雙語新聞鉤沉 | 印巴分治之殤 | 觀察者

In Lahore, trauma of partition’s silent generation slowly comes to light

雙語新聞鉤沉 | 印巴分治之殤 | 觀察者

Samina Akram was 12 when the trains began arriving in Lahore: some with people spilling out of doors and windows, others full of dead bodies. On the roads outside the city, families were arriving on foot or by truck.

拉合爾通火車那年薩米娜·阿克拉姆12歲,火車人滿為患,人們都從門窗溢了出來,有的列車上全是死屍。在城外的路上,人們舉家前來,或徒步,或乘坐卡車。

“There were children who had been left by their mothers,” Akram remembers. “Children with masses of flies on their faces. I’ve never seen so many vultures just waiting to swoop.”

“有孩子被母親拋棄了,”阿克拉姆回憶說。“他們臉上爬滿了蒼蠅,我從沒見過那麼多禿鷲,只等著俯衝下來。”

In one of those trucks was Ibn Abdur Rehman, then 17, whose family had left Hasanpur, 300 miles away in Uttar Pradesh. Shortly after their town had become part of India, a mob descended on his grandfather’s house and massacred scores of his relatives. “There was lawlessness. It was systematic plunder,” Rehman remembered. “Everybody was afraid.”

時年17歲的伊本·阿卜杜勒·拉赫曼就坐在其中一輛卡車上,他的家人從300英里外北方邦的Hasanpur來。他們原來的鎮子劃歸印度後不久,一群暴徒就襲擊了祖父的房子,屠戮了數十名親人。“無法無天,大肆搶劫,”拉赫曼回憶說。“所有人都害怕。”

Lahore, capital of Punjab, became part of Pakistan, having been disputed until the last minute partly because of its large Hindu and Sikh populations. The uncertainty caused tensions to flare, with stabbings, violence and riots across the city. “I was rather apprehensive. One couldn’t feel comfortable,” said Akram.

旁遮普首府拉合爾成了巴基斯坦的一部分,可直到最後一刻仍爭議重重,部分原因是這裡有大量印度教和錫克教人口。局勢未定,於是衝突爆發,各處都是暴力騷亂,持刀傷人事件不斷。“我很擔心,心裡靜不下來。”阿克拉姆說。

As the capital of the Mughal empire from 1524 to 1752, Lahore was a multicultural crossroads. Faith was only one of several markers of identification, until it was imposed in 1947 as the one that determined where people should live.

1524年至1752年間,拉合爾一直是莫臥兒帝國的首都,是多文化的十字路口。信仰不過是多元身份的標誌之一,可到了1947年,卻成為決定人們該在哪裡生活的唯一標準。

Akram is from a Muslim family but had little notion of religious differences. Her first and best friend from the age of three was Mahesh, a Hindu boy who lived across the street. One day in 1947, nine years after they’d met, she returned from a holiday to find his family gone.

阿克拉姆來自穆斯林家庭,她對宗教分歧沒什麼概念。打三歲起,她的第一個、也是最好的玩伴馬赫什是住街對面的印度男孩。二人相識九年,1947年的某天,她度假歸來,發現他家搬走了。

“It was like having an empty space in your heart,” Akram tells the Observer. She still keeps a black-and-white photograph of Mahesh’s family in her bedroom. At 82, she has outlived her army officer husband, but still lives in their beautiful house, built around a garden full of chirping birds.

“心裡空落落的,”阿克拉姆對《觀察者》說。她臥室裡還保留這馬赫什家的黑白照片。她今年82歲了,軍官丈夫已過世,她仍住在他們漂亮的房子裡,四周是花園,鳥語啁啾。

Today, Lahore is a fast-paced, cosmopolitan city, Pakistan’s cultural capital. “If you haven’t seen Lahore, you haven’t been born yet,” goes a saying. But beneath the bustle of 10 million people runs a current of unspoken trauma. The partition generation is shrinking, and few of them have shared their stories. There have been no official efforts to collect their memories of 1947.

今天,拉合爾是一個快節奏的國際化都市,巴基斯坦的文化之都。有句話這麼說,“沒來過拉合爾,白走一世。”可千萬人口熙熙攘攘的背後,掩藏著難以言說的愴痛。分治時那一代人已屈指可數,沒人還記得他們的故事,官方也不去重拾1947年的回憶。

“Partition survivors think their children will never understand what they’ve been through,” says Furrukh Khan a professor at Lahore University who has been interviewing women about partition for 20 years and is now working on a documentary. And children, for their part, are reluctant to ask parents sensitive questions. “Parents are these towering figures,” he says. “We were never able to relate to them.”

“還活著的人覺得,孩子們永遠不會理解他們曾經經歷了什麼,”拉合爾大學教授法魯克·汗說,他二十年來就分治採訪婦女,目前正在製作一部紀錄片。對孩子們而言,他們也不願像父母提敏感性問題。“父母高高在上,”他說,“我們沒法瞭解他們。”

Every year, Pakistan celebrates partition, or Independence Day, with prayers, flag-hoisting, green-and-white coloured clothing, military parades and fireworks across the country. This year, the government had planned to inaugurate a new airport on 14 August, but that has been postponed.

每年,巴基斯坦都慶祝分治,即獨立日,祈禱,升旗,身綠白服飾,閱兵,全國各處放焰火。今年,政府計劃在8月14日啟動一個新機場,可計劃推遲了。

Lahore has no museum of partition. No memorials for those killed. Only in recent years have survivors been asked, in a systematic way, to share their stories. The Citizens’ Archive of Pakistan, a non-profit organisation, has interviewed more than 1,000 survivors and is planning an interactive exhibition at the National History Museum in Lahore. As well as preserving history, these stories capture how overwhelmingly anti-Indian the official state narrative was, says Anam Zakaria, 29, author of a 2015 oral history book, Footprints of Partition.

拉合爾沒有分治博物館,沒有被殺者紀念碑。最近幾年才系統性地組織倖存者說出他們的故事。非營利組織“巴基斯坦公民檔案”採訪了超過1000名倖存者,計劃在拉合爾國家歷史博物館舉辦一次互動展覽。2015年出版的口述史《分治足跡》作者、29歲的阿納姆·扎卡利亞說,除了保存歷史,這些故事充分體現了官方敘事的反印痕跡如此壓倒一切。

Schools don’t teach history, she adds, only Pakistan studies. And because her generation is taught a skewed history, they are often oblivious to what their grandparents know: that people on either side of the border share culture. They are not just separated by tragedy but united in it too.

她說,學校不教歷史,只教巴基斯坦研究。他們這一代人知道的歷史都是歪曲的,多半也不記得祖父母所知道的事,即邊境兩邊的人們其實有共同的文化。悲劇不只將他們一分為二,他們通過悲劇獲得團結。

“The younger generations receive a packaged history,” Zakaria says. Documenting partition experiences is urgent: the generation who saw it is nearly gone. “That’s my biggest fear. They’re the only ones who have a more nuanced view of history.”

Women’s memories and traumas, in particular, remain pent up for decades. “One woman spoke to me about partition for a long time, and fainted afterwards,” Zakaria says.

“年輕一代接受的是包裝過的歷史,”扎卡利亞說。記錄分治時期的故事時不我待:見證了它的那一代人所剩無幾了。“那是我最害怕的事。他們是唯一對歷史的觀感更為細緻的人。”尤其是女性的回憶和愴痛,幾十年來都被掩藏起來。“一個女人和我講述分治歷史,她說了很久很久,最後竟暈了過去,”扎卡利亞說。

The partition nearly doubled Lahore’s population. The exodus of affluent Hindus and Sikhs removed cultural capital, but new communities contributed to the city’s revival. As part of India, Lahore had been a centre of film and newspaper publishing, rivalled by Mumbai and Kolkata, but as part of Pakistan it became a cinematic capital.

分治讓拉合爾人口幾乎翻番。富裕的印度教徒和錫克教徒大批搬離文化之都,新的社群又讓城市復興。印度時期的拉合爾,一直是電影和新聞出版中心,同孟買與加爾各答齊名。歸巴基斯坦後,這裡成為電影之都。

“Habits changed. Food changed,” says Rehman.

“習俗變了,食品變了。”拉赫曼說。

With time, the trauma of 1947 became a source of creativity. Short story writer Saadat Hasan Manto, who came to Lahore from Mumbai in 1948, uses partition prominently in his work. His 1955 story Toba Tek Singh, which tells of a group of mental asylum patients evicted from Pakistan, ends with an old man collapsing in the no man’s land between the two countries.

時過境遷,1947年的愴痛成為創作之源。短篇小說作家薩達特·哈桑·曼託1948年從孟買來到拉合爾,他的作品多涉及分治。1955年故事《託巴特辛》講述了一群被巴基斯坦趕走的精神病院病人的故事,其中一個老人在兩國間的無人區崩潰。

Despite political hostility between India and Pakistan, creeping religious extremism and a degree of lawlessness, Lahore still prides itself on its tolerance. On the border, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs congregate for festivals and pray at the same shrines. “If they opened the gates, people would run towards each other,” says Rehman.

儘管印巴兩國政治上相互敵對,宗教極端主義令人毛骨悚然,還有一點無法無天,拉合爾仍以其寬容為傲。在邊境,穆斯林、印度教徒和錫克教圖共慶節日,在相同的神殿中祈禱。“如果打開邊界大門,人們會跑向彼此。”拉赫曼說。

Like many, he has managed to visit his old house, in Hasanpur. In 1988, it stood unoccupied, bloodstains still painfully visible on the walls.

同許多人一樣,他設法探訪了在Hasanpur的老屋。1988年,那裡還沒有人住,牆上的血跡還看得見,令人心痛。

Akram was reunited with her childhood friend two decades ago. Mahesh Buch was by then an urban planner, known as the modern architect of the city of Bhopal. He died two years ago but in a memoir recalled meeting Akram in Bhopal. The first thing she asked, he wrote, was: “Does Aunty’s [his mum’s] hair still come down to her ankles?”

二十年前,阿克拉姆和她兒時的玩伴重聚。馬赫什·布赫成了一名城市設計師,被譽為博帕爾城的現代設計師。他兩年前過世,回憶錄中提到在博帕爾與阿克拉姆見面的情景。他寫道,她問的第一件事是:“姑姑(她母親)還長髮及膝嗎?”

Then the friends went sightseeing, visiting every corner of the city where Buch had arrived as a child, but which he had, literally, made his own.

後來兩個朋友一起各處遊覽這座城市,布赫還是孩子時來到這裡,可他已把這裡當成自己的家。

“My God, we didn’t sit still,” Akram laughs. “It was like we had never been apart. He was the Mahesh I’d known.”

“天啊,我們都坐不住,”阿克拉姆笑著說。“好像我們從未分開,他還是我認識的那個馬赫什。”

雙語新聞鉤沉 | 印巴分治之殤 | 觀察者

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