Obituary; Ghulam Haider Hamidi;

讣告；胡拉姆·海德尔·哈米迪；

Ghulam Haider Hamidi, mayor of Kandahar City, died on July 27th, aged 64；

阿富汗坎大哈市市长胡拉姆·海德尔·哈米迪7月27日遇刺身亡，终年64岁；

Like most mayors, Ghulam Haider Hamidi had big dreams for his city. He imagined wide, paved roads where the traffic flowed freely. He hoped for first-class schools with computers, and housing developments where the rich would flock to live. Tidy, well-regulated shops would line the streets, with trees and parks as green oases between them. By night the whole place would blaze with lights. And this city would be spotless, with fresh-laid sewage pipes, fresh-dug drains, and an army of workers to deep-clean the streets on a regular basis. Immaculate himself, in designer glasses and pure white perahan tunban topped with a perfectly matching brown wool jacket and scarf, the mayor wanted nothing less for the town he adored.

和多数市长一样，胡拉姆·海德尔·哈米迪也在心中为自己管辖的这座城市描绘了宏伟蓝图：设想中的城市里宽阔平整的马路上交通畅通无阻；学校质量一流并配有计算机；住宅规划让富人住宅集中；街道两旁商店整齐有序，公园秀木绿洲般点缀其间；夜色降临时整个城市便灯火辉煌。理想中的城市还应该一尘不染，有着新铺设的排污排水管道，街道则由环卫工人定期大清扫。哈米迪戴着名牌眼镜，缠着纯白色头巾，上身一件极其合身的棕色羊毛上衣，围着同样颜色和质地的围巾，全身上下干净整洁的他，想让这座深爱的城市也如自己一样干净整洁。

But this was Kandahar City, a sprawling desert entrepot of 800,000 people in the middle of a war, in southern Afghanistan. Its essence was dust, fumes, bicycles, raw sewage, horns, rickshaws, jerry-built apartments, teeming bazaars; and now thundering NATO convoys, blaring police trucks, the sudden whump of a bomb blast, and groups of grim turbaned men who were possibly Taliban, but possibly weren't, from their redoubts outside the city. In four years Mr Hamidi lost two deputies and a police chief to assassinations. In 2009, driving to work, his own car triggered a roadside bomb. Staggering out and running, blinded with dust, he looked back to see a figure sitting by the wreck with blood dripping from his hands. God had not written his name on that day.

可这毕竟是坎大哈市。这座进出口贸易城市坐落在阿富汗南部，周围是一片广阔沙漠，80万人口，常年战火不断。尘土飞扬，烟气滚滚，污水横流，自行车来来往往，车辆鸣笛阵阵，人力车穿行其中，破败居民楼简陋无比，集市人头攒动熙熙攘攘——这就是过去的坎大哈给人的印象。现在的坎大哈北约部队轰鸣而过，警用卡车笛音嘈杂，时不时一颗炸弹巨响；一群群表情严肃缠着头巾的男子从城外据点而来，可能是塔利班分子，却也可能不是。四年内哈米迪手下两名副市长和一名警察局长遇刺身亡。2009年，哈米迪开车上班途中不小心触爆路边一枚地雷。当时他双眼被灰尘所迷，挣扎着从车里逃出，回头时模糊看到炸毁的车旁坐着一个人，血从那人头上滴滴流下。那天，他侥幸没有被上帝召回。

Yet the Taliban, he felt, were only half the problem. The people he most wanted a jihad against were corrupt men at the heart of government. Entrepreneurs who won a city contract for lighting, produced inferior goods and put the profits in their pockets. Land-grabbers who rented government plots illegally to fly-by-night shops, taking money that belonged to the city. (Mr Hamidi would burst into such places with shovel in hand, pushing people aside, shouting at them to clear their rubbish away.) And, over all these, the swaggering local powerbrokers who demanded their share of the opium trade, the military contracts and the building projects, like boys fighting for candy at a wedding.

然而对哈米迪来说，塔利班固然令人头疼，但也只是全部麻烦的一半。他最想整治的对象是政府权力中心的贪污腐败官员。获得市政府照明建设项目后，承包商提供的产品质量却不合格，所得利润都被饱入私囊；政府土地被强占后非法租给毫无信誉的店主，本来属于政府的收入又流入私人袋中（哈米迪经常会突然闯进这样的店铺中，手拿铁锹，大叫着推开人群，好把店里的“垃圾”都弄走）；还有，最严重的问题是，当地政治掮客肆无忌惮，像婚礼上互相厮打的小孩一样，要求从鸦片交易、军事合同和建筑项目中分得自己那杯羹。

No figure brokered more power in the city than Ahmed Wali Karzai: head of the provincial council, unsavoury ally of the NATO forces and half-brother of Hamid Karzai, the president. But Ahmed Wali, as burly and bearish as the mayor was thin, was Mr Hamidi's friend. Both were Pushtuns, and had been close since childhood. It was Ahmed Wali who appointed him mayor in 2007, after the president had called him back from a 20-year exile in Virginia to make use of his accounting skills. He was offered even higher jobs, but those he rejected.

坎大哈政治掮客中没有比艾哈迈德·瓦利·卡尔扎伊更炙手可热的了。艾哈迈德·瓦利是省议会议长，总统哈米德·卡尔扎伊同父异母的兄弟，因为依靠北约势力在阿富汗声名狼藉。艾哈迈德·瓦利身材魁梧，虎背熊腰，身材瘦削的哈米迪却和他是好友——二人都是普什图人，自小就交情甚好。哈米迪结束了在美国维吉尼亚的二十年流亡生涯后，总统卡尔扎伊将他召回，好发挥他的会计才能，2007年哈米迪正是受艾哈迈德·瓦利任命才当上市长。当时摆在他面前的还有更高的职位，不过他拒绝了。

Mr Hamidi's enemies, most of them businessmen offended by his cleaning-up exercises, called him a puppet of the Karzais, their dog on a leash. That infuriated him. Yes, he had sold 10,000 acres of land to Mahmoud Karzai, another brother, to build the exclusive Aino Mina estate, but that was the best such project in Afghanistan, beautiful houses that would be the city's best source of income for a decade. Some powerbrokers he needed to befriend.He dared to walk the streets openly,grinning and kissing children and yelling at men who were relieving themselves in the road, because he also had the protection of Abdul Razak, the police chief; but Colonel Razak watched the flow of narcotics across the nearby Pakistan border, and his force was not above suspicion.

哈米迪的政府内肃清运动为他招来众多敌人，其中多数是商业大亨，他们称哈米迪为卡扎伊家族的傀儡、拴着链子的走狗。这让哈米迪大为光火。不过，他的确曾出售给卡尔扎伊另一个兄弟穆哈穆德·卡尔扎伊10,000公顷土地，用以建造艾诺米娜住房高级住房发展中心。但是，此中心是目前阿富汗同类项目中最好的一个，未来十年内将一直会是该市最佳财源。有些政治掮客他必须得同他们搞好关系。他敢毫无顾忌走上街头，对孩子们咧着嘴笑，时不时还亲亲他们，对路上随地小便的男人大吼——他敢这样是因为有警察局长阿卜杜·拉扎克护驾。但是，拉扎克任由附近巴基斯坦边境出毒品进出，而且，他手下的人肯定脱不了干系。

Sleeping in Virginia

让人昏昏欲睡的维吉尼亚

It was all much more difficult than his life in America, where he had spent the years of Taliban rule quietly keeping the books of a small travel company. He could have stayed there. But he would have been asleep. In Kandahar—close to the mountains and the cool, high villages of his childhood—he was awake, and he owed it to his country to remain. People inevitably saw him as the Americans' man, but this was his home, even though he had to live in a safe room in the governor's house, and had almost no staff. In his new heavily fortified municipal compound, only 38 of 119 employees dared to come to work. This meant that city revenue in the last financial year was only 200m afghanis ($13.3m), where he had hoped for 600m.

塔利班统治阿富汗的那几年，他一直在维吉尼亚州的一家小旅游公司安安静静做着会计，回到阿富汗之后境况比在美国艰难得多了。他本可以留在维吉尼亚州，但若留下他会昏睡过去的。在坎大哈，童年的座座山川和高高山上凉风习习的村庄近在眼前，他是一直清醒的，而且，如果留在美国，他会觉得对不起自己的祖国。不可避免地，人们把他当做美国派来的人。可是，这里是他的家乡。虽然在这家乡，为了安全起见，他不得不住在市长宅邸，但那里也几乎没什么工作人员。在他的戒备森严的市长新宅，119位工作人员中只有38人敢来上班，这就意味着上一个财政年度市政府收入只有2亿阿富汗尼（1330万美元），而他原本预想的是6亿。

His family thought he should return to Virginia, where he was still paying off the mortgage on his comfortable house. He was not interested. His life was Kandahar City, with no time off. He had cleared away 460 illegal shops in order to build a school. He had plans for 300 acres of sports fields, and a special women's garden to match the one he had created, planted by a man from his home village, at the junction of the Kabul and Quetta roads. He wanted to expand the road from the city to the airport, and install more solar lighting.

哈米迪家人觉得他应该回维吉尼亚去，在那里他有一套舒适的住宅，并且还在还着房贷。可他对回美国毫无兴趣。他注定就要生活在坎大哈，一刻也不能离开。为了建一所学校，他曾一口气清理了460家违规店铺。他还计划建造几处运动场，总面积300公顷，还有一座特殊的女子花园。之前在卡布尔（阿富汗首都）和基达（巴基斯坦北部城市）两市的公路交叉处他已经建了一座，并由一个同乡负责种植管理。计划建造的女子花园就是为了和原来这座配成一对。他还规划拓宽连接坎大哈和机场之间的公路，扩大太阳能照明的使用。

Also, of course, he planned to talk to people. After the murder of Ahmed Wali early in July, he had no high-up protector; but that made him all the more passionate to explain why his ideas were good for the city. When protesters arrived at the municipal compound on July 27th, furious about the bulldozing of illegal houses in which two children had died, he went straight out to apologise to them. It was then that someone, maybe Taliban, maybe not, set off the explosives wound in his turban.

当然，他还设想要倾听民意。七月初艾哈迈德·瓦利被刺后，他并没有增强自身安保措施；艾哈迈德·瓦利遇刺反而让他更加热切地向市民解释为何自己的设想有利于坎大哈市的发展。一次政府强行推倒违规店铺时，两名儿童在强拆中死亡。7月27日，愤怒的人群涌向政府办公大楼进行抗议，哈米迪则径直出去向人们道歉。然而就在那时，袭击者（也许是塔利班分子）引爆了缠在头巾中的炸弹。