是說我們沒有一套記錄時間和我們生活中重要事件的方法。只不過我們所用的方法是一種自然的，或者更確切地說,是一種神授的—日曆,因為它是根據上帝的行為來制定的：地震、旱災、水災、蝗災和瘟疫。雖然我們的日曆很簡單，但對於我們來說它已經足夠了。
Take, for example, the birth date of Teta Im Khalil, the oldest woman in Magdaluna and all the surrounding villages. When I asked Grandma, "How old is Teta Im Khalil?"
就拿泰塔·伊姆·哈利勒的生日為例吧，她是馬格達路納以及周圍所有村莊中最年長的婦女。我問祖母:「泰塔·伊姆·哈利勒多大年紀了?」
Grandma had to think for a moment; then she said, "I've been told that Teta was born shortly after the big snow that caused the roof on the mayor's house to cave in."
祖母不得不想一會兒;然後她說:「人們說泰塔是在大雪後不久出生的,那場大雪把市長家的屋頂都壓塌了。」
"And when was that?" I asked.
「那又是什麼時候呢?」我問。
"Oh, about the time we had the big earthquake that cracked the wall in the east room."
「哦,大約是大地震發生的時候吧,那場大地震把東屋的牆都震裂了。」
Well, that was enough for me. You couldn't be more accurate than that, now, could you?
嗯,對我來說那已經足夠了。現在，你不能回答得比那更精確了,不是嗎?
And that's the way it was in our little village for as far back as anybody could remember. One of the most unusual of the dates was when a whirlwind /ˈwɜːrlwɪnd/ 旋風 struck during which fish and oranges fell from the sky. Incredible as it may sound, the story of the fish and oranges was true, because men who would not lie even to save their own souls told and retold that story until it was incorporated /ɪnˈkɔːrpəreɪt/ 把……合併 into Magdaluna's calendar.
這就是我們小村莊的人能夠記住曾發生過的事情的方法。其中一個最不同尋常的日子就是在一次大旋風襲擊的時候,魚和柑橘從天而降。雖然這聽起來可能讓人難以相信,不過天上掉魚和柑橘的故事是真的,因為是即便為了拯救自己的靈魂也不願撒謊的人們一遍又一遍地複述這個故事,直到它成為馬格達路納日曆的一部分。
The year of the fish-bearing whirlpool was not the last remarkable /rɪˈmɑːrkəbl/ 卓越的；非凡的 year. Many others followed in which strange and wonderful things happened. There was, for instance例如, the year of the drought, when the heavens were shut for months and the spring from which the entire village got its drinking water slowed to a trickle. The spring was about a mile from the village, in a ravine /rəˈviːn/ 山澗；峽谷 that opened at one end into a small, flat clearing covered with fine gray dust and hard, marble-sized彈珠大小的 goat droppings. In the year of the drought, that little clearing was always packed full of noisy kids with big brown eyes and sticky hands, and their mothers—sinewy /ˈsɪnjuːi/ 有力的，結實的, overworked young women with cracked, brown heels. The children ran around playing tag or hide-and-seek while the women talked, shooed flies, and awaited their turns to fill up their jars with drinking water to bring home to their napping men and wet babies. There were days when we had to wait from sunup 日出 until late afternoon just to fill a small clay jar with precious, cool water.
攜帶魚的大旋風發生的那一年還不是最後一個不同尋常的年份。接下來的很多年裡接連發生了不少奇怪又精彩的事情。比如，旱災那年，老天一連幾個月都滴雨未下,那個為全村人提供飲用水的泉眼減慢流速成了一股細流。泉眼位於離村莊大約 1英裡外的山溝裡,山溝的一頭通向一小塊平坦的空地，上面覆蓋著灰色的粉塵和玻璃彈子大小的堅硬的羊糞球。旱災那年,這一小塊平地上總是擠滿了吵鬧的孩子們,他們個個都有一雙褐色的大眼睛和一雙黏糊糊的手;還有他們的母親們—她們都是年輕的婦女,精瘦強健,勞累不堪,腳後跟發黑開裂。孩子們跑來跑去,玩著捉人或捉迷藏的遊戲;而這些婦女們則聊著天,「噓噓」地驅趕著蒼蠅，排隊等著輪到自己用罐子盛滿飲用水，然後帶回家給她們正在午睡的丈夫和襁褓中的嬰兒喝。有時候,我們得從日出一直等到下午很晚才能裝滿一小罐珍貴、清涼的泉水。
Sometimes, amid /əˈmɪd/ 在……過程中the long wait and the heat and the flies and the smell of goat dung, tempers flared, and the younger women, anxious about their babies, argued over whose turn it was to fill up her jar. And sometimes the arguments escalated /ˈeskəleɪt/ 逐步增強,升級 into full-blown, knock down—drag out fights; the women would grab each other by the hair and curse /kɜːrs/ 詛咒；咒罵 and scream and spit and call each other names that made my ears tingle /ˈtɪŋɡl/ 感到刺痛；使激動. We little brown boys who went with our mothers to fetch water loved these fights, because we got to see the women's legs and their colored panties as they grappled and rolled around in the dust. Once in a while, we got lucky and saw much more, because some of the women wore nothing at all under their long dresses. God, how I used to look forward to those fights. I remember the rush, the excitement, the sun dancing on the dust clouds as a dress ripped and a young white breast was revealed, then quickly hidden. In my calendar, that year of drought will always be one of the best years of my childhood.
有時候,在漫長的等待、酷熱的天氣,蒼蠅的騷擾和羊糞的臭味中,人們的脾氣會突然變得很大。那些擔心家裡的嬰兒的年輕婦女們為該輪到誰打水而爭吵起來。有時候這些爭吵會升級為不把對方打翻在地決不罷休的打鬥。女人們互相撕扯著對方的頭髮，咒罵,尖叫,吐唾沫，叫罵聲令我都感到刺耳。我們這些和自己的母親一塊來打水、皮膚曬得黝黑的小男孩們喜歡這樣的打鬥,因為這些女人扭打著在塵土中滾作一團時,我們有機會看到她們的大腿和彩色內褲。偶爾我們運氣好的時候，可以看到更多,因為有些女人長長的連衣裙裡面什麼也沒有穿。上帝啊,我曾經是多麼盼望這樣的打鬥啊。一個女人的連衣裙被撕破了,她的一隻白皙的乳房露了出來,然後又很快被遮蓋起來,我現在還記得當時的那種衝動和興奮,連陽光都在飛揚的塵土上空翩翩起舞。在我的日曆中,旱災那年永遠是我童年時期最快樂的年份之一。
But, in another way, the year of the drought was also one of the worst of my life, because that was the year that Abu Raja, the retired cook, decided it was time Magdaluna got its own telephone. Every civilized village needed a telephone, he said, and Magdaluna was not going to get anywhere until it had one. A telephone would link us with the outside world. A few men—like the retired Turkish army drill sergeant /ˈsɑːrdʒənt/ 海軍陸戰隊中士, and the vineyard /ˈvɪnjərd/ 葡萄園 keeper—did all they could to talk Abu Raja out of having a telephone brought to the village. But they were outshouted and ignored and finally shunned by the other villagers for resisting progress and trying to keep a good thing from coming to Magdaluna.
但是,從另一方面來看，旱災那年也是我生命中最糟的年份之一,因為就是在那一年,退休廚師阿布·拉賈決定馬格達路納該擁有自己的電話了。他說每個文明的村莊都需要一部電話，如果沒有電話，馬格達路納將不會有任何進步。電話會把我們同外面的世界連接起來。一些人——如退役的土耳其軍隊中操練士兵的中士和葡萄園的管理人——都竭盡全力地勸說阿布·拉賈不要在村裡安裝電話,但是他們的反對聲被支持聲淹沒了,其他村民對他們置之不理,最後都迴避他們，因為他們反對進步,試圖阻止好東西進入馬格達路納。
One warm day in early fall, many of the villagers were out in their fields repairing walls or gathering wood for the winter when the shout went out that the telephone company truck had arrived at Abu Raja's dikkan, or country store. When the truck came into view, everybody dropped what they were doing and ran to Abu Raja's house to see what was happening.
秋初很暖和的一天,許多村民都已經出門到他們的地裡勞作,有的修理圍牆,有的為過冬撿木柴,忽然有人高喊著說，電話公司的卡車已經開到阿布·拉賈的鄉村商店門前了。當看見那輛大卡車時,所有的人都放下了手中的活,跑到阿布·拉賈家去看是怎麼回事。
It did not take long for the whole village to assemble at Abu Raja's dikkan. Some of the rich villagers walked right into the store and stood at the elbows of the two important- looking men from the telephone company, who proceeded with utmost /ʌtmoʊst/ 極度的 gravity, like priests at Communion, to wire up接通電源 the telephone. The poorer villagers stood outside and listened carefully to the details relayed to them by the not-so-poor people who stood in the doorway and could see inside.
沒過多久,全村的人都聚集在了阿布·拉賈的鄉村商店門前。一些富有的村民直接走進商店,站在從電話公司來的看上去很是重要的兩個人身邊觀看。那兩個人就像聖餐儀式上的牧師一樣極其嚴肅地接著電話線。貧窮些的村民們站在商店外邊,仔細聽著站在過道裡能看到裡邊情況的不太窮的那些人傳給他們的細節。
"The bald man is cutting the blue wire /ˈwaɪər/ 電線," someone said.
「那個光頭在剪藍色電線，」有人說。
"He is sticking the wire into the hole in the bottom of the black box," someone else added.
「他正在把電線插到那個黑盒子底部的孔裡，」另一個人補充道。
"The telephone man with the mustache is connecting two pieces of wire. Now he is twisting the ends together," a third voice chimed in插話.
「那個留著小鬍子的裝電話的人正在把兩根電線接起來。他現在正在把兩個電線頭擰在一起，」第三個人插話道。
Because I was small, I wriggled /ˈrɪɡl/ 使蠕動；蠕動到my way through the dense /dens/ 密集的 forest of legs to get a firsthand look at the action. Breathless, I watched as the men in blue put together a black machine that supposedly would make it possible to talk with uncles, aunts, and cousins who lived more than two days' ride away.
因為我人很小，所以我擠過人們密密麻麻的腿來到前面,親眼看清楚整個安裝過程。我屏住呼吸,看著那兩個穿藍色衣服的人把一個黑色機器拼裝在一起,據說那個機器能讓我們和那些住在坐車都要用兩天多才能到的遠方的叔伯舅舅、姑媽姨媽、堂表兄弟姐妹通話。
It was shortly after sunset when the man with the mustache announced that the telephone was ready to use. He explained that all Abu Raja had to do was lift the receiver, turn the crank /kræŋk/（L字形）曲柄 on the black box a few times, and wait for an operator to take his call. Abu Raja grabbed the receiver and turned the crank forcefully. Within moments, he was talking with his brother in Beirut. He didn't even have to raise his voice or shout to be heard.
太陽剛下山，留小鬍子的那個人就宣布電話已經能用了。他解釋說,阿布·拉賈要做的只是拿起那個聽筒把黑盒子上面的搖柄轉動幾圈,然後等話務員給他接通電話就行了。阿布·拉賈抓起聽筒，用力地轉動搖柄，一會兒工夫, 他就和他在貝魯特的兄弟聊了起來。他甚至都不需要提高嗓門或大喊，對方就能聽見。
And the telephone, as it turned out, was bad news. With its coming, the face of the village began to change. One of the fast effects was the shifting of the village's center. Before the telephone's arrival, the men of the village used to gather regularly at the house of Im Kaleem, a short, middle-aged widow /ˈwɪdoʊ/ 寡婦 with jet-black /ˌdʒet ˈblæk/ 黑而發亮的 hair and a raspy /ˈræspi/ 刺耳的 voice that could be heard all over the village, even when she was only whispering. She was a devout /dɪˈvaʊt/ 虔誠的 Catholic and also the village whore /hɔːr/ 妓女. The men met at her house to argue about politics and drink coffee and play cards or backgammon /ˈbækɡæmən/ 西洋雙陸棋戲. Im Kaleem was not a true prostitute /ˈprɑːstɪtuːt/ 妓女, however, because she did not charge for her services—not even for the coffee and tea that she served the men. She did not need the money; her son, who was overseas in Africa, sent her money regularly. Im Kaleem loved all the men she entertained, and they loved her, every one of them. In a way, she was married to all the men in the village. Everybody knew it but nobody objected. Actually I suspect the women did not mind their husbands' visits to Im Kaleem. Oh, they wrung /rʌŋ/心中有煩惱的their hands and complained to one another about their men's unfaithfulness /ʌnˈfeɪθflnəs/ 不忠實, but secretly they were relieved, because Im Kaleem took some of the pressure off them and kept the men out of their hair while they attended to their endless chores. Im Kaleem was also a kind of confessor and troubleshooter, talking sense to those men who were having family problems, especially the younger ones.
電話的到來最終被證明不是一件好事。隨著它的到來村莊的面貌開始發生變化。最快的影響之一就是村子中心的轉移。電話到來之前,村裡的男人們通常定期聚集在伊姆·卡裡姆家裡。她是一個矮個子的中年寡婦,有著烏黑的頭髮和沙啞刺耳的嗓音,即使她低聲說話,全村的人也能聽得見。她是個虔誠的天主教徒，也是村裡的妓女。男人們聚集在她家討論政治,喝咖啡,玩撲克或下十五子棋。然而伊姆·卡裡姆不是一個真正的妓女,因為她的服務從不收費一甚至她提供給男人們喝的咖啡和茶水也都不收錢。她不缺錢,她兒子出國去非洲了,定期給她寄錢。伊姆·卡裡姆愛她所招待的所有男人,他們所有人也都愛她。從某種意義上說，她嫁給了村裡所有的男人。每個人都知道這一點,但是沒有人反對。事實上，我覺得女人們根本不介意自已的丈夫去伊姆·卡裡姆家。哦，她們會苦惱地絞著雙手，相互抱怨自己男人的不忠，但是私底下又感到如釋重負，因為伊姆·卡裡姆幫她們減輕了一些壓力,在她們做家裡沒完沒了的家務活時,男人們不會給她們添亂。伊姆·卡裡姆也是一個傾聽者和麻煩解決者,她能給那些家庭出現問題的男人，尤其是那些年輕的男人,說出一大堆的道理來。
Before the telephone came to Magdaluna, Im Kaleem's house was bustling /ˈbʌslɪŋ/ 熙熙攘攘的at just about any time of day, especially at night, when the loud voices of the men talking, laughing, and arguing could be heard in the street below—a reassuring /ˌriːəˈʃʊrɪŋ/ 安心的, homey sound. Her house was an island of comfort, an oasis /oʊˈeɪsɪs/ 舒適的地方 for the weary /ˈwɪri/ 疲倦的 village men, exhausted from having so little to do.
在電話來到馬格達路納以前,伊姆·卡裡姆家裡一天到晚都是熱熱鬧鬧的,特別是在晚上，男人們的大聲談話、笑聲以及爭論聲在下面的街道上都可以聽得見一那是一種讓人感到在家般自在的聲音。對於村裡因無所事事而對生活感到厭倦的萎靡不振的男人們來說，卡裡姆的家就如同一個舒適的小島,沙漠裡的一片綠洲。
But it wasn't long before many of those men—the younger ones especially—started spending more of their days and evenings at Abu Raja's dikkan. There, they would eat and drink and talk and play checkers and backgammon, and then lean their chairs back against the wall—the signal that they were ready to toss /tɔːs/ 拋，投 back and forth, like a ball, the latest rumors /ˈruːmər/ 謠言 going around the village. And they were always looking up from their games and drinks and talk to glance at the phone in the corner, as if expecting it to ring any minute and bring news that would change their lives and deliver them from their aimless existence. In the meantime, they smoked cheap, hand-rolled cigarettes, dug dirt out from under their fingernails with big pocket knives 小折刀, and drank lukewarm /ˌluːkˈwɔːrm/ 微溫的 sodas /'səudəz/ 碳酸飲料 that they called Kacula, Seffen-Ub, and Bebsi.
但是沒過多久,那些男人們中的很多人——特別是年輕人——開始花越來越多的時間待在阿布·拉賈的鄉村商店裡,無論是白天還是晚上。在那裡,他們吃喝談笑,玩著西洋棋和十五子棋,然後把椅子往後一仰, 靠在牆上一這表明他們準備開始像傳接球一樣熱烈談論村子裡的最新謠言。他們總是在遊戲、喝酒、談笑的時候抬起頭來,瞥一眼角落裡的電話,好像在期盼電話鈴聲隨時響起，為他們帶來會改變他們的生活並將他們從毫無目標的生存狀態中解救出來的消息。與此同時,他們吸著廉價的手捲菸,用大折刀摳著指甲裡的汙垢,喝著被他們稱為可口可樂、七喜和百事可樂的溫熱的汽水。
The telephone was also bad news for me personally. It took away my lucrative /ˈluːkrətɪv/ 獲利多的 business—a source of much-needed income. Before, I used to hang around Im Kaleem's courtyard and play marbles with the other kids, waiting for some man to call down from a window and ask me to run to the store for cigarettes or liquor, or to deliver a message to his wife, such as what he wanted for supper. There was always something in it for me: a ten or even a twenty-five-piaster piece. On a good day, I ran nine or ten of those errands /ˈerənd/ 使命；差事, which assured a steady supply of marbles that I usually lost to other boys. But as the days went by fewer and fewer men came to Im Kaleem's, and more and more congregated at Abu Raja's to wait by telephone. In the evenings, the laughter and noise of the men trailed off and finally stopped.
電話的到來對我個人來說也是個壞消息。它奪走了我利潤豐厚的生意——一種我非常需要的收人來源。以前。我經常在伊姆·卡裡姆家的院子裡閒逛,和其他孩子們玩彈子遊戲,等待某個男人從窗戶往下喊,要我往商店跑一趟去幫他買煙、買酒,或者給他的老婆捎個話,比如說晚飯他想吃什麼之類的。每次跑腿我總是會從中得到好處:一個10比索的硬幣,甚至是一個25比索的硬幣。運氣好的時候,我一天能跑上9到10次腿,這保證了我有穩定的收人來源來買輸給別的男孩子的彈子。但是,隨著時間的推移,越來越少的男人來伊姆·卡裡姆家裡了,而越來越多的人聚集在阿布·拉賈的商店裡,在電話旁等候。晚上,男人們的笑聲和喧鬧聲越來越輕,最終停止了。
At Abu Raja's dikkan, the calls did eventually come, as expected, and men and women started leaving the village the way a hailstorm /ˈheɪlstɔːrm/ 雹暴 begins: first one, then two, then bunches.
在阿布·拉賈的鄉村商店裡,正如人們所期盼的那樣,電話終於來了。男男女女們開始離開村子，就像下冰雹一樣,先是一個人,然後兩個,接著就是成群結隊地離開。
The army took them. Jobs in the cities lured them. And ships and airplanes carried them to such faraway places as Australia and Brazil and New Zealand. My friend Kameel, his cousin Habeeb, and their cousins and my cousins all went away to become ditch /dɪtʃ/ 溝渠 diggers and mechanics and butcher—shop boys and deli /ˈdeli/ 熟食店 owners who wore dirty aprons /ˈeɪprən/ 圍裙 sixteen hours a day, all looking for a better life than the one they had left behind. Within a year, only the sick, the old, and the maimed were left in the village. Magdaluna became a skeleton of its former self, desolate and forsaken, like the tombs, a place to get away from.
他們隨外出務工的大軍走了。城裡的工作吸引著他們。船和飛機把他們帶到了遙遠的地方，比如澳大利亞、巴西和紐西蘭。我的朋友卡米爾,他的表兄哈比布以及他們的表兄弟和我的表兄弟們都離開了家,當上了挖渠工、技工、肉鋪店裡的夥計和熟食店老闆,每天穿著骯髒的圍裙工作16個小時。所有人都在追求著yi 種比過去更好的生活。不到一年,村裡只剩下了老弱病殘者。馬格達路納成了以前的村莊的一個空架子,像墓地一樣荒涼孤獨,成了一個該逃離的地方。
Finally, the telephone took my family away, too. My father got a call from an old army buddy who told him that an oil company in southern Lebanon was hiring interpreters and instructors. My father applied for a job and got it, and we moved to Sidon, where I went to a Presbyterian missionary school and graduated in 1962. Three years later, having won a scholarship, I left Lebanon for the United States. Like the others who left Magdaluna before me, I am still looking for that better life.
最終,電話也把我的家人帶走了。我父親接到了一個老戰友的電話,告訴他黎巴嫩南部的一家石油公司正在招聘翻譯和教師。我父親申請並獲得了一個工作,接著我們全家搬到了西頓,在那裡我上了一所長老會辦的學校,並於1962年畢業。3年後,我獲得了獎學金,離開黎巴嫩來到了美國。就像在我之前離開馬格達路納的其他人一樣,我現在仍在追求一種更加美好的生活。