雙語暢銷書《我是馬拉拉》第2章1:誠實的靈魂

2 My Father the Falcon

2　父親是鷹

I ALWAYS KNEW my father had trouble with words. Sometimes they would get stuck and he would repeat the same syllable over and over like a record caught in a groove as we all waited for the next syllable to suddenly pop out. He said it felt like a wall came down in his throat. M’s, p’s and k’s were all enemies lying in wait. I teased him that one of the reasons he called me Jani was because he found it easier to say than Malala. A stutter was a terrible thing for a man who so loved words and poetry. On each side of the family he had an uncle with the same affliction. But it was almost certainly made worse by his father, whose own voice was a soaring instrument that could make words thunder and dance.

我的父親有發音方面的困擾。有時候，他在說話時，一個單詞卡住，就會不斷重複同一個音節，彷彿唱片跳針一樣，下一個音節不知何時纔會突然跳出來。他說那種感覺就像是喉嚨裏頭有一道牆倒塌。“馬”“貝”和“可”這幾個音是他的敵人。我開玩笑說，他之所以叫我“親愛的”就是因爲發音比“馬拉拉”容易。口吃對一個熱愛文字和詩歌的人來說，是件極糟糕的事。父親有一個叔叔和一個舅舅都有同樣的問題。但是，使父親的口吃問題愈加嚴重的，無疑是來自祖父的影響。他的父親，我的祖父，是個說起話來能讓文字飛舞、音量有如鑼鼓撼天的男人。

‘spit it out, son!’ he’d roar whenever my father got stuck in the middle of a sentence. My grandfather’s name was Rohul Amin, which means ‘honest spirit’ and is the holy name of the Angel Gabriel. He was so proud of the name that he would introduce himself to people with a famous verse in which his name appears. He was an impatient man at the best of times and would fly into a rage over the smallest thing – like a hen going astray or a cup getting broken. His face would redden and he would throw kettles and pots around. I never knew my grandmother, but my father says she used to joke with my grandfather, ‘By God, just as you greet us only with a frown, when I die may God give you a wife who never smiles.’

“說出來，兒子！”每當我父親話說到一半卡住的時候，祖父就會厲聲命令。我的祖父名爲拉胡爾.阿明，意爲“誠實的靈魂”，同時也是天使加百列的聖名。他對自己的名字感到非常驕傲。每次自我介紹時，他總會念一段有他的名字在其中的詩文給對方聽。祖父沒什麼耐性，芝麻綠豆大的小事，比方說一隻母雞跑到外面來了，或是一隻杯子碎了，都能讓他暴跳如雷。他常常會漲紅了臉，把水壺和鍋子亂扔。我從未見過我的祖母，但父親說祖母以前跟祖父開玩笑說：“看在真主的份兒上，你總是讓我們看你皺眉頭的模樣。等我死後，願真主賜你一位永不微笑的太太。”

My grandmother was so worried about my father’s stutter that when he was still a young boy she took him to see a holy man. It was a long journey by bus, then an hour’s walk up the hill to where he lived. Her nephew Fazli Hakim had to carry my father on his shoulders. The holy man was called Lewano Pir, Saint of the Mad, because he was said to be able to calm lunatics. When they were taken in to see the pir, he instructed my father to open his mouth and then spat into it. Then he took some gur, dark molasses made from sugar cane, and rolled it around his mouth to moisten it with spit. He then took out the lump and presented it to my grandmother to give to my father, a little each day. The treatment did not cure the stutter. Actually some people thought it got worse. So when my father was thirteen and told my grandfather he was entering a public speaking competition he was stunned. ‘How can you?’ Rohul Amin asked, laughing. ‘You take one or two minutes to utter just one sentence.’

祖母非常擔心我父親的口吃問題，所以在他還小的時候，她帶他去見一位世襲聖人。路途遙遠，他們得先搭很久的公交車，她的侄子法茲利.哈基姆揹着年幼的父親，再走上一小時的山路，才能抵達聖人的住處。聖人名叫裏瓦諾.皮爾，是個瘋聖徒，據說他可以讓瘋子平靜下來。當他們被帶去見這位聖人時，他請我父親張開嘴巴，然後朝他的嘴裏吐了一口口水。接着拿了一點用甘蔗製成的深色糖漿，放進自己嘴裏，在口腔中推揉，用口水溼潤，再把口中這團東西拿出來交給我祖母，要她每天餵我父親吃一點。這個療法沒有治好我父親的口吃，事實上，有些人甚至覺得更嚴重了。所以，當父親十三歲時對祖父說他要去參加一場演講比賽時，祖父笑着問他：“怎麼可能？你一句話就要講一到兩分鐘！”