Signs of Life | Hazlitt
Born in India and raised in Canada, Raksha Vasudevan is a writer, economist and former aid ...
Raksha Vasudevan 出生于印度，在加拿大长大，是一位作家、经济学家和前援助...
“Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.” —Andre Breton, The Surrealist Manifesto
“亲爱的想象力，我最喜欢你的是你不留情面的品质。” ——安德烈·布雷顿，《超现实主义宣言》
Hamade’s voice stayed warm and steady, even when he told us, “Four mortars last night.
哈马德的声音始终温暖而稳定，即使他告诉我们：“昨晚有四门迫击炮。
Thirty dead.” And later, “They will bomb the camp hospital today.”
死了三十人。”随后，“他们今天将轰炸营地医院。”
I wondered how he did it, how his voice could soothe even as it shocked.
我想知道他是怎么做到的，他的声音如何在震惊的同时还能舒缓情绪。
Maybe if I understood that, I’d stop flinching when he spoke.
也许如果我明白这一点，当他说话时我就不会畏缩了。
Pauline and Matej must know; Pauline’s face stayed smooth, Matej’s voice brisk.
宝琳和马泰肯定知道；宝琳的脸色保持平静，马泰的声音轻快。
“Where?
“哪里？
How did you hear?
你怎么听到的？
Which groups?”
哪些组？”
From our apartment in Turkey, Matej wanted to know everything happening across the border in Syria: Hamade’s sources, the exact locations of anticipated attacks, which groups were planning air strikes and which were retreating to the rubble of villages already destroyed by war.
在我们位于土耳其的公寓里，马泰伊想了解叙利亚边境发生的一切：哈马德的消息来源、预期袭击的确切地点、哪些团体正在计划空袭以及哪些团体正在撤退到已经被战争摧毁的村庄废墟中。
He—we—needed details if our teams were to keep working, keep trying to stem the country’s flood of losses.
如果我们的团队要继续工作、继续努力阻止国家大量损失，他——我们——需要细节。
Outside, the sun was rising, seeping through our lacy curtains.
外面，太阳正在升起，透过我们的花边窗帘。
In Syria, forty-five kilometres to the east, it lit up the Great Mosque of Aleppo, its marbled prayer hall blackened by rocket-propelled grenades.
在叙利亚以东四十五公里处，它照亮了阿勒颇大清真寺，其大理石祈祷大厅被火箭弹熏黑。
Syrians kept praying there anyway, the crowns of their heads kissing daylight and ruined stone.
不管怎样，叙利亚人仍然在那里祈祷，他们的头顶亲吻着阳光和废墟的石头。
Elsewhere in the country, it warmed the faces blinking awake in makeshift camps.
在该国其他地方，它温暖了临时营地中眨着眼睛清醒的面孔。
Warmed, too, the hands of bakers, already at work kneading manakish bread.
面包师们的双手也变得温暖起来，他们已经在揉捏马纳基什面包了。
Even in a war, signs of life.
即使在战争中，也有生命的迹象。
As the day went on, death tolls rising, I tried to hold onto this.
随着时间一天天过去，死亡人数不断上升，我试图抓住这一点。
In the spring of 2014, I moved to Antakya, a border town in southern Turkey.
2014年春天，我搬到了土耳其南部边境小镇安塔基亚。
In normal times, Antakya was only an hour from Syria, a smooth and lovely drive lined with cypress trees and small villages of stone.
正常情况下，安塔基亚距叙利亚仅一小时路程，道路平坦而美丽，两旁种满了柏树和石头建成的小村庄。
But that time was not normal.
但那段时间并不正常。
The war between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and rebel groups was stretching into its third year.
叙利亚总统巴沙尔·阿萨德政权与叛乱组织之间的战争已进入第三个年头。
I heard that road was still pretty to drive, but not exactly pleasant, and definitely not relaxing, surveilled as it was by drones, soldiers, and a dozen militias, all relentlessly watching and waiting for one wrong move.
我听说那条路开起来还是很漂亮的，但不是很愉快，也绝对不放松，因为它受到无人机、士兵和十几名民兵的监视，所有人都在无情地注视着，等待着一个错误的举动。
One wrong move—in a sense, that’s what I was there to prevent.
一个错误的举动——从某种意义上说，这就是我在那里要防止的。
My employer, a French humanitarian agency, operated in Syria’s northern Idlib province, providing assisted walking devices and rehabilitation therapy to civilians who’d lost limbs in the fighting.
我的雇主是一家法国人道主义机构，在叙利亚北部伊德利卜省开展业务，为在战斗中失去肢体的平民提供步行辅助设备和康复治疗。
Recently, they had also started a risk education program.
最近，他们还启动了风险教育计划。
Mortars, shells, and rockets that didn’t detonate on landing had become a sight so common, Syrians stopped avoiding them, believing them to be like all other debris of war: the rubble of collapsed buildings, the bullet-ridden walls, the downed power lines.
着陆时没有爆炸的迫击炮、炮弹和火箭已经变得如此常见，叙利亚人不再回避它们，认为它们就像所有其他战争废墟一样：倒塌的建筑物的瓦砾、弹痕累累的墙壁、倒塌的电线。
Harmless—if hideous—relics.
无害——尽管丑陋——的遗迹。
The damage, they believed, was already done.
他们相信，损害已经造成。
They were wrong.
他们错了。
In 2013, the UN gave up counting Syria’s casualties.
2013年，联合国放弃统计叙利亚伤亡人数。
But the number who escaped a bombing or airstrike only to later be killed or injured by an innocent-looking scrap of metal was in the thousands—maybe tens of thousands.
但逃离爆炸或空袭却后来被看似无辜的金属碎片炸死或炸伤的人数达数千人，甚至数万人。
Risk education helped civilians recognize the devices for what they still were: objects of war, to be avoided at all costs.
风险教育帮助平民认识到这些设备仍然是战争对象，需要不惜一切代价避免。
It was public health in a war zone—and I was in charge of it.
这是战区的公共卫生问题——而我负责它。
But the closest I’d get to the war was this apartment in Antakya, full of frightening, eccentric details: blood-red ceilings, a statue of a snarling monkey in the entryway.
但我最接近战争的地方是安塔基亚的这间公寓，里面充满了可怕、古怪的细节：血红色的天花板，入口处有一尊咆哮的猴子雕像。
In my room, a Barbie nightlamp, except Barbie’s face was stretched too wide, her smile taking on freakish proportions reminiscent of the Joker.
我的房间里有一盏芭比娃娃夜灯，只是芭比娃娃的脸拉得太宽，她的微笑呈现出怪异的比例，让人想起小丑。
And in the living room, a low-dangling rusted chandelier, its few remaining crystals gaudy and tinkering.
客厅里有一盏低垂的、生锈的枝形吊灯，仅剩的几颗水晶华丽而修补。
Underneath, Matej and Pauline, my colleagues and housemates, usually hunched over their laptops, casting huge shadows on walls painted a dark, ominous purple.
在下面，我的同事和室友马泰和波琳通常弯腰坐在笔记本电脑前，在漆成暗紫色的墙壁上投下巨大的阴影。
I tried not to hate it.
我试着不去讨厌它。
Not only did I have no choice but to live here, but from the ghoulish living room that doubled as an office, I also managed, remotely, a team of twelve Syrian risk educators.
我不仅别无选择只能住在这里，而且在兼作办公室的可怕客厅里，我还远程管理着一个由 12 名叙利亚风险教育者组成的团队。
I’d had the same job in Mali, except there, in the desert town of Sévaré, I’d been up-close, traveling every week to the nearby camps of IDP s—internally displaced people—refugees in their own country.
我在马里也做过同样的工作，只不过在那里，在沙漠小镇塞瓦雷，我每周都近距离地前往附近的国内流离失所者营地，那里是他们自己国家的难民。
But that wasn’t possible here: foreigners were not allowed in Syria.
但这在这里是不可能的：外国人不允许进入叙利亚。
I had no idea how to do this—how to ensure others’ safety without ever putting mine on the line.
我不知道该怎么做——如何确保别人的安全而不让我自己陷入危险。
How to manage a team I’d never meet.
如何管理一个我从未见过的团队。
How to be the aid worker I’d always dreamed of—working to stanch the greatest humanitarian crisis our generation had seen—without ever encountering the crisis itself.
如何成为我一直梦想的援助工作者——努力平息我们这一代所见过的最严重的人道主义危机——而无需遭遇危机本身。
I was twenty-six.
我当时二十六岁。
I’d never had to contend with the limits of my body, my dreams, my reality.
我从来没有必要与我的身体、我的梦想和我的现实的限制作斗争。
For Freud and the surrealists of the post-war period, the line between reality and dreams was an artificial one, an arbitrary division carved by the forces of rationalism and convention undergirding Western society.
对于弗洛伊德和战后时期的超现实主义者来说，现实与梦想之间的界限是人为的，是由支撑西方社会的理性主义和传统力量所刻画的任意划分。
To these intellectuals, dreams—including daydreams, dreams born in sleep, and nightmares—showed us our hidden desires and demons.
对于这些知识分子来说，梦——包括白日梦、睡眠中的梦和噩梦——向我们展示了我们隐藏的欲望和恶魔。
It was up to us to listen, to reshape our reality towards what we really wanted, and to meet with grace and conviction what we most feared.
我们有责任倾听，将现实重塑为我们真正想要的，并以优雅和信念面对我们最害怕的事情。
Ultimately, they saw dreams as a means for remaking the world.
最终，他们将梦想视为重塑世界的一种手段。
The days in Antakya began with a security briefing, the three of us crowding around Matej’s phone, taking care not to brush against each other as we rubbed the sleep from our eyes.
在安塔基亚的日子从安全简报开始，我们三个人围在马特吉的手机周围，一边揉着睡意，一边小心翼翼地不要互相碰触。
We might hear each other’s snores and farts through the thin walls at night but in the daytime, we were humanitarians.
晚上，我们可能会透过薄薄的墙壁听到彼此的鼾声和放屁声，但在白天，我们是人道主义者。
Professionals.
专业人士。
On the phone, Hamade, who spoke the best English of the Syrians, recounted the previous night’s fatalities: “Two families dead.
哈马德在电话中讲述了叙利亚人中最好的英语，他讲述了前一天晚上的死亡事件：“两个家庭死亡。
A third is missing.
第三个失踪了。
They are still digging through the wreckage.” Then, calm as always, he forecasted the casualties of the day ahead.
他们仍在废墟中挖掘。”然后，他一如既往地冷静地预测了未来一天的伤亡情况。
By that point, every town in the rebel-held province of Idlib had designated marasid, civilians who intercepted communications between government pilots and airbases.
到那时，叛军控制的伊德利卜省的每个城镇都指定了马拉西德平民，他们拦截政府飞行员和空军基地之间的通信。
If an impending strike was discovered, the town’s mosques broadcast warnings on their loudspeakers.
如果发现即将发生的罢工，该镇的清真寺就会通过扬声器发出警告。
Based on this intelligence, the Syrian team suggested an itinerary for the day, which camps they would visit, and which they would avoid.
根据这些情报，叙利亚团队建议了当天的行程，他们将参观哪些营地，以及将避开哪些营地。
Within the camps, the men usually went to hospitals and rehabilitation centres, and the women to makeshift schools and homes, often built of tin sheets and empty grain sacks.
在难民营内，男人通常去医院和康复中心，女人则去临时学校和房屋，这些学校和房屋通常是用锡纸和空粮袋建造的。
Like street preachers, they sermonized to all who passed by, showing them picture after picture of deformed missiles and firearms, warning of their dangers, their potential for all types of death: painful and long, painful and quick, painful to the point where time lost all meaning, all sense.
就像街头传教士一样，他们向所有路过的人布道，向他们展示一张又一张变形导弹和枪支的图片，警告它们的危险，它们可能造成各种类型的死亡：痛苦而漫长，痛苦而迅速，痛苦到时间失去所有意义、所有意义。
And of course, before letting their congregants go, they exhorted them to spread the word among their kith and kin.
当然，在让他们的会众离开之前，他们劝告他们在他们的亲友中传播这一信息。
At the end of each day, the Syrians sent photos from the camps, blurry images of dark eyes, water boiled over a fire of twigs, earthen floors turned muddy with rain.
每天结束时，叙利亚人都会发送来自难民营的照片，模糊的图像包括黑色的眼睛、树枝火上沸腾的水、泥土地板被雨水弄得泥泞。
Sometimes, an unexploded grenade, casually sitting next to someone’s tent.
有时，一枚未爆炸的手榴弹，随意地放在某人的帐篷旁边。
Sometimes, a scarred face, a stump.
有时，一张伤痕累累的脸，一个残肢。
Though I knew they were coming, the images were still a shock after a day spent before my screen, coordinating with other humanitarian agencies in Idlib, completing expense reports and updating budgets, and nagging headquarters for the steel-toed boots and solar-powered printers our teams desperately needed.
尽管我知道他们会来，但在我的屏幕前花了一天时间与伊德利卜的其他人道主义机构协调、完成费用报告和更新预算、并不断向总部索取我们团队迫切需要的钢头靴子和太阳能打印机后，这些图像仍然令人震惊。
Sometimes, as I mechanically crossed things off my to-do list, I almost forgot about the war, about the fraught project of survival for every Syrian still inside Syria, a survival which was not at all guaranteed, but an hourly gamble.
有时，当我机械地把事情从待办事项清单上划掉时，我几乎忘记了战争，忘记了每个仍在叙利亚境内的叙利亚人的生存计划，这种生存根本没有保证，而是一场每小时的赌博。
When the photos came, I looked at each one for a long time.
当照片来的时候，我每一张都看了很长时间。
Next to me, my mug of Turkish coffee turned cold.
我旁边的土耳其咖啡杯变冷了。
From outside, I could hear the laughter of children released from school, could smell the Turkish pide they munched on their way home.
从外面，我可以听到放学的孩子们的笑声，可以闻到他们回家路上咀嚼的土耳其臭味。
In those moments, looking at a life and landscape so alien from the one I inhabited, the distance to Syria felt enormous, almost too vast for my mind to grasp.
在那些时刻，看着与我所居住的生活和风景如此陌生的生活和风景，到叙利亚的距离感觉非常遥远，几乎太遥远了，以至于我的头脑无法理解。
The fact of physical proximity seemed absurd—not false per se, but something else, something in that grey zone between truth and fiction.
物理上接近的事实似乎很荒谬——本身并不是错误的，而是其他的东西，是介于真实与虚构之间的灰色地带的东西。
It felt, perhaps, surreal.
也许感觉很超现实。
According to Merriam-Webster , surreal is the term most often-looked up by Americans and Canadians after tragedies: 9/11, the Boston Marathon bombing, COVID -19.
根据韦氏词典，超现实主义是美国人和加拿大人在悲剧发生后最常提及的术语：9/11、波士顿马拉松爆炸案、新冠肺炎 -19。
The urge for clarity—for a logical articulation of what we’re experiencing, of a world suddenly beyond our understanding—is never stronger than in moments of tragedy.
在悲剧时刻，人们对清晰的渴望——对我们正在经历的事情、对一个突然超出我们理解的世界的逻辑清晰的表达——的渴望从未像现在这样强烈。
Of course, by definition, tragedy refuses logic, living in a space beyond comprehension, beyond fairness, beyond reason.
当然，根据定义，悲剧拒绝逻辑，生活在一个无法理解、超越公平、超越理性的空间。
Today, I walked Kurtuluş Caddesı, the city’s central avenue.
今天，我漫步在城市的中央大道库尔图卢斯卡德西 (Kurtuluş Caddesı) 上。
It’s lined with palm trees that always seem out of place to me, tone-deaf in their presence.
它两旁都是棕榈树，对我来说，它们总是显得格格不入，对它们的存在感到五音不全。
They belong in some tropical vacation destination, Miami or Cuba maybe, not on a busy commercial street, not in a city so close to war.
它们属于某个热带度假胜地，也许是迈阿密或古巴，而不是在繁忙的商业街上，也不在一个如此接近战争的城市。
Here, I hunt for supplies to be smuggled over the border: first aid kits, flashlights, steel-toed boots to protect the team from stray mortars blowing off their feet.
在这里，我寻找可以走私过境的物资：急救包、手电筒、保护队员免受流弹袭击的钢头靴子。
For the most part, I blend in: the war has made Antakya cosmopolitan, refugees and aid workers walking the same streets as diplomats and housewives.
在很大程度上，我融入其中：战争使安塔基亚变得国际化，难民和援助人员与外交官和家庭主妇走在同一条街上。
But today, for the first time, I encountered suspicion.
但今天，我第一次遇到了怀疑。
I was trying to get flyers with pictures of ERW —explosive remnants of war—printed for the teams to distribute.
我试图将印有战争遗留爆炸物（ERW）照片的传单打印出来供各小组分发。
The shop owner, beard henna-ed orange to mark a recent pilgrimage to Hajj, squinted at me.
店主眯着眼睛看着我，他的胡子染上了橙色，以纪念最近的朝觐。
“You going over there to fight, my daughter?” he asked.
“我的女儿，你要去那里打架吗？”他问道。
I fled.
我逃走了。
Outside, the roundabout clogged with afternoon traffic.
外面，环形交叉路口下午交通堵塞。
Beyond the city, the Nur Mountains rose, freshly green from spring showers.
城市之外，努尔山脉拔地而起，在春雨的滋润下呈现出新绿。
I thought of you—how you love the scent of air heavy with rain, that time we got caught in an afternoon thunderstorm coming back from hiking in the Juras, the way your hair curled in the damp.
我想起了你——你是多么喜欢那充满雨意的空气的味道，那次我们从侏罗山徒步回来时遇到了下午的雷雨，你的头发在潮湿中卷曲的样子。
That last part was a lie.
最后一部分是谎言。
Looking at the Nur Mountains, I’d thought not of S, but of how many people would die that day on the other side of those hills.
看着努尔山，我想到的不是S，而是那天有多少人会死在那些山的另一边。
I’d guessed fifteen.
我猜是十五个。
Later, I learned it was eighteen.
后来我才知道已经十八了。
Close , I thought, and felt strangely proud—until my mind caught up to my thoughts and I wretched, folding in half and heaving and nothing coming out, nothing at all.
很接近了，我想，感到一种奇怪的自豪——直到我的思绪追上了我的想法，我可怜巴巴地，折叠成两半，用力喘气，但什么也没有出来，什么也没有。
The term surreal tends to evoke surrealism , a style often associated with European artists like Dali and Magritte.
超现实这个词往往会让人想起超现实主义，这种风格通常与达利和马格里特等欧洲艺术家联系在一起。
In his best-known work, “The Persistence of Memory,” Dali foregrounds melting clocks against the cliffs of his native Catalonia.
在他最著名的作品《记忆的永恒》中，达利将家乡加泰罗尼亚悬崖上融化的时钟作为前景。
Magritte, in his “Personal Values,” barely contains a giant comb, drinking glass, and matchstick within walls of sky.
马格利特在他的《个人价值观》中，天空之墙内几乎没有一把巨大的梳子、水杯和火柴棍。
And Cuban-born Wifredo Lam’s “The Jungle” depicts monster-like creatures, part-human, part-animal, that simultaneously emerge from and merge with a dense wall of vegetation.
出生于古巴的 Wifredo Lam 的《丛林》描绘了半人半动物的怪物般的生物，它们同时从茂密的植被墙中出现并与之融合。
The power of surrealist art lies in how it renders the familiar bizarre—in the dissonance it exposes between the real and impossible.
超现实主义艺术的力量在于它如何将熟悉的事物变得怪异——在于它揭露了真实与不可能之间的不和谐。
Such juxtapositions produce contradictory emotions in us: confusion, anger, desire, dread, each amplifying instead of nullifying the other, pushing us into new, uncanny territory.
这种并置在我们体内产生了矛盾的情绪：困惑、愤怒、欲望、恐惧，每一种情绪都放大而不是抵消另一种情绪，将我们推入新的、不可思议的领域。
Not exactly real, but something more, or something beyond.
不完全真实，但有更多的东西，或者超越的东西。
Just like in a dream, time was slippery in Antakya.
就像在梦中一样，安塔基亚的时间很滑。
There were no weekends: we worked every day, all the time.
没有周末：我们每天都在工作。
We wore pyjamas at all hours, the coffeemaker always dripping, the trash perpetually full, hummus-smeared plates piling in the sink.
我们整天都穿着睡衣，咖啡机总是滴水，垃圾永远装满，沾满鹰嘴豆泥的盘子堆在水槽里。
My butt was always numb from sitting, my brain tender and cottony.
我的屁股总是因为坐着而麻木，我的大脑又软又软。
The purple walls were a permanent dusk.
紫色的墙壁是永久的黄昏。
Only Saturdays stood out.
只有星期六比较突出。
Every Saturday, I updated an Excel sheet tracking the numbers of Syrian men, women, and children our team had “educated” that week.
每个星期六，我都会更新一份 Excel 表格，记录我们团队在那周“接受教育”的叙利亚男性、女性和儿童的数量。
Also, the number of men, women, and children reported hurt or killed by ERW , explosive remnants of war.
此外，据报道，有多少男性、女性和儿童因战争遗留爆炸物（ERW）（战争遗留爆炸物）而受伤或死亡。
The cells tallying injuries and death were cumulative, rising over the months I was there from hundreds to thousands.
统计受伤和死亡的细胞是累积的，在我在那里的几个月里，从数百个增加到数千个。
Once, after updating the cell for “children reported dead from ERW ” and watching it clock in at an even 1000, I sat unmoving.
有一次，在更新了“据报告死于战争遗留爆炸物的儿童”的单元格后，看着它的时钟显示为 1000，我一动不动地坐着。
My chest seemed to fill with concrete, heavy and irreversible.
我的胸口似乎充满了混凝土，沉重且不可逆转。
When I finally managed to get up, I walked to the kitchen, turned on the faucet to full blast and stuck my mouth under it, swallowing icy water until I thought I might choke.
当我终于站起来时，我走到厨房，把水龙头开到最大，把嘴埋在水龙头下，吞下冰冷的水，直到我觉得自己可能会窒息。
And still, I kept gulping.
尽管如此，我还是继续咽口水。
Only when I raised my head did I see Pauline standing by the fridge, about to bite into a sandwich.
当我抬起头时，我才看到宝琳站在冰箱旁，正要咬一块三明治。
“Bad day?” she asked.
“糟糕的一天？”她问道。
I knew she didn’t expect an answer.
我知道她并不期待得到答案。
We both knew there were no good days here.
我们都知道这里日子不好过。
But I was learning some days were darker than others, dark enough to make you forget what the light looked like, its warmth on your skin.
但我了解到有些日子比其他日子更暗，黑暗到让你忘记光线是什么样子，忘记它在你皮肤上的温暖。
Modern horror movies are profoundly influenced by surrealism.
现代恐怖电影深受超现实主义的影响。
Hitchcock, for example, hired Dali to help design a dream sequence in his film Spellbound , scenes leaking with slashed eyeballs, rigged card games, and a cliffside morphing into a menacing face.
例如，希区柯克聘请达利帮助设计他的电影《魔咒》中的梦幻场景，其中包括眼球被割伤、被操纵的纸牌游戏以及悬崖边变成一张凶恶面孔的场景。
Without surrealism, art critic and writer Jonathon Jones argues, we wouldn’t have “that inexplicable vein of cinema in which the physical world is violent, erotic.” But to him, the essence of horror is not in flesh-eating monsters or the murderer with the bloody knife.
艺术评论家兼作家乔纳森·琼斯认为，如果没有超现实主义，我们就不会有“那种令人费解的电影风格，其中物质世界是暴力的、色情的”。但对他来说，恐怖的本质并不在于食肉怪物，也不在于持血刀的凶手。
It lies in the tension between those things and the oblivious protagonists, blithely going about their days.
它存在于这些事物与那些无知的主角之间的紧张关系中，他们快乐地过着自己的日子。
The best horror, in other words, is where the mundane meets the monstrous.
换句话说，最好的恐怖就是平凡与可怕的相遇。
And this collision disorients, altering our reality—maybe momentarily, maybe forever.
这种碰撞使我们迷失方向，改变了我们的现实——也许是暂时的，也许是永远的。
In my second month in Antakya, I spent most of my days toggling between BBC , Al Jazeera, Kanal D, back to BBC , a quick visit to CNN , Al Jazeera again.
在安塔基亚的第二个月，我大部分时间都在 BBC、半岛电视台、Kanal D 之间切换，然后回到 BBC，再次快速访问 CNN、半岛电视台。
We’d realized these networks sometimes knew of planned attacks in Idlib before our team did, giving us a chance to warn them away before it was too late.
我们意识到这些网络有时比我们的团队更早知道伊德利卜有计划的袭击，这让我们有机会在为时已晚之前警告他们离开。
Sifting through news reports was the most useful thing to do in theory, and the most painful to carry out in reality.
筛选新闻报道在理论上是最有用的事情，但在现实中执行起来却是最痛苦的。
Imagine: day after day, looking at children’s faces twisted in fear, bodies unconscious in hospital beds, anonymous heads wrapped in bloody bandages.
想象一下：日复一日，看着孩子们因恐惧而扭曲的脸，医院病床上失去知觉的尸体，无名的头颅缠着血迹斑斑的绷带。
Other times, it was live footage of tanks rolling through deserted streets, the buildings Swiss-cheesed with bullet holes.
其他时候，则是坦克驶过荒凉街道的现场镜头，瑞士奶酪般的建筑物上布满弹孔。
Once in while, a picture of a family huddled in some dark corner appeared, their few belongings scattered around them—blankets, a yellow duck toy, a Quran.
偶尔会出现一张家庭挤在某个黑暗角落的照片，他们的几件物品散落在周围——毯子、黄色的鸭子玩具、一本《古兰经》。
I’d seen some variation of these images on the news throughout my life—but this hit differently, a fist to the throat.
在我的一生中，我在新闻中看到过这些图像的一些变体——但这一次的打击不同，就像是拳头打在喉咙上。
After just a month, I could understand some of the Arabic that Syrians used in interviews.
仅仅一个月后，我就能听懂叙利亚人在采访中使用的一些阿拉伯语。
Layl.
莱尔.
Night.
夜晚。
Qatala .
卡塔拉。
Killed.
被杀了。
Allah yusaeiduna.
真主尤赛杜纳。
God help us.
上帝帮助我们。
I came to recognize the look they wore, a terror that was at once heightened and dulled from years of carnage.
我开始认出他们的表情，一种因多年的屠杀而加剧又减弱的恐惧。
And on a map taped to one of the purple walls, I could pick out the towns under attack—Al-Fu’ah, Kafriya, Saraqib—names that had meant nothing to me just weeks ago.
在一张贴在紫色墙壁上的地图上，我可以辨认出受到攻击的城镇——Al-Fu'ah、Kafriya、Saraqib——几周前这些名字对我来说还毫无意义。
But now, I walked around with those names spilling from my tongue, hoping they still pointed to a place.
但现在，我带着这些名字走来走去，希望它们仍然指向一个地方。
At night, I heard sounds from that other world.
晚上，我听到了来自另一个世界的声音。
It happened gradually.
它是逐渐发生的。
One night, the metallic pings of gunfire.
一天晚上，枪声响起。
Another night, a mortar crashing through a roof.
又一个夜晚，一枚迫击炮击穿了屋顶。
I knew it was bad when I heard helicopter wings chopping the air, just moments before the rockets dropped.
就在火箭坠落前不久，当我听到直升机机翼划破空气的声音时，我知道情况很糟糕。
Whooshh .
嗖嗖。
In the daytime, with sunlight filtering through lace-edged curtains, I could rationalize: Antakya was too far for the noise to travel.
白天，阳光透过花边窗帘，我可以合理地解释：安塔基亚太远了，噪音无法传播。
My brain was simply recreating the sounds from news footage.
我的大脑只是在重现新闻片段中的声音。
But in the dark, I lay very still, the sheets soaked with sweat.
但在黑暗中，我一动不动地躺着，床单都被汗水浸湿了。
I was paralyzed, not by the idea of war coming closer—if that happened, I could run or hide or fight, do something .
我瘫痪了，不是因为战争即将来临的想法——如果发生这种情况，我可以逃跑、躲藏或战斗，做点什么。
No, what frightened me was knowing that the horrors I was imagining, and worse, were happening just an hour away.
不，让我害怕的是我知道我所想象的恐怖，甚至更糟糕的事情，就在一个小时后发生。
Rubble burying, bombs incinerating.
瓦砾掩埋，炸弹焚烧。
Everywhere, endings.
无处不在，结局。
And there was nothing I could do about it.
我对此无能为力。
I was far from war, physically.
从身体上来说，我远离战争。
But still, it wormed into my consciousness, refusing to be brushed away into the realm of things abstract and distant and therefore ignorable.
但它仍然钻进了我的意识，拒绝被带入抽象、遥远、因此可以忽略的事物领域。
Andre Breton, widely regarded as the founder of surrealism as a cultural movement, quotes French poet Pierre Reverdy: “The more the relationship between …
安德烈·布雷顿 (Andre Breton) 被广泛认为是超现实主义文化运动的创始人，他引用法国诗人皮埃尔·雷维尔迪 (Pierre Reverdy) 的话：“……之间的关系越紧密。
juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be—the greater its emotional power and poetic reality.” The greater the poetic reality, the closer it feels—and maybe is— to truth.
并列的现实既遥远又真实，图像越强烈，其情感力量和诗意现实就越大。”诗意的现实越伟大，它感觉上——也许确实是——就越接近真理。
In the camps, our teams in Syria sought out children, easily lured by the glitter and unfamiliar shapes of shazaya.
在难民营中，我们在叙利亚的团队寻找容易被沙扎亚闪闪发光和陌生形状所吸引的儿童。
Shrapnel.
弹片。
They played a game with the kids: whoever could pick out the most objects in pictures that were not safe to play with got damak, Turkish chocolate studded with pistachios.
他们和孩子们玩了一个游戏：谁能从图片中找出最多不安全的物体，就可以获得达马克（damak），一种镶嵌着开心果的土耳其巧克力。
I bought those chocolates.
我买了那些巧克力。
I’d volunteered to do it.
我自愿这么做的。
Making kids happy would make me happy, I’d thought.
我想，让孩子们快乐会让我快乐。
Obviously saving their lives should make a person happy—shouldn’t it?
显然，拯救他们的生命应该让一个人感到高兴，不是吗？
But at the supermarket, standing before stacks of candy, trying to decide which one was tempting enough to stand between a child’s life and early death, my brain melted.
但在超市，站在成堆的糖果前，试图决定哪一颗糖果足以阻止孩子的生命和早逝，我的大脑融化了。
I couldn’t face it.
我无法面对它。
At the store, I drifted away from my body.
在商店里，我渐渐远离了自己的身体。
That’s the only way I know to say it.
这是我知道的唯一表达方式。
From a few feet away, I watched someone who looked like me carefully stack the bars of damak in her basket.
在几英尺外，我看到一个看起来像我的人小心翼翼地把达玛克棒堆放在她的篮子里。
I watched her smile at the cashier eyeing her strangely, this customer buying five pounds of chocolate and nothing else.
我看到她对着收银员微笑，奇怪地看着她，这位顾客只买了五磅巧克力，没有买其他东西。
I trailed a few steps behind as she walked home, calling Hakan, the fixer who smuggled things across the border, crossing ruined fields of cucumber and olive groves by moonlight, his bag heavy with damak and ball point pens.
当她走回家时，我落后了几步，给哈坎打电话，他是一名走私物品过境的掮客，他在月光下穿过被毁坏的黄瓜田和橄榄园，他的包里装满了达马克笔和圆珠笔。
Back at the apartment, my doppelganger smoothed her fingers across the chocolate, their wrappers smooth and cool to the touch.
回到公寓，我的分身用手指抚摸着巧克力，巧克力的包装光滑而凉爽。
I watched her look around to make sure her housemates weren’t watching before grabbing a bar and rushing to my room, bolting the door behind her.
我看着她环顾四周，确保她的室友没有在看，然后抓起一根酒吧，冲进我的房间，把门锁在身后。
Then, I stared as she devoured the whole king size bar—nearly a pound—in a single sitting, not tasting any of it.
然后，我盯着她一口气吃掉了整块特大号的巧克力棒——将近一磅——却没有品尝任何东西。
Later, if not for my churning guts and the wrapper sitting guiltily in the garbage can, I would not know what she’d done.
后来，如果不是我的肠子翻腾，还有那张包装纸愧疚地丢在垃圾桶里，我不会知道她做了什么。
The old thought experiment: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
古老的思想实验：如果一棵树倒在森林里，周围没有人听到，它会发出声音吗？
What about the inverse: what if you hear the tree fall but you’re not in the forest?
反过来呢：如果你听到树倒下的声音但你并不在森林里怎么办？
What if you see loss of life, clearly and viscerally, but death is nowhere close to you?
如果你清楚地、发自内心地看到生命的逝去，但死亡离你却很远，该怎么办？
“I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, ” writes André Breton.
安德烈·布雷顿（André Breton）写道：“我相信，梦想和现实这两种看起来如此矛盾的状态，在未来将会被解决为一种绝对的现实，一种超现实。”
The cultural movement emerging in the aftermath of World War I was built on Breton’s training in psychiatry, including his work with shell-shocked soldiers in a neurological hospital.
第一次世界大战后兴起的文化运动是建立在布雷顿的精神病学训练基础上的，包括他在神经医院对炮弹休克症士兵的工作。
To him, distinguishing the “real” from the imagined or misremembered was both impossible and unnecessary.
对他来说，将“真实”与想象或错误记忆区分开来既不可能又没有必要。
Our imaginings—no matter how bizarre or implausible—were as much a part of our selves and the world as what our brains categorized as “real.”
我们的想象——无论多么奇怪或难以置信——就像我们的大脑归类为“真实”的东西一样，是我们自我和世界的一部分。
Breton would be adamant that the tree falling made a sound, regardless of who did or did not witness it.
布雷顿坚持认为树倒下会发出声音，无论谁目睹或没有目睹。
He’d argue, too, that death at a distance was as real as death close up.
他还认为，远处的死亡和近距离的死亡一样真实。
Not in usual terms, but absolute terms—surreal terms.
不是用通常的术语，而是绝对的术语——超现实的术语。
That is to say, imagined events are rendered real by our reaction to them, whether that reaction is just a sigh, a flinch, or something more permanent: an altering of our neural pathways, a shift in our body’s rhythms.
也就是说，想象中的事件通过我们对它们的反应而变得真实，无论这种反应只是叹息、退缩，还是更持久的东西：我们的神经通路的改变，我们身体节律的改变。
A break in how we experience the world.
我们体验世界的方式的突破。
On Sundays, I Skyped with S.
周日，我通过 Skype 与 S 进行通话。
So I wouldn’t be overheard, I went to a café in the old town known for its kunefe, a local dessert made from semolina and sweet cheese, warm and heavy enough to make me drowsy.
为了不被人无意中听到，我去了老城区的一家咖啡馆，以 kunefe 闻名，这是一种用粗面粉和甜奶酪制成的当地甜点，温暖而沉重，足以让我昏昏欲睡。
S’s face, when it appeared on my laptop, jolted me awake.
当S的脸出现在我的笔记本电脑上时，我被惊醒了。
As the war took up more space in my mind, thoughts of him got pushed out.
随着战争在我脑海中占据了越来越多的空间，关于他的想法就被排除在外了。
Until, in the middle of the night, listening for barrel bombs or god-knows-what-else, I’d remember him, the calluses on his hand or the curve of his neck, and just for a moment, I’d relax.
直到半夜，听着桶装炸弹或天知道还有什么其他声音，我会想起他，想起他手上的老茧或他脖子上的曲线，有那么一刻，我会放松下来。
My jaw unclenched, my shoulders melted away from my ears.
我的下巴张开，肩膀从耳朵上融化了。
Sometimes, I wondered if I’d made him up, a sweet distraction for my darkest moments.
有时候，我想知道他是不是我编造的，在我最黑暗的时刻，这是一个甜蜜的消遣。
But on Saturdays, there he was on my screen, his beard longer than last time, his hair falling into his eyes.
但到了周六，他就会出现在我的屏幕上，他的胡子比上次更长，头发垂到眼睛里。
With him, I tried to keep it light, upbeat.
和他在一起时，我尽量保持轻松、乐观的态度。
“What you do for work is amazing,” he’d said when we first met.
“你所做的工作真是太棒了，”我们第一次见面时他说道。
“Not many people would do that.” And then he’d kissed me.
“没有多少人会这么做。”然后他吻了我。
Would he still kiss me if he knew I was walking around half-alive, flinching away from my work, sometimes departing my body?
如果他知道我半死不活地走来走去，逃避工作，有时甚至离开我的身体，他还会吻我吗？
I didn’t think so.
我不这么认为。
Instead, I told S about my favourite person here, Jwan, the finance assistant.
相反，我告诉 S 我最喜欢的人是财务助理 Jwan。
He and his mother had crossed over from Syria two years ago.
他和他的母亲两年前从叙利亚越境过来。
He hated Turkey, hated the language and the cramped apartment he and his mother shared with a Turkish family.
他讨厌土耳其，讨厌这种语言，也讨厌他和母亲与土耳其家庭住在一起的狭小公寓。
He came to our place every few days, mostly to escape his packed home, to struggle with me through budgets and procurement orders.
他每隔几天就来我们家一次，主要是为了逃离挤满人的家，和我一起讨论预算和采购订单。
“What should I put as the ‘reason for expense’ for your phone bill?” he asked once, smirking.
“我应该把什么作为你电话账单的‘费用原因’？”有一次他笑着问道。
“Um, you have to coordinate the teams?
“嗯，你必须协调团队？
Like, that’s literally your job?”
就像，这真的是你的工作吗？”
We laughed, rolling our eyes.
我们笑了，翻白眼。
This bureaucratic administrative crap had no place in a war zone, we huffed.
我们恼怒地说，这种官僚行政垃圾在战区没有立足之地。
But secretly, I enjoyed these tasks.
但私下里，我很享受这些任务。
They were the only times I felt to be real.
这是我唯一感到真实的时候。
In our ugly purple living room, filling out spreadsheets and giggling with Jwan, life felt like something I could hold in my palm.
在我们丑陋的紫色客厅里，填写电子表格并与 Jwan 一起咯咯地笑，生活感觉就像我可以握在手掌中一样。
Another time, I told S how most nights, Matej, Pauline, and I watched The Penguins of Madagascar , a cartoon about four penguins carrying out bizarre commando missions to protect their home in the Central Park Zoo.
还有一次，我告诉 S，大多数晚上，我和 Matej、Pauline 都会观看《马达加斯加的企鹅》，这部动画片讲述的是四只企鹅执行奇异的突击队任务，以保护它们在中央公园动物园的家园。
Over three seasons, they battled a lemur with a foot fetish, a stoned alligator, a shamanic baboon—the list went on.
在三个赛季中，他们与恋足癖的狐猴、被石头砸死的鳄鱼、萨满狒狒——这样的例子不胜枚举。
We laughed so hard at Penguins that we cried, snot streaking our faces.
我们对着企鹅笑得很厉害，以至于哭了，鼻涕在脸上流淌。
It was such a release—maybe because it was the only one we had.
这是一个这样的版本——也许是因为它是我们唯一的版本。
The three of us never talked about our feelings—or anything, really, aside from work.
我们三个人从来没有谈论过我们的感受——或者说除了工作之外的任何事情。
I was glad for our silences, the places we didn’t go.
我为我们的沉默和我们没有去过的地方感到高兴。
I was afraid I’d either scream primally or sob hysterically if we ever discussed how it really felt to work and eat and sleep and shit in this garish apartment, far from everyone we loved, acting as glorified personal assistants to the people doing the real work on the ground, just an hour—an impossible hour—away, in one of the most brutal conflicts of the century.
我担心，如果我们讨论过在这间花哨的公寓里工作、吃饭、睡觉和拉屎的真实感受，我担心我要么原始地尖叫，要么歇斯底里地哭泣，远离我们所爱的每个人，充当在实地做真正工作的人们的光荣私人助理，距离我们只有一个小时——一个不可能的小时——距离，在本世纪最残酷的冲突之一。
No, we couldn’t talk about those things.
不，我们不能谈论这些事情。
So, instead, we watched Penguins.
因此，我们观看了《企鹅》。
When S spoke, I watched his eyebrows, remembering how they felt under my fingers, and his teeth, white and slightly turned out like a chipmunk.
当S说话时，我看着他的眉毛，回忆着它们在我手指下的感觉，还有他的牙齿，洁白，有点像花栗鼠。
I had to be careful with how much of him I took in.
我必须小心我接受了他多少。
It was too easy to want his life, plump with ease and impulse.
想要他的生活太容易了，因为他的生活充满了安逸和冲动。
I wanted to stop for hot jalebi on the way home for work.
我想在回家上班的路上停下来吃热的贾莱比。
I wanted to go to dinner at Mumbai’s hottest new restaurant.
我想去孟买最热门的新餐厅吃晚饭。
I wanted to take the train across fields of rice and sugarcane.
我想坐火车穿过稻田和甘蔗田。
I wanted to be with him, doing those things together.
我想和他在一起，一起做那些事情。
But I couldn’t.
但我不能。
I was here, doing the job I’d always dreamed of, even if it was also undoing me.
我在这里，做着我一直梦想的工作，即使这也会毁掉我。
After our Skypes, I meandered back to the apartment, trying to hold onto the memory of S’s face, his baritone still reverberating in my chest.
聊完 Skype 后，我漫步回到公寓，试图牢牢记住 S 的脸，他的男中音仍然在我的胸口回响。
Suddenly, the cobbled streets of the old town looked romantic.
突然间，老城区的鹅卵石街道显得浪漫起来。
Even the Orontes river bisecting the city, dry and foul-smelling, appeared alluring in its promise to return.
就连将这座城市一分为二的奥龙特斯河也干涸且散发着恶臭，但它的回归似乎也很诱人。
But joy couldn’t survive back at the apartment, where the hideous purple walls, the latest news of attacks and my morbid spreadsheet all awaited.
但回到公寓后，喜悦无法延续，可怕的紫色墙壁、最新的袭击消息和我病态的电子表格都在等待着。
As usual, when I entered, Matej and Pauline didn’t look up.
和往常一样，当我进去时，马泰和波琳没有抬头。
I sank into a chair, fighting the urge to bury my head in my hands.
我瘫坐在椅子上，强忍着把头埋进双手的冲动。
What kind of life was this, I wondered?
我想知道这是什么样的生活？
I worried relentlessly for my Syrian team, none of whom I’d met but all of whom I spoke to everyday, who lived close by and forever out of reach.
我无情地为我的叙利亚团队担心，我从未见过他们，但我每天都与他们交谈，他们住在附近，永远遥不可及。
The only two people physically in my life were Matej and Pauline, around whom I spent all my waking hours—but how much did I know of them, and they of me?
我生命中仅有的两个人是马泰和波琳，我醒着的所有时间都在他们身边度过——但我对他们了解多少，他们又对我了解多少？
They knew nothing of S or my life before Antakya.
他们对S和我在安塔基亚之前的生活一无所知。
They didn’t know my mother’s name or that my father left us when I was in high school.
他们不知道我母亲的名字，也不知道我父亲在我上高中时离开了我们。
They didn’t know my favourite smell was sandalwood or my favourite bird, the kingfisher.
他们不知道我最喜欢的气味是檀香或我最喜欢的鸟翠鸟。
I didn’t know anything about their lives or families.
我对他们的生活和家庭一无所知。
We never hugged.
我们从来没有拥抱过。
I hadn’t touched another person in two months.
我已经两个月没有碰过别人了。
It must have been even longer for them.
对他们来说肯定还要更长。
Our real selves, it seemed, were reserved for our “real” lives—wherever those were.
我们真实的自我似乎是为我们的“真实”生活保留的——无论这些生活在哪里。
By the end of my second month, I was constantly imagining the staff I was closest to—Hamade, Jwan, Nivin—dying.
到了第二个月末，我不断地想象着我最亲近的员工——哈马德、贾万、尼文——死去。
Not just dying, but dying violently.
不仅是死，而且是死得很惨。
Shot down in Idlib’s streets or bombed in their homes or obliterated by ERW or, or, or …
在伊德利卜的街道上被击落，在他们的家中被轰炸，或者被战争遗留爆炸物消灭，或者，或者，或者……
No one was safe, no matter how much they knew or how careful they were.
没有人是安全的，无论他们知道多少，无论他们多么小心。
My hands were always cold.
我的手总是冰冷的。
Soon, I stopped sleeping altogether.
很快，我就完全不再睡觉了。
All night long, I looked at Barbie and she looked back.
整个晚上，我看着芭比，她也回头看了我一眼。
Every night, as the sky lightened to dawn, I hurtled between confusion—how could I be haunted by things I’d never experienced?—and shame—was I appropriating others’ tragedies, taking their grief for myself?
每天晚上，当天色渐渐亮明时，我都会陷入困惑——我怎么会被自己从未经历过的事情所困扰？——以及羞愧——我是否在挪用别人的悲剧，把他们的悲伤据为己有？
It was not normal, I thought.
我想，这不正常。
I was not normal.
我本来就不正常。
Matej and Pauline seemed fine.
马泰和波琳看起来很好。
Even the Syrians had adapted.
甚至叙利亚人也已经适应了。
As journalist Rania Abouzeid writes, “The shelling, once unpredictable, was now as regimented as a television viewing guide.
正如记者拉尼娅·阿布扎伊德（Rania Abouzeid）所写，“炮击曾经是不可预测的，现在就像电视观看指南一样受到严格控制。
Syrians called it ‘the nightly schedule.’ It began a little after 11:30 p.m…
叙利亚人称之为“夜间时间表”。它在晚上 11:30 过后不久开始……
.
。
A second, then a third strike, each louder and closer, amplified in a night black because of the lack of electricity and otherwise nearly silent in a neighbourhood emptied of families.”
第二次、然后是第三次罢工，每次都更响亮、更近，由于缺乏电力而在漆黑的夜色中放大，否则在一个空无一人的社区里几乎一片寂静。”
Hamade often told us the fighting had its own logic, a rhythm invisible to outsiders.
哈马德经常告诉我们，战斗有其自身的逻辑，一种外人看不见的节奏。
So, I kept hoping I’d adapt, become used to the cadence of attacks I wasn’t directly exposed to, but that still shaped my days and nights.
所以，我一直希望自己能够适应，习惯那些我没有直接接触到的攻击的节奏，但这仍然影响着我的日日夜夜。
I just had to wait, be patient.
我只能等待，要有耐心。
Let time normalize the unthinkable.
让时间让不可想象的事情正常化。
The unthinkable: Hamade casually announcing a hospital being wiped off the earth.
不可思议的事情：哈马德漫不经心地宣布一家医院将从地球上消失。
Turkish chocolate and (un)dead kids.
土耳其巧克力和（未）死的孩子。
Turkish coffee in hand and satellite imagery of chemical attacks on screen.
手中的土耳其咖啡和屏幕上化学袭击的卫星图像。
Soft tapping of keyboards during the day and detonations rippling through the nights.
白天轻柔的键盘敲击声和夜晚的爆炸声。
In S’s latest email, he’d signed off with “love.” I’d stared at the screen, my fists curling with joy.
在 S 的最新电子邮件中，他以“爱”作为结尾。我盯着屏幕，高兴地握紧了拳头。
A minute later, an email arrived from Hamade.
一分钟后，收到一封来自哈马德的电子邮件。
Nivin, one of the Syrian staff, wouldn’t be working that day, he wrote.
他写道，叙利亚工作人员之一尼文当天不会工作。
The building next to hers had been barrel bombed last night.
她家旁边的大楼昨晚遭到桶式轰炸。
She and her family hadn’t been harmed, Alhamdulillah, but the explosion—the incredible noise and quaking earth and the sheer terror—had caused her to bleed.
她和她的家人没有受到伤害，Alhamdulillah，但是爆炸——令人难以置信的噪音、震动的大地和纯粹的恐惧——让她流血了。
She was seven months pregnant.
她已经怀孕七个月了。
I sat, numb and unmoving for I’m not sure how long—maybe five minutes, maybe fifteen.
我麻木地坐着，一动不动，不知道多久了——也许五分钟，也许十五分钟。
When I clicked back to S’s email, I stared again at the word “love.” Now, I felt nothing, not even a basic recognition.
当我点击返回S的电子邮件时，我再次盯着“爱”这个词。现在，我什么感觉都没有了，连基本的认知都没有了。
I felt like I was reading a language I didn’t know.
我感觉自己正在阅读一种我不懂的语言。
One day, leaving the old town, I saw children lying motionless on the cobblestone.
有一天，离开老城，我看到孩子们一动不动地躺在鹅卵石上。
A moment later, they disappeared.
过了一会儿，他们就消失了。
On the way back, I passed a car and it exploded.
回来的路上，我经过一辆汽车，它爆炸了。
I blinked, and there it was, intact.
我眨了眨眼，它就在那里，完好无损。
Back within the purple walls, I imagined a mortar crashing through the ceiling.
回到紫色的墙壁内，我想象着迫击炮轰击天花板。
I shut my eyes and prayed for respite.
我闭上眼睛，祈祷能得到喘息的机会。
On surrealist images, Breton quoted Baudelaire, “Man does not evoke them; rather they ‘come to him spontaneously, despotically.
关于超现实主义图像，布勒东引用了波德莱尔的话：“人不会唤起它们；相反，它们‘自发地、专制地来到他身边。
He cannot chase them away; for the will is powerless now and no longer controls the faculties.’” To Breton, this was high art, a pure production of the subconscious bypassing the rational mind’s tendency to filter and dilute.
他不能把他们赶走；他不能把他们赶走。因为意志现在无能为力，不再控制能力。”对布列塔尼来说，这是高雅艺术，是潜意识的纯粹产物，绕过了理性思维的过滤和淡化倾向。
But the same helplessness over images that one does not wish to see—the tyrannical or “despotic” way they appear—also characterizes acute PTSD .
但是，对人们不希望看到的图像的同样无助——它们表现出的暴虐或“专制”方式——也是急性创伤后应激障碍的特征。
Psychologists agree that repeated exposure to trauma stories, even if that exposure is only second-hand, leads to a “disrupted world view,” one wherein the world no longer appears benign.
心理学家一致认为，反复接触创伤故事，即使这种接触只是二手的，也会导致“世界观被破坏”，世界看起来不再是良性的。
Now, when I saw people from or on their way to Syria—a woman in full niqab, children spilling out of the Arabic-Turkish language school, men with long beards—I sped up.
现在，当我看到来自叙利亚或正在前往叙利亚的人们时——一个戴着面纱的女人，从阿拉伯语-土耳其语言学校涌出的孩子们，留着长胡子的男人——我加快了速度。
Not because I was afraid of them but because I was starting to grasp that, in addition to the physical distance imposed by law, my sanity hinged on maintaining a mental separation from Syria.
不是因为我害怕他们，而是因为我开始认识到，除了法律规定的身体距离之外，我的理智取决于保持与叙利亚的精神分离。
Before, I’d wanted to get as close as possible—or at least that’s what I’d told myself: a “good” aid worker would try to be as close to crisis as she could, all the better to help alleviate it.
以前，我想尽可能地接近危机——或者至少我是这么告诉自己的：一个“优秀”的援助工作者会尽可能地接近危机，以便更好地帮助缓解危机。
Now, though I was physically removed from tragedy, I suffered like I was at ground zero.
现在，虽然我的身体已经脱离了悲剧，但我的痛苦就像处于零基础一样。
“At any given moment we have only a distinct notion of [separate] realities, the coordination of which is a question of will,” writes Breton.
布雷顿写道：“在任何特定时刻，我们都只有一个[单独的]现实的独特概念，其协调是一个意志问题。”
I no longer willed to hold all these different realities in my mind.
我不再愿意将所有这些不同的现实牢记在心。
Now, I just wanted to be in the future, with S.
现在，我只想和S一起走向未来。
When I didn’t extend my contract, Matej was furious.
当我没有延长合同时，马特很生气。
“What are you going to do that’s more important?” he yelled.
“你打算做什么更重要的事情？”他喊道。
Later, he apologized, but I told him it wasn’t necessary.
后来他道歉了，但我告诉他没有必要。
I had asked myself the same question, with no answer.
我也问过自己同样的问题，但没有答案。
The Syrians were more understanding.
叙利亚人更加理解。
“Your parents will be happy to see you,” Hamade said.
“你的父母会很高兴见到你，”哈马德说。
He was shorter than I’d expected and his eyes were blue, not brown as I’d imagined.
他比我想象的要矮，眼睛是蓝色的，而不是我想象的棕色。
He’d crossed the day before I left to pick up the colour printer that headquarters, after almost three months of my pestering, finally approved.
在我离开的前一天，他过境去取彩色打印机，经过我近三个月的纠缠，总部终于批准了。
Now, the Syrians could print their own materials instead of having them smuggled from Antakya.
现在，叙利亚人可以打印自己的材料，而不是从安塔基亚走私。
I was glad to see Hamade in person, to situate all of him, beyond just his steady voice, in my world.
我很高兴见到哈马德本人，除了他稳定的声音之外，他的一切都出现在我的世界里。
But some distances remained.
但仍然存在一些距离。
I did not tell him, for example, that I was leaving not to see my family but to meet a man I’d only known for a few weeks in “real” life.
例如，我没有告诉他，我离开不是为了见我的家人，而是为了见一个我在“现实”生活中只认识了几个星期的男人。
In the taxi to the airport, my phone pinged with Facebook notifications.
在去机场的出租车上，我的手机收到了 Facebook 的通知。
Friend requests from the Syrians.
来自叙利亚人的好友请求。
I accepted them immediately, clicking hungrily through their photos.
我立即接受了他们，如饥似渴地浏览着他们的照片。
A close-up of someone’s grandmother biting into an apricot, its juices running down her chin.
某人的祖母咬着杏子的特写镜头，杏汁顺着她的下巴流下来。
Jwan standing in an olive grove, hands in his pockets, looking vaguely uncomfortable.
杰万站在橄榄园里，双手插在口袋里，看上去有些不自在。
(“City boy!” I thought, smiling.) Here was Nivin’s newborn, wrinkled pink.
（“城市男孩！”我微笑着想。）这是尼文的新生儿，粉红色的皱纹。
And Hamade standing on a rooftop, collapsed roofs behind him and his two young daughters, porcelain-skinned and smiling beside him.
哈马德站在屋顶上，身后是倒塌的屋顶，他的两个年幼的女儿皮肤白皙，在他身边微笑。
Relief came first, then shame.
首先是宽慰，然后是羞耻。
The Syrians’ realities—at least, as represented on Facebook—were vastly more varied than I’d pictured.
叙利亚人的现实——至少从脸书上来看——比我想象的要多样化得多。
Until then, some part of me had felt morally obligated to imagine their lives under war, shellings and dead children and all, even when those images and sounds went rogue, appearing randomly, not just when I allowed them in.
在那之前，我内心的某些部分觉得在道德上有义务想象他们在战争、炮击和死去的孩子等条件下的生活，即使这些图像和声音变得不正常，随机出现，而不仅仅是当我允许他们进入时。
I’d become trapped in the purest surreality as Breton defined it: “psychic automatism,” my imagination sputtering haphazardly, in every direction.
我陷入了布雷顿所定义的最纯粹的超现实之中：“心灵自动主义”，我的想象力随意地向各个方向飞溅。
All just to get it wrong anyway.
无论如何，一切都只是为了弄错。
Experts agree the best solution to secondary trauma is minimizing exposure.
专家一致认为，解决继发性创伤的最佳方法是尽量减少暴露。
In other words, limiting work hours, leaving your work at work.
换句话说，限制工作时间，把工作留在工作中。
Obviously, living in our office, every waking hour consumed by the war, I never stood a chance.
显然，住在我们的办公室里，每一个醒着的时间都被战争所消耗，我从来没有机会。
Now, I wonder why Matej and Pauline weren’t similarly affected.
现在，我想知道为什么马泰和波琳没有受到类似的影响。
Some experts believe prior trauma, especially in childhood, heightens the risk of secondary trauma later in life.
一些专家认为，先前的创伤，尤其是童年时期的创伤，会增加日后遭受二次创伤的风险。
Now, I can see that I’d been burned out from Mali even before getting to Antakya.
现在，我发现，在到达安塔基亚之前，我就已经在马里筋疲力尽了。
And growing up, I’d had a father who was violent, always at war with us, himself, the world.
在我的成长过程中，我有一个暴力的父亲，总是与我们、他自己、世界交战。
Maybe that history primed me in ways that Matej and Pauline weren’t.
也许这段历史给了我一些启发，而马泰和波琳却没有。
Or maybe they were affected and just hid it, the way we were always hiding our selves from each other.
或者也许他们受到了影响，只是隐藏了它，就像我们总是互相隐藏自己一样。
I’d never know.
我永远不会知道。
After I left, we didn’t stay in touch.
我走后，我们就没有再联系了。
I felt too guilty for leaving to reach out and they were probably too busy, too focused, too dedicated to their work to bother.
我对离开而无法联系他们感到太内疚，而且他们可能太忙、太专注、太专注于他们的工作而无暇打扰。
They were the type of “good” humanitarian I was not: professional in contexts where professionalism seemed almost inhumane.
他们是我所不具备的那种“好”人道主义者：在专业主义似乎几乎不人道的环境中，他们是专业的。
I still imagine them now, slaving away within those purple walls.
我现在仍然想象着他们在那些紫色的墙壁里辛勤劳作。
It would be months before my nightmares abated, before I could talk about Syria or watch news from the Middle East without shrinking.
几个月后，我的噩梦才逐渐减轻，我才能毫不畏缩地谈论叙利亚或观看来自中东的新闻。
Seeing S again helped.
再次见到S有帮助。
We met in Geneva.
我们在日内瓦见面。
One part bliss: S in the flesh, his hands, his mouth.
一份幸福：S在肉身、他的手、他的嘴里。
Geneva in summer, the sunset blush of Lac Leman.
夏季的日内瓦，莱蒙湖的夕阳红晕。
But another part was agony: I saw the Alps and thought of the Nur Mountains, which is to say, I thought of death.
但另一部分是痛苦：我看到了阿尔卑斯山，想到了努尔山，也就是说，我想到了死亡。
S and I ate Swiss chocolate, dark and bitter, but all I could think of was milky-sweet damak, which is to say, all I could think of was death.
我和S吃了瑞士巧克力，又黑又苦，但我能想到的只有乳白色的甜达马克，也就是说，我能想到的只有死亡。
In Antakya, I’d tried so hard to push against the horror creeping into my consciousness.
在安塔基亚，我竭尽全力抵制潜入我意识中的恐惧。
But this time, the sensations weren’t as unbearable, maybe because I actually allowed myself to feel them.
但这一次，这种感觉不再那么难以忍受，也许是因为我真的让自己去感受它们。
Guilty, exhausted, ruined, and glad to be there, with S.
内疚、疲惫、毁灭，但很高兴能和 S 在一起。
A juxtaposition, I was learning, was not always a contradiction.
我了解到，并置并不总是矛盾的。
But after three weeks, S had to return to India.
但三周后，S不得不返回印度。
Perhaps I could go with him, I ventured.
我大胆地说，也许我可以和他一起去。
I had no job lined up and enough savings to last me at least a half year.
我没有找到工作，也没有足够的积蓄维持至少半年的生活。
He touched my face and smiled.
他摸着我的脸笑了。
Then, gently, he told me he didn’t think that was a good idea.
然后，他温和地告诉我，他认为这不是一个好主意。
And just like that, it was over.
就这样，一切都结束了。
“The absolute rationalism that is still in vogue allows us to consider only facts relating directly to our experience,” Breton wrote, nearly 100 years ago.
“仍然流行的绝对理性主义让我们只考虑与我们的经历直接相关的事实，”布雷顿在近 100 年前写道。
This still rings true today.
时至今日，这句话依然成立。
If that’s the case, then Antakya was the closest I came to absolute irrationalism, months coloured by events and people outside my physical reach.
如果是这样的话，那么安塔基亚是我最接近绝对非理性主义的几个月，这几个月的时间被我身体接触不到的事件和人所渲染。
As time went by, I expected my memories of those months, already swaddled in a sort of surreal gauze, to fade.
随着时间的流逝，我预计那几个月的记忆已经被包裹在一种超现实的纱布中，会逐渐消失。
But, instead, the opposite has happened: six years later, my memories of that time have sharpened, skin and skies and walls intensifying into technicolor.
但是，相反的情况却发生了：六年后，我对那段时间的记忆变得更加清晰，皮肤、天空和墙壁都变得色彩斑斓。
Across the years and continents, I can feel the weight of my boredom, my horror, my laughter in Antakya.
跨越岁月和大陆，我能感受到安塔基亚的无聊、恐惧和欢笑的重量。
I can feel the tenderness I was growing for S, its precarity and promise.
我能感受到我对 S 的温柔、它的不稳定和希望。
In fact, I feel closer to all those things now than when I experienced them.
事实上，我现在比经历这些事情时感觉更亲近。
A juxtaposition is not a contradiction; the surreal can be truer than reality.
并置并不是矛盾，而是并置。超现实可能比现实更真实。
Born in India and raised in Canada, Raksha Vasudevan is a writer, economist and former aid worker.
Raksha Vasudevan 出生于印度，在加拿大长大，是一位作家、经济学家和前援助工作者。
Her work appears in Harper’s Bazaar, Guernica, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more.
她的作品出现在《时尚芭莎》、《格尔尼卡》、《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》等杂志上。
She lives in Denver, where she’s writing a memoir about family and the long shadow of colonialism.
她住在丹佛，正在写一本关于家庭和殖民主义长期阴影的回忆录。