雙語暢銷書《我是馬拉拉》第6章6:寫詩

My father also loved to write poetry, sometimes about love, but often on controversial themes such as honour killings and women’s rights. Once he visited Afghanistan for a poetry festival at the Kabul Intercontinental Hotel, where he read a poem about peace. It was mentioned as the most inspiring in the closing speech, and some in the audience asked him to repeat whole stanzas and couplets, exclaiming ‘Wah wah’ when a particular line pleased them, which is a bit like ‘Bravo’. Even my grandfather was proud. ‘Son, may you be the star in the sky of knowledge,’ he used to say.

父親還很愛寫詩。他有時寫的是愛情詩，但更多是寫爭議性很大的主題，例如可怕的屠殺行爲，以及女性權利等。有一次，他去阿富汗參加在喀布爾洲際酒店舉行的詩歌節，朗誦了一首關於和平的詩。活動閉幕式時，他的詩被稱爲最具啓發性的作品，有些現場觀衆還請他再念一次，當唸到其中幾句他們喜歡的句子時，現場的人都會高喊：“哇哇！”意思就是“太棒了！”連我祖父都感到很驕傲。“兒子，願你成爲知識領域的明日之星。”他曾這麼說過。

We too were proud, but his higher profile meant we didn’t see him very much.

我們爲父親感到很驕傲。

It was always our mother who shopped for our clothes and took us to hospital if we were ill, even though in our culture, particularly for those of us from villages, a woman is not supposed to do these things alone. So one of my father’s nephews would have to go along. When my father was at home, he and his friends sat on the roof at dusk and talked politics endlessly. There was really only one subject – 9/11. It might have changed the whole world but we were living right in the epicentre of everything. Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, had been living in Kandahar when the attack on the World Trade Center happened, and the Americans had sent thousands of troops to Afghanistan to catch him and overthrow the Taliban regime which had protected him.

但他的高知名度也意味着我們變得不太能經常見到他，都是母親幫我們買衣服，或是我們生病時帶我們去醫院，雖然在我們的文化裏，特別是像我們這樣的村子，婦女是不被允許獨自進行這類事務的。所以，我父親的諸多侄子之中就得有人來陪同前往。當我父親在家時，他和朋友們會在黃昏時坐在屋頂上，沒完沒了地討論政治。他們聊的話題其實只有一個——9·11事件。這件事也許改變了全世界，但我們住的地方首當其衝。基地組織的領導人奧薩馬·本·拉登在攻擊紐約世貿大樓的時候住在坎大哈，美國派了數千名士兵到阿富汗抓他，並推翻了保護本·拉登的塔利班政權。