美国国家公共电台 NPR 'I Belonged Nowhere': A Story Of Displacement, From A Novelist Who Knows

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

At the very start of a novel by Hala Alyan, a woman does what seems like a very simple thing. She buys a coffee set - a dozen cups, a coffee pot, a tray. It's a simple thing that becomes painful because she is a Palestinian woman. She's part of a displaced family forced to move from one country to another. And the coffee set makes her cry out because the tray reminds her of one she's lost in her moves. Hala Alyan builds her story on little moments like that, moments in the lives of several generations of a family unwillingly¹ on the move.

HALA ALYAN: They're characters that are very lost in a lot of ways and are trying to look for home. I definitely think that there is an intergenerational trauma² that went along with losing a homeland that you see trickle³ down through the different generations.

INSKEEP: The novel is called "Salt Houses," and its author wrote it while working out her own family's story. Hala Alyan is Palestinian-American whose family has moved about since the founding of Israel and the wars that followed. That woman who lost the coffee tray, her story grows out of the writer's personal experience.

ALYAN: I've always been really interested in the meaning we imbue⁴ with objects. I grew up kind of watching my mother's attachment⁵ to certain objects, my grandparent's attachment to certain objects, and a lot of the times, I mean, it becomes especially valuable because the place with which you attach it to is no longer - it doesn't exist anymore.

INSKEEP: What was the story of your mother and your grandmother?

ALYAN: Well, you know, one of the things that I'm (laughter) always thinking about is sort of how - when I wanted to get married, one of the things that I didn't really have the luxury of was wearing or asking my mother if I could wear her wedding dress or ask my grandmother if I could wear her wedding dress because my grandmother lost hers when she moved to Kuwait. My mother lost hers in Kuwait after the invasion. And so there is these milestones⁶ in our life that don't ultimately end up getting passed down because they're lost. They're lost in the rubble⁷ of time and movement and displacement⁸.

INSKEEP: Your family just doesn't have the heirlooms of another family.

ALYAN: We don't have heirlooms, and it's very - you know, I mean, one of the things that my mother, I've noticed, is very kind of keen on and intent on is talking about sort of how she'll buy pieces of jewelry⁹ and talk about how, you know, this is - you'll give this to your children and then your children will give it - it's a little bit morbid¹⁰, right? And it took me a while to sort of kind of put it together and be like, oh, I mean, it's - you're sort of putting together a fractured history. You're trying to start over again.

INSKEEP: Where did you grow up?

ALYAN: That's a loaded question (laughter) - all over. My parents met and married in Kuwait. And then, when my mother became pregnant with me, in the Middle East you get what your father has in terms of passport. My mother had a Lebanese passport. My father had Palestinian travel documents. And so she sort of in the stroke of foresight's ingenius, she went to, quote, unquote, "visit" her brother who lived in Carbondale, Ill. And she was this eight-month pregnant brown woman, and they let her in, no problem, no worries.

INSKEEP: It was the '80s.

ALYAN: It was the - it was a different time, right. And then she gave birth to me, and I was there for the first week or so of my life. We returned to Kuwait, and then after the invasion, we were in Syria for a little bit, and then they sought asylum¹¹ in the states. So my passport, in a lot of ways, enabled us to then go to the states.

INSKEEP: This was totally your mother saying this child I'm about to have is going to be a stateless person, in effect.

ALYAN: Exactly. And in a really beautifully symbolic¹² way kind of, you know, being like I want her to be anchored to something. And of course, she couldn't have known that in anchoring me she was going to anchor the entire family.

INSKEEP: So is this drawn¹³ from your real life when you write in this novel of people not quite telling the family story to each other? They're half-revealed facts and images that they sort of have in their memory and sort of don't. Is that an experience you've had yourself?

ALYAN: I have. I mean, I've sort of seen it - you know, in my family, it kind of depends on who you talk to. I definitely think it's a wound that never quite healed over. And so we sort of talk around it, right? We'll talk about, like, my father's restlessness and the fact that he likes to move every year or two. We'll talk about the fact that, you know, my mother really loves homes and loves to think about decorating homes and nesting and settling. And you see this in other traumatized populations, like Holocaust¹⁴ survivors¹⁵. A lot of the times, it's something that's really not brought up, which then leaves it to the later generations to sort of re-imagine, re-conceptualize, kind of re-create what it was that was lost.

INSKEEP: There's a lovely paragraph I'd like to ask you to read...

ALYAN: Of course.

INSKEEP: ...That gets at this sense of family memories that you don't quite have. The character's name is Riham. She's one of the younger characters. There's some discussion of a garden, and this reminds her of something. Could I get you to read that paragraph?

ALYAN: Of course. (Reading) There was another garden, Riham has been told, though the details of it are hazy¹⁶ to her, almost fictional¹⁷. All she knows is this garden was in Palestine, and it burned down. It is linked to the war she learned about in school and to her father being away a long time ago. The adults rarely speak of these things, giving vague responses to questions. It is clear they find this talk painful, and Riham isn't the type of girl to ask for more.

INSKEEP: This has got to be a really common experience in this time when so many millions of people are displaced, people are refugees and many of them from war zones where the physical landscape that you note just literally¹⁸ isn't there anymore. It was destroyed. It was burned. The name has been changed. Different people are there.

ALYAN: Absolutely. I mean, I think, and you add on to that, this other kind of complicating¹⁹ factor of having to defend one's existence or having to assure people that in seeking refuge in a different place, you know, you're doing that because you simply can't go back home again.

INSKEEP: Years ago, I heard the story of a woman who made it all the way from war-torn Afghanistan to New York, I believe, and concluded after that experience that she belonged nowhere. She was not getting accustomed to the United States but after her experience could not imagine returning to Afghanistan. Do you feel like you belong anywhere?

ALYAN: I would say for a very long time I felt like I belonged nowhere. The last couple of years I've sort of been re-conceptualizing it. Like, I could kind of belong everywhere. I belong wherever I am because I'm bringing with me whatever culture, whatever history, whatever love for food and music and memory and photographs that have been passed down to me. So I've gotten a little bit less attached to the idea of physical place needing to be big enough to hold me and hold my culture and hold everything that's important to me.

INSKEEP: Are you bigger than any one place? Is that what you're saying?

ALYAN: I think so. I think we all are. I mean - and I don't - you know, and I don't mean to undermine - like, I don't say that in the sense of Palestine isn't important to me anymore. Not - to the contrary. I think because Palestine is so important to me, I insist on bringing it everywhere I go.

INSKEEP: The new novel by Hala Alyan is called "Salt Houses."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HADI YA BAHAR")

MANAL MOUSA: (Singing in foreign language).

1 unwillingly   

adv.不情愿地

参考例句：

• He submitted unwillingly to his mother. 他不情愿地屈服于他母亲。
• Even when I call, he receives unwillingly. 即使我登门拜访，他也是很不情愿地接待我。

2 trauma   

n.外伤，精神创伤

参考例句：

• Counselling is helping him work through this trauma.心理辅导正帮助他面对痛苦。
• The phobia may have its root in a childhood trauma.恐惧症可能源于童年时期的创伤。

3 trickle   

vi.淌，滴，流出，慢慢移动，逐渐消散

参考例句：

• The stream has thinned down to a mere trickle.这条小河变成细流了。
• The flood of cars has now slowed to a trickle.汹涌的车流现在已经变得稀稀拉拉。

4 imbue   

v.灌输(某种强烈的情感或意见)，感染

参考例句：

• He managed to imbue his employees with team spirit.他成功激发起雇员的团队精神。
• Kass is trying to imbue physics into simulated worlds.凯斯想要尝试的就是把物理学引入模拟世界。

5 attachment   

n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附

参考例句：

• She has a great attachment to her sister.她十分依恋她的姐姐。
• She's on attachment to the Ministry of Defense.她现在隶属于国防部。

6 milestones   

n.重要事件( milestone的名词复数 )；重要阶段；转折点；里程碑

参考例句：

• Several important milestones in foreign policy have been passed by this Congress and they can be chalked up as major accomplishments. 这次代表大会通过了对外政策中几起划时代的事件，并且它们可作为主要成就记录下来。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Dale: I really envy your milestones over the last few years, Don. 我真的很羡慕你在过去几年中所建立的丰功伟绩。 来自互联网

7 rubble   

n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾

参考例句：

• After the earthquake,it took months to clean up the rubble.地震后，花了数月才清理完瓦砾。
• After the war many cities were full of rubble.战后许多城市到处可见颓垣残壁。

8 displacement   

n.移置，取代，位移，排水量

参考例句：

• They said that time is the feeling of spatial displacement.他们说时间是空间位移的感觉。
• The displacement of all my energy into caring for the baby.我所有精力都放在了照顾宝宝上。

9 jewelry   

n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝

参考例句：

• The burglars walked off with all my jewelry.夜盗偷走了我的全部珠宝。
• Jewelry and lace are mostly feminine belongings.珠宝和花边多数是女性用品。

10 morbid   

adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的

参考例句：

• Some people have a morbid fascination with crime.一些人对犯罪有一种病态的痴迷。
• It's morbid to dwell on cemeteries and such like.不厌其烦地谈论墓地以及诸如此类的事是一种病态。

11 asylum   

n.避难所，庇护所，避难

参考例句：

• The people ask for political asylum.人们请求政治避难。
• Having sought asylum in the West for many years,they were eventually granted it.他们最终获得了在西方寻求多年的避难权。

12 symbolic   

adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的

参考例句：

• It is symbolic of the fighting spirit of modern womanhood.它象征着现代妇女的战斗精神。
• The Christian ceremony of baptism is a symbolic act.基督教的洗礼仪式是一种象征性的做法。

13 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

14 holocaust   

n.大破坏；大屠杀

参考例句：

• The Auschwitz concentration camp always remind the world of the holocaust.奥辛威茨集中营总是让世人想起大屠杀。
• Ahmadinejad is denying the holocaust because he's as brutal as Hitler was.内贾德否认大屠杀，因为他像希特勒一样残忍。

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 hazy   

adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的

参考例句：

• We couldn't see far because it was so hazy.雾气蒙蒙妨碍了我们的视线。
• I have a hazy memory of those early years.对那些早先的岁月我有着朦胧的记忆。

17 fictional   

adj.小说的，虚构的

参考例句：

• The names of the shops are entirely fictional.那些商店的名字完全是虚构的。
• The two authors represent the opposite poles of fictional genius.这两位作者代表了天才小说家两个极端。

18 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。

19 complicating   

使复杂化( complicate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• High spiking fever with chills is suggestive of a complicating pylephlebitis. 伴有寒战的高热，暗示合并门静脉炎。
• In America these actions become executive puberty rites, complicating relationships that are already complicated enough. 在美国，这些行动成了行政青春期的惯例，使本来已经够复杂的关系变得更复杂了。