经济学人07:目击埃及之春 Square eyes

 　　Books and Arts; Book Review;

　　文艺；书评；
　　Revolution in Egypt;Tahrir Square, one year on;
　　埃及革命;回顾一年前的胜利广场;
　　Cairo: My City, Our Revolution. By Ahdaf Soueif.
　　《开罗：我的城市，我们的革命》，著者：阿达芙·索伊夫。
　　The big themes of history may be written by the victors, but it is the observant bystanders who fill in the details. When Hosni Mubarak was overthrown 1 in Cairo a year ago, among those watching was Ahdaf Soueif, a novelist born in Egypt and mostly resident in London. She missed the first three days as well as some of the postnatal struggles of the new era. As a liberal leftist she is at best a partial victor, given that Islamists took control of the streets after the big battles were won.
　　历史的大文章可能是由胜利者来撰写的，但是它的细节却是那些近距离的旁观者所提供的。当胡斯尼·穆巴拉克在一年前被推翻时，阿达芙·索伊夫就是这样的一个旁观者。她是一个出生于埃及、但大部分时间住在伦敦的小说家。她没有目睹头三天的情景，也没有看到新时代开始后的各种争斗。作为一个左翼自由派人士，她顶多算一个半胜利者，因为在埃及人民获得推翻穆巴拉克的斗争的胜利后，伊斯兰教主义者控制了街头。
　　So her view of the revolution may never dominate the new textbooks now being prepared in Egypt. The bearded men who will most likely dictate 2 what is in them, however, cannot entirely 3 ignore what she recorded during the initial 18 days that felled the tyrant 4 and his cronies. Well- observed details have an unmistakable ring of truth and revisionist historians ignore them at their peril 5.
　　因此，索伊夫关于埃及革命的观点可能永远不会成为正在埃及重写的教科书的支配观点。然而，那些最有可能决定教科书写些什么的人，难以罔顾她所纪录的埃及革命头十八天中发生的那些事情。认真观察到的细节具有无可争辩的真实性，如果历史的修正者罔顾这些事实，他们自己会承担很大的风险。
　　Ms Soueif has collected her notes in a book that above all conveys what it felt like to be in Tahrir Square, to face the police on the Nile bridges, to stumble into makeshift hospitals filled with bloodied 6 youths. She has an eye for ephemera at the edge of a vast stage: that tear-gas canisters become more not less potent 7 when they pass their expiry date, that in July last year a Saudi flag appeared in Tahrir Square, that the soldiers took possession of any US dollar bills they came across as evidence of demonstrators being foreign agents.
　　索伊夫小姐把她的笔记整理成为一本书，在这本书中，她使人身临其境般地感受到开罗胜利广场的氛围、在尼罗桥上与警察的对持、闯进满是受伤的年轻人的临时医院。她很善于捕捉在大场景中那些转瞬即逝的细小情节：过了期的催泪罐功效反而更大；去年七月一面沙特国旗出现在胜利广场上；士兵们没收他们看到的任何美元钞票，以作为证据指控抗议者是外国间细。
　　She captures the deep contempt of the youths for the old rulers, quoting a teenage acquaintance as saying of the Mubarak men: “Before they open their mouths they’re liars 8; they breathe lies.”And she records imaginative chants of revolutionaries marching through hard-up districts of the city trying to win allies by warning the residents: “Prices up and no one cares / Next you’ll sell your bed and chairs.”
　　她纪录了年轻人对前统治者们的极度蔑视，如一个十几岁的熟人在谈到穆巴拉克的人时说：“他们没张嘴也在说谎，他们呼吸的就是谎言。”她还纪录了，革命者们在戒备森严的地区一边游行一边唱着歌以争取居民支持：“价格飞涨无人管/你马上会变成穷光蛋。”
　　The lifeblood of Cairo visibly quickens during the days and months she chronicles. Her tone can be bombastic 9, breathless and laden 10 with pathos 11, just as it was on the city streets. The narrative 12 has a rushed, unfinished quality, much like the revolution itself. She inserts a flash-forward halfway 13 through the account of the 18 days of revolution, in which she picks at what followed, especially the rise of the Islamists. All of it adds to the sense of drama.
　　开罗的生命之血在她所纪录的的那些日子里显而易见地加快了流动。她的语调是爆炸性的、令人难以喘气的、充满痛苦的，正像开罗街道上所发生的事情一样。她的叙述带着一种急迫的、未尽的感觉，正像埃及革命本身。在她对十八天革命的纪录中间，她插进了一段快进式的片段来讲述在革命之后发生的事，特别是伊斯兰教旨主义的崛起。所有这一切都加强了事件的戏剧性。
　　The most successful passages juxtapose the personal and the political. The narrative of street fighting is interleaved with personal memories of a previous age: here the house of a beloved aunt, there the studio where she acted in a television drama. The reader gets a visceral sense of the dislocation the revolutionaries felt in their own city.
　　把个人经历和政治现实对照着来写，是她的书最成功的地方。对街头斗争的叙述与自己对过去的回忆交织在一起：这里是一个可爱的姑母的房子；那里是她曾经参演电视剧的摄影室。读者从中感受到那些革命者们在自己的城市中发自内心的一种失落感。
　　There is little clever analysis in the book, but that hardly matters. In years to come it will be a reminder 14 to liberals—now once again in the opposition 15 following the recent election victory of Egypt’s Islamists—of their most glorious hour. It should serve as a heartening reminder of what they are capable of achieving when united and courageous 16.
　　书中没有什么精辟的分析，但这并不重要。在今后多年中，它将提醒那些自由主义者们（他们又成了在新近的选举中获胜的埃及伊斯兰教主义者的对立面），他们曾经有过多么辉煌的时刻。这应当是一种振奋人心的提醒：当他们团结起来，鼓足勇气的时候，可以成就什么样的事业。