美国国家公共电台 NPR In 'No Turning Back,' The 'Epic' Journeys Of Four Syrians In Wartime

 

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

The civil war in Syria is, by any measure, one of the world's great catastrophes¹. And for much of the time, it has raged too dangerous for most journalists to get close to those at the center of the conflict. One who has is Rania Abouzeid, who was there at the start.

RANIA ABOUZEID: I witnessed what was one of the first demonstrations² in Damascus in late February 2011. And I was trying to figure out what it all meant and what was happening.

MONTAGNE: Abouzeid's new book "No Turning Back" traces the stories of individual Syrians from those small protests through the bloody³ civil war that the protests became. We began our conversation by talking about the early days known as the Arab Spring. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad was presenting himself as a modern leader. But many Syrians were haunted by what his father had done as president in 1982, mercilessly crushing a rebellion in the city of Hama.

ABOUZEID: The regime went house to house in Hama. And nobody knows how many people were killed. Estimates are in the tens of thousands. People put up mass graves that were then paved over. And Hama lived on as a potent⁴ example of the price of dissent⁵ and what the Assads could do.

MONTAGNE: Could do and would do.

ABOUZEID: Yes. Syrians knew what to expect. And they knew their regime well. They knew that this was not going to be easy.

MONTAGNE: Well, that's where you, in a sense, found one of the profiles that you do in the book. It was a protester by the name of Suleiman.

ABOUZEID: Yes.

MONTAGNE: Give us a small portrait of exactly who he was.

ABOUZEID: Suleiman was a man with everything, really - a rich man. He was a manager. His family had money. He was a man with opportunities, yet he...

MONTAGNE: A young man - a young man.

ABOUZEID: A very young man - he was a young man in his 20s. But he knew that he was privileged and that most Syrians didn't have the opportunities that he had. And for him, that was enough for him to take to the streets.

MONTAGNE: And then there's Mohammad, a suspected Islamist, who would have been the enemy of Assad's regime and had felt the lash⁶ of that regime - a different sort of a potential protester or rebel.

ABOUZEID: No, absolutely. He's Suleiman's opposite. Suleiman was a peaceful protester. He never picked up a gun, whereas Mohammad was, if you like, baptized in the aftermath of what happened in Hama in '82. So he grew up seeing his male relatives hunted and humiliated⁷ by the regime. And with time, he became radicalized. And his form of radicalization was Islamic radicalization.

MONTAGNE: And part of that radicalization process was his - he cycled in and out of prison.

ABOUZEID: Yes.

MONTAGNE: Read us just - from the book, read us just a little bit of what being in Assad's prison could mean to somebody like Mohammad.

ABOUZEID: Sure. (Reading) For the first 25 days, he was subjected to procedures common in Syrian jails. Doused⁸ with water and electrocuted, hung from the ceiling by his wrists, his toes barely touching⁹ the floor as guards beat his sides. They call this shaba (ph) - whipped on the soles of his feet with cables until he couldn't walk - the falaka (ph) torture method. Then they ignored him. He said that was worse. Alone in the dark, he hallucinated, becoming convinced that his baby daughter was in there with him. He'd bang on the door and ask for a beating, quote, "just to feel something."

MONTAGNE: Fast forward in a way. There came a time when there were refugees. And you profile a little girl. Tell us about her and her siblings¹⁰.

ABOUZEID: I tell the story of Ruha. I focused on Ruha because she was a little girl. But she was much older than a little girl in her ability to explain and try and understand the things that were happening around her and expressed it in her own ways, whether that meant that she would be making paper planes when she was hiding in her house's basement from the real planes that were above them or collecting shrapnel because she thought that they were pretty shapes. And they considered them like a new form of toys. So I followed Ruha and her family for six years.

MONTAGNE: All three of these, six years later, were different people than they might have expected to be.

ABOUZEID: Yes, all of them. Every person in the book has changed. I mean, their journeys really were epic¹¹. And that's the only word that comes to mind when I think about what happened to them. And the thing is that they are not unusual. This was one of my big problems when I sat down to write the book - was I didn't know whose stories to tell because they were all epic. I knew so many people who had been through things that most of us can't even imagine.

MONTAGNE: When you talk about people being very different at the six-year mark of this long and still continuing war, what kind of ways do people change?

ABOUZEID: Some of them have literally¹² survived what I think hell is. And yet they emerged on the other side without bitterness or regret. Some of them lost so much. And yet they can still joke and laugh and love life. They still have hope. They still have plans. They still have dreams. I have a friend of mine whose factory was bombed recently. And I spoke¹³ to him this morning before I came in to the interview. And he said, it's OK. We'll rebuild. I'm making plans to rebuild. But until I do that, I'm looking to see if there's an empty factory somewhere where I can rent - that I can rent until I get my factory up and running again. I mean, there is a resilience that continues to astound¹⁴ me.

MONTAGNE: Rania Abouzeid - her new book is "No Turning Back: Life, Loss, And Hope In Wartime Syria." Thank you so much for joining us.

ABOUZEID: Thank you for having me.

1 catastrophes   

n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难

参考例句：

• Two of history's worst natural catastrophes occurred in 1970. 1970年发生了历史上最严重两次自然灾害。 来自辞典例句
• The Swiss deposits contain evidence of such catastrophes. 瑞士的遗址里还有这种灾难的证据。 来自辞典例句

2 demonstrations   

证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威

参考例句：

• Lectures will be interspersed with practical demonstrations. 讲课中将不时插入实际示范。
• The new military government has banned strikes and demonstrations. 新的军人政府禁止罢工和示威活动。

3 bloody   

adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染

参考例句：

• He got a bloody nose in the fight.他在打斗中被打得鼻子流血。
• He is a bloody fool.他是一个十足的笨蛋。

4 potent   

adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的

参考例句：

• The medicine had a potent effect on your disease.这药物对你的病疗效很大。
• We must account of his potent influence.我们必须考虑他的强有力的影响。

5 dissent   

n./v.不同意，持异议

参考例句：

• It is too late now to make any dissent.现在提出异议太晚了。
• He felt her shoulders gave a wriggle of dissent.他感到她的肩膀因为不同意而动了一下。

6 lash   

v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛

参考例句：

• He received a lash of her hand on his cheek.他突然被她打了一记耳光。
• With a lash of its tail the tiger leaped at her.老虎把尾巴一甩朝她扑过来。

7 humiliated   

感到羞愧的

参考例句：

• Parents are humiliated if their children behave badly when guests are present. 子女在客人面前举止失当，父母也失体面。
• He was ashamed and bitterly humiliated. 他感到羞耻，丢尽了面子。

8 doused   

v.浇水在…上( douse的过去式和过去分词 )；熄灯[火]

参考例句：

• The car was doused in petrol and set alight. 这辆汽车被浇上汽油点燃了。
• He doused the lamp,and we made our way back to the house. 他把灯熄掉，我们就回到屋子里去。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 touching   

adj.动人的，使人感伤的

参考例句：

• It was a touching sight.这是一幅动人的景象。
• His letter was touching.他的信很感人。

10 siblings   

n.兄弟，姐妹( sibling的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• A triplet sleeps amongst its two siblings. 一个三胞胎睡在其两个同胞之间。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• She has no way of tracking the donor or her half-siblings down. 她没办法找到那个捐精者或她的兄弟姐妹。 来自时文部分

11 epic   

n.史诗，叙事诗；adj.史诗般的，壮丽的

参考例句：

• I gave up my epic and wrote this little tale instead.我放弃了写叙事诗，而写了这个小故事。
• They held a banquet of epic proportions.他们举行了盛大的宴会。

12 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。

13 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

14 astound   

v.使震惊，使大吃一惊

参考例句：

• His practical grasp of affairs and his energy still astound me.他对事物的实际掌握和他充沛的精力实在使我惊异。
• He used to astound his friends with feats of physical endurance.过去，他表现出来的惊人耐力常让朋友们大吃一惊。