2 My Father the Falcon

2　父亲是鹰

I ALWAYS KNEW my father had trouble with words. Sometimes they would get stuck and he would repeat the same syllable over and over like a record caught in a groove as we all waited for the next syllable to suddenly pop out. He said it felt like a wall came down in his throat. M’s, p’s and k’s were all enemies lying in wait. I teased him that one of the reasons he called me Jani was because he found it easier to say than Malala. A stutter was a terrible thing for a man who so loved words and poetry. On each side of the family he had an uncle with the same affliction. But it was almost certainly made worse by his father, whose own voice was a soaring instrument that could make words thunder and dance.

我的父亲有发音方面的困扰。有时候，他在说话时，一个单词卡住，就会不断重复同一个音节，仿佛唱片跳针一样，下一个音节不知何时才会突然跳出来。他说那种感觉就像是喉咙里头有一道墙倒塌。“马”“贝”和“可”这几个音是他的敌人。我开玩笑说，他之所以叫我“亲爱的”就是因为发音比“马拉拉”容易。口吃对一个热爱文字和诗歌的人来说，是件极糟糕的事。父亲有一个叔叔和一个舅舅都有同样的问题。但是，使父亲的口吃问题愈加严重的，无疑是来自祖父的影响。他的父亲，我的祖父，是个说起话来能让文字飞舞、音量有如锣鼓撼天的男人。

‘Spit it out, son!’ he’d roar whenever my father got stuck in the middle of a sentence. My grandfather’s name was Rohul Amin, which means ‘honest spirit’ and is the holy name of the Angel Gabriel. He was so proud of the name that he would introduce himself to people with a famous verse in which his name appears. He was an impatient man at the best of times and would fly into a rage over the smallest thing – like a hen going astray or a cup getting broken. His face would redden and he would throw kettles and pots around. I never knew my grandmother, but my father says she used to joke with my grandfather, ‘By God, just as you greet us only with a frown, when I die may God give you a wife who never smiles.’

“说出来，儿子！”每当我父亲话说到一半卡住的时候，祖父就会厉声命令。我的祖父名为拉胡尔.阿明，意为“诚实的灵魂”，同时也是天使加百列的圣名。他对自己的名字感到非常骄傲。每次自我介绍时，他总会念一段有他的名字在其中的诗文给对方听。祖父没什么耐性，芝麻绿豆大的小事，比方说一只母鸡跑到外面来了，或是一只杯子碎了，都能让他暴跳如雷。他常常会涨红了脸，把水壶和锅子乱扔。我从未见过我的祖母，但父亲说祖母以前跟祖父开玩笑说：“看在真主的份儿上，你总是让我们看你皱眉头的模样。等我死后，愿真主赐你一位永不微笑的太太。”

My grandmother was so worried about my father’s stutter that when he was still a young boy she took him to see a holy man. It was a long journey by bus, then an hour’s walk up the hill to where he lived. Her nephew Fazli Hakim had to carry my father on his shoulders. The holy man was called Lewano Pir, Saint of the Mad, because he was said to be able to calm lunatics. When they were taken in to see the pir, he instructed my father to open his mouth and then spat into it. Then he took some gur, dark molasses made from sugar cane, and rolled it around his mouth to moisten it with spit. He then took out the lump and presented it to my grandmother to give to my father, a little each day. The treatment did not cure the stutter. Actually some people thought it got worse. So when my father was thirteen and told my grandfather he was entering a public speaking competition he was stunned. ‘How can you?’ Rohul Amin asked, laughing. ‘You take one or two minutes to utter just one sentence.’

祖母非常担心我父亲的口吃问题，所以在他还小的时候，她带他去见一位世袭圣人。路途遥远，他们得先搭很久的公交车，她的侄子法兹利.哈基姆背着年幼的父亲，再走上一小时的山路，才能抵达圣人的住处。圣人名叫里瓦诺.皮尔，是个疯圣徒，据说他可以让疯子平静下来。当他们被带去见这位圣人时，他请我父亲张开嘴巴，然后朝他的嘴里吐了一口口水。接着拿了一点用甘蔗制成的深色糖浆，放进自己嘴里，在口腔中推揉，用口水湿润，再把口中这团东西拿出来交给我祖母，要她每天喂我父亲吃一点。这个疗法没有治好我父亲的口吃，事实上，有些人甚至觉得更严重了。所以，当父亲十三岁时对祖父说他要去参加一场演讲比赛时，祖父笑着问他：“怎么可能？你一句话就要讲一到两分钟！”