KARACHI, Pakistan — When I heard that the fourth season of Showtime’s “Homeland” would be set in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I awaited its season premiere with anticipation and trepidation. A major American television show would be portraying events set in my country, but I knew those events would be linked to the only thing that seems to interest the world’s eye: terrorism and how Islamist extremism affects Americans and the West.
巴基斯坦卡拉奇——当听说Showtime的《国土安全》(Homeland)把第四季的故事背景放在了巴基斯坦和阿富汗时，我开始充满期待和担心地等待这一季的首播。一部重要美剧将讲述发生在我的祖国的事情，但我知道这些事情只会与一件事有关——这似乎也是唯一让世界感兴趣的事：恐怖主义，以及伊斯兰极端主义对美国和西方所造成的影响。

As advertising for the season premiere was heating up, a short essay by an American writer and activist, Laura Durkay, appeared on The Washington Post’s website under the headline “Homeland Is the Most Bigoted Show on Television.” Ms. Durkay wrote, “The entire structure of ‘Homeland’ is built on mashing together every manifestation of political Islam, Arabs, Muslims and the whole Middle East into a Frankenstein-monster global terrorist threat that simply doesn’t exist.”
随着这一季第一集的广告片开始热播，美国作家与活动人士劳拉·杜尔考伊(Laura Durkay)的一篇短文出现在了《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)的网站上，文章的标题为“《国土安全》是最狭隘的电视剧”。杜尔考伊写道，“《国土安全》的整个结构建立在这样一个基础之上：把政治伊斯兰、阿拉伯人、穆斯林和整个中东地区的方方面面融合在一起，形成一个弗兰肯斯坦怪物般的全球性恐怖主义威胁，虽然它根本就不存在。”
The show’s reputation along those lines had kept me away, even as I longed to examine Claire Danes’s portrayal of Carrie Mathison as a conflicted C.I.A. agent immersed in a male-dominated world, and engaging with Middle Eastern and Muslim characters. How could the show’s creators have dreamed up such a complex protagonist, while depicting the sociopolitical milieu in which so many of its characters exist with so little nuance?
这部电视剧的名声和这些说法使我对它敬而远之，虽然我也想看看克莱尔·达内什(Claire Danes)如何演绎中情局(CIA)探员凯莉·马西森(Carrie Mathison)——这个充满矛盾色彩的角色身陷男性主导的世界，还需要与中东和穆斯林角色打交道。该剧的主创是如何构想出一个如此复杂的主角，却又与此同时将其诸多角色寄身的社会政治环境描绘得如此简略粗疏？
Yes, Hollywood isn’t known for historical accuracy or impartial portrayals of any fictionalized “other.” But I still couldn’t resist trying to see what Pakistan, my homeland, looked like through its eyes. I’m a writer of fiction, so I know about imagined worlds. You look not for complete truthfulness, but for verisimilitude — the “appearance of being true” — so it can give your art authenticity, credibility, believability. And we in Pakistan long to be seen with a vision that at least approaches the truth.
的确，好莱坞(Hollywood)不以历史的准确性或对任何虚构的“他方”的公正描述而闻名。但是，我仍然无法抵抗诱惑，想看看我的祖国巴基斯坦在它的眼中究竟是何模样。我是一个虚构类作家，所以我对想象出来的世界有所了解。你寻找的不是完全的真实，而是逼真程度——“表面上看似真实”——它能给你的艺术创造提供真实感、说服力和可信性。我们这些身处巴基斯坦的人希望别人对我们的看法至少能接近真实。
Pakistan has long been said to have an image problem, a kind way to say that the world sees us one-dimensionally — as a country of terrorists and extremists, conservatives who enslave women and stone them to death, and tricky scoundrels who hate Americans and lie pathologically to our supposed allies. In Pakistan, we’ve long attributed the ubiquity of these images to what we believe is biased journalism, originating among mainstream American journalists who care little for depth and accuracy. By the time these tropes filter down into popular culture, and have morphed into the imaginings of showbiz writers, we’ve gone from an image problem to the realm of Jungian archetypes and haunting traumatized psyches.
一直以来，巴基斯坦据说都存在一个形象问题，这委婉地说明，世界往往只会从一个角度看待我们——将我们视作一个恐怖分子和极端主义者的国度，这里的保守主义者会奴役女性，用石块把她们砸死，而且这里还有狡猾的骗子，他们仇恨美国，经常强迫性地对我们所谓的盟友撒谎。在巴基斯坦，我们一直认为，这种广为人知的形象源于我们眼中的存在偏见的媒体报道，这种报道则来自对深度和准确性不甚在意的主流美国记者。当这些描述渗入流行文化，演变为娱乐界作家的想象时，我们就从形象问题走进了荣格原型和无法摆脱的受创心理的领域。
Whenever a Western movie contains a connection to Pakistan, we watch it in a sadomasochistic way, eager and nervous to see how the West observes us. We look to see if we come across to you as monsters, and then to see what our new, monstrous face looks like. Again and again, we see a refracted, distorted image of our homeland staring back at us. We know we have monsters among us, but this isn’t what we look like to ourselves.
每当一部与巴基斯坦有关的西方电影出现时，我们都会以一种受虐狂的心态去观看。我们总是迫不及待地想看看自己在西方世界眼中是什么模样。我们想知道，我们是否在你们的眼中变成了怪物，以及我们的怪物新形象是什么样的。一次又一次，我看到都是我们国家变形而扭曲的画面。我知道我们当中有怪物，但是在我们看来，我们并非如此。
There have been previous international attempts to portray Pakistan on film: “A Mighty Heart,” about the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl; or “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the assassination of Osama bin Laden. The Pearl film was shot largely in India, with some scenes in Pakistan; the Bin Laden film was shot in Jordan and India; in these and other films, streets and shops in India were given nominal Pakistani makeovers, and Indian actors were hired to pass as Pakistanis. In them, I have seen India’s signature homemade Ambassador cars traveling down Pakistani streets; actors who play tribal Pashtuns but look Bihari; Western women wearing chadors where they don’t have to, or going around bareheaded when they should be covered.
国际上有人曾试图把巴基斯坦拍进电影：讲述丹尼尔·珀尔(Daniel Pearl)遭到绑架和谋杀的《坚强的心》(A Mighty Heart)，以及讲述奥萨马·本·拉登(Osama bin Laden)被暗杀故事的《刺杀本·拉登》(Zero Dark Thirty)。珀尔的那部电影主要在印度拍摄，只有一些场景摄于巴基斯坦；本·拉登的那部电影则摄于约旦和印度。在这些和其他电影中，印度的街道和商店都被装扮成了带有些许巴基斯坦色彩的样子，剧组还会聘请印度演员扮作巴基斯坦人。在它们当中，我看到印度特有的国产大使车沿着巴基斯坦街道行驶，扮演普什图族的演员看起来像是比哈里人，而有时西方女性会在不需要穿黑色罩袍的时候穿罩袍，或者在需要把头盖住的时候，四处抛头露面。
In the season premiere of “Homeland,” Carrie Mathison orders an airstrike on a terrorist compound in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan. It is utterly surreal for a Pakistani to watch a fictional imagining of the dreaded strike from the viewpoint of the person ordering it in an American control room: the disconnection, the studied casualness, the presenting of a birthday cake afterward. It’s not clear who the monsters are in this scene, even before it’s revealed that the strike hit a wedding party, killing women and children. It’s a moment of obvious reversal, but also of nuance, when I wasn’t expecting it.
在《国土安全》第四季的第一集当中，凯莉·马西森下令对与阿富汗接壤的一个巴基斯坦部落地区的恐怖主义建筑发动空袭。让一个巴基斯坦人从一个在美国控制室里下令发动空袭的人的视角来观看这种虚构的可怕袭击，实在有种非常之超现实的感觉：那种疏离感、那种故意为之的漫不经心，以及随后的生日蛋糕。在那一幕中，人们还不能清楚地看出怪物究竟是谁，在剧情揭露此次空袭袭击了一个婚礼，导致许多妇女和儿童死亡之前就是如此。它是一个明显的逆转时刻，但同时也颇具微妙之处，在那一刻，这完全出乎我的意料。
Still, the season’s first hour, in which Carrie also goes to Islamabad, offers up a hundred little clues that tell me this isn’t the country where I grew up, or live. When a tribal boy examines the dead in his village, I hear everyone speaking Urdu, not the region’s Pashto. Protesters gather across from the American Embassy in Islamabad, when in reality the embassy is hidden inside a diplomatic enclave to which public access is extremely limited. I find out later that the season was filmed in Cape Town, South Africa, with its Indian Muslim community standing in for Pakistanis.
但这一季的第一集中依然出现了众多蛛丝马迹，告诉我这不是我长大或生活的那个国家。在剧情方面，凯莉也去了伊斯兰堡。当一名部落男孩查看他所在村子里的死者时，我听到所有人说的都是乌尔都语，而不是该地区的普什图语。画面上，抗议者聚集在伊斯兰堡美国大使馆的对面，而在现实中，美国大使馆隐藏在一个外交机构聚居地内。公众要想进入那片地区，会受到极大限制。稍后我发现，这一季是在南非的开普敦拍摄的，那里的印裔穆斯林群体扮成了巴基斯坦人。
I realize afterward that I’ve been creating a test, for the creators of “Homeland” and all who would sell an imagined image of Pakistan: If this isn’t really Pakistan, and these aren’t really Pakistanis, then how they see us isn’t really true.
后来我意识到，我一直在为《国土安全》的创作人员，以及所有兜售想象出来的巴基斯坦形象的人，进行一种测试。如果这不是真正的巴基斯坦，这些人也不是真正的巴基斯坦人，那么他们对我们的看法，实际上也是不准确的。
A verse in the Quran says, “Behold, we have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another.” Even after everything that’s happened between us, we in Pakistan still want you to know us, not as you imagine us, but as we really are: flawed, struggling, complex, human. All of us, in the outside world as well as in Pakistan, need art — film and television, story and song — that closes that gap between representation and reality, instead of prying the two further apart.
《古兰经》中的一节说，“众人啊！我确已从一男一女创造你们，我使你们成为许多民族和宗族，以便你们互相认识。”尽管我们之间发生了那么多事情，但我们身在巴基斯坦的人，依然想让你们了解我们，不是你们想象中的我们，而是真实的我们：不完美、艰难谋生、复杂、通人情。我们所有人，不管是世界其他地区的人，还是身在巴基斯坦的人，所需的电影、电视、故事和歌曲等艺术作品，要能缩小描述与现实之间的差距，而不是让两者进一步背向而驰。