2021年经济学人 纳瓦勒·萨达维-埃及女权先锋(2)（在线收听）

A savage, dangerous woman, many said. So, truth was savage, too. That was why the words poured out, in 55 books that encompassed short stories, novels, poetry, lectures and plays. She spoke for all Egypt’s women as they struggled in silent subordination, shouting “I insist on it!”, until, sometimes, she got through. One of those voices belonged to Firdaus, a “Woman at Point Zero”, awaiting death for killing just one of the men who had abused her.

很多人说，萨达维是个野蛮、危险的女人。所以，真相也是野蛮的。这就是为什么这些内容会在55本书中呈现出来，其中包含短篇故事、小说、诗歌、演讲和戏剧等形式。她代表所有埃及妇女发声，当她们在沉默的服从中挣扎时，她还在高喊着“我就要坚持到底!”，直到有时她能度过难关。其中一个声音来自菲达斯，《处于零点的女人》的主角，因为她杀死了虐待她的其中一个男人而面临着死亡。

Another was her own smothered, terrified voice when, at six, she had been taken from her warm bed, held in an iron grasp on the icy bathroom tiles by the village midwife who stank of sweat, henna and iodine, and slashed with a fiery razor between her thighs, as if she was a sheep being butchered for Eid. Against that razor, part of a merciless campaign to paralyse girls’ capacity to think and understand, she now had her pen. It could be just as sharp.

另一个声音则是萨达维自己窒息般、恐惧的声音。当时6岁的她被村里的接生婆从温暖的被窝里拽出来，无法动弹地被按在冰冷的浴室地板上。接生婆浑身散发着汗水、指甲花和碘酒混合的刺鼻味道，手里拿着一把红色剃须刀在她大腿间划动着，她仿佛一只为开斋节献祭的羔羊。为了反抗那把剃须刀，这把旨在麻痹女孩的思考和理解能力的无情运动一部分的剃须刀，她现在握住了笔。笔尖若刀刃般锋利。

So could a scalpel. She had no wish to be a doctor, but did so well at school that it became inevitable. As a girl she was lucky to be properly educated at all, when her place was in the kitchen among the onions. The only praise she ever received was when she learned to light the kerosene stove. Girls, her grandmother told her, were a blight; a boy was worth 15 times as much. Yet in the dissection room at medical school, where she had gone on a scholarship, she saw how equally frail men’s and women’s bodies were under her probing blade. Since that was so, why were they so unequal everywhere else? Why, as a doctor back in Kafr Tahla, did she have to spend nights at the bedside of child brides who had been pre-emptively deflowered for their husbands by the coarse unwashed nails of a midwife, and were still bleeding?

手术刀也可以作为反抗工具。可她无意成为一名医生，不过因为在学校表现优异，自然而然成为了医生。作为女孩，她很幸运地受到了良好的教育，毕竟以当时的社会定位，她应该围绕着厨房的洋葱转悠。她唯一一次被表扬是学会点燃煤油炉的时候。祖母跟她讲，女孩是祸害；一个男孩的价值抵得上十五个女孩。然而，在获得奖学金后就读的医学院的解剖室里，她发现，在她的刀片下，男性和女性的身体是一样地脆弱不堪。既然如此，为什么在其他领域两性却如此不平等呢？为什么她在卡夫塔拉村当医生时，不得不整夜守在儿童新娘的床边，照顾这些被接生婆污秽、粗糙的指甲抢先夺走了贞洁，好满足男性私欲，并且还在流血的姑娘们?