词汇提示

1.heretics 异端

2.savaged 激烈批评

3.mugged 公开打劫

4.tormentor 折磨者

5.scapegoat 替罪羊

6.marchers 抗议游行者

7.Enlightenment 启蒙教育

8.blasphemy 亵渎

原文

Salman Rushdie: 'Life Under Threat' (2)

Out there where you are, in the rich and powerful and lucky west, has it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics,drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it?

The original metaphor has reasserted itself.

I'm back in the balloon, asking for the right to live.

What is my single life worth" Despair whispers in my ear: 'Not a lot.'

But I refuse to give in to despair.

I refuse to give in to despair because I've been shown love as well as hatred.

I know that many people do care, and are appalled by the crazy, upside-down logic of the post-fatwa world, in which a single novelist can be accused of having savaged or 'mugged' a whole community, becoming its tormentor (instead of it starred and feathered victim) and the scapegoat for all its discontents.

Many people do ask, for example: When a white pop-star-turned-Islamic-fanatic speaks approvingly about killing an Indian immigrant, how does the Indian immigrant end up being called the racist?

Or,again: What minority is smaller and weaker than a minority of one?

I refuse to give in to despair even though, for a thousand days and more, I've been put through a degree course in worthlessness, my own personal and specific worthlessness.

My first teachers were the mobs marching down distant boulevards, baying for my blood, and finding, soon enough, their echoes on the English streets.

I could not understand the force that makes parents hang murderous slogans around their children's necks.

I have learned to understand it.

It burns books and effigies and thinks itself holy.

But at first, as I watched the marchers, I felt them trampling on my heart.

Once again, however, I have been saved by instances of fair-mindedness, of goodness.

Every time I learn that a reader somewhere has been touched by The Satanic Verses, moved and entertained and stimulated by it, it arouses deep feelings in me.

And there are more and more such readers nowadays, my postbag tells me, readers(including Muslims) who are willing to give my burned, spurned child a fair hearing at long last.

Sometimes I think that, one day, Muslims will be ashamed of what Muslims did in these times, will find the 'Rushdie affair' as improbable as the west now finds martyr-burning.

One day they may agree that - as the European Enlightenment demonstrated- freedom of thought is precisely freedom from religious control, freedom from accusations of blasphemy.

Maybe they'll agree, too, that the row over The Satanic Verses was at bottom an argument about who should have power over the grand narrative, the Story of Islam, and that power must belong equally to everyone.

That even if my novel were incompetent, its attempt to retell the story would still be important.

That if I've failed, others must succeed, because those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change,truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.

翻译

萨尔曼·拉什迪:《生命受到威胁》(2)

在你们所处的地方，在富裕、强大、幸运的西方，宗教迫害人们真的已经很久了吗，把他们当作异教徒烧死，把他们当作女巫淹死，以至于当你看到宗教迫害时，你都认不出来了?
原来的比喻再次出现了。
我又回到了气球里，要求生存的权利。
我的单身生活值多少钱?”绝望在我耳边低语:“不值多少钱。”
但我拒绝向绝望屈服。
我拒绝向绝望屈服，因为我既被爱也被恨。
我知道，很多人确实关心这个问题，并对法特瓦后世界的疯狂、颠倒的逻辑感到震惊，在这个世界上，一个小说家就可能被指控蹂躏或“抢劫”了整个社会，成为它的折磨者(而不是被涂上焦油和羽毛的受害者)，成为所有不满的替罪羊。
例如，很多人确实会问:当一个白人流行歌星出身的伊斯兰狂热分子赞许地说要杀死一名印度移民时，为什么印度移民最终会被称为种族主义者?
又或者:哪个少数群体比一个人的少数群体更小更弱?
我拒绝向绝望屈服，即使在过去的一千多天里，我已经完成了一个关于毫无价值的学位课程，我个人的和特定的毫无价值。
我的启蒙老师是那些在远处林荫大道上游行的暴徒，他们叫嚷着要我的血，很快，他们就在英国的街道