This is how war starts. One day you're living your ordinary life, you're planning to go to a party, you're taking your children to school, you're making a dentist appointment. The next thing, the telephones go out, the TVs go out, there's armed men on the street, there's roadblocks. Your life as you know it goes into suspended animation. It stops.
战争是这样开始的 有一天,你一如既往地过着你的生活 你正准备参加一个派对 你正在送孩子上学 你正在去看牙医的路上。 突然,手机没有了信号 电视信号也中断了,大街上到处都是武装分子。 道路被拦了起来 你的生活突然停滞了 它停止了。
I'm going to steal a story from a friend of mine, a Bosnian friend, about what happened to her, because I think it will illustrate for you exactly what it feels like. She was walking to work one day in April, 1992, in a miniskirt and high heels. She worked in a bank. She was a young mother. She was someone who liked to party. Great person. And suddenly she sees a tank ambling down the main road of Sarajevo knocking everything out of its path. She thinks she's dreaming, but she's not. And she runs as any of us would have done and takes cover, and she hides behind a trash bin, in her high heels and her miniskirt. And as she's hiding there, she's feeling ridiculous, but she's seeing this tank go by with soldiers and people all over the place and chaos and she thinks, "I feel like Alice in Wonderland going down the rabbit hole, down, down, down into chaos, and my life will never be the same again."
我要从我朋友那里借一个故事 我的一个波斯尼亚的朋友,一个关于她的故事 因为我认为它将为你呈现的正是这种感觉。 在 1992 年 4 月的一天,她正在上班的路上 穿着迷你裙和高跟鞋。她在一家银行工作。 她是一位年轻的母亲,一位很喜欢参加派对的人。 总之是一个很棒的人。 她突然看到了一辆坦克 缓缓地在萨拉热窝的路上行驶 把路上一切阻挡它的东西给撞开 她一瞬间认为她在做梦,但她错了。 她像任何正常人一样逃离了那个地方 她躲在了一个隐蔽的垃圾桶后 穿着她的高跟鞋和她的迷你裙。 在那时,她感觉这一切很可笑 但她看到坦克随着士兵行驶着 和人们处于一片混乱之中 她想着,"我怎么觉得自己像梦游仙境里的爱丽丝 一样掉入兔子洞, 一直往下,陷入一片混乱 我永远不会回到过去了。”
A few weeks later, my friend was in a crowd of people pushing with her infant son in her arms to give him to a stranger on a bus, which was one of the last buses leaving Sarajevo to take children out so they could be safe. And she remembers struggling with her mother to the front, crowds and crowds of people, "Take my child! Take my child!" and passing her son to someone through a window. And she didn't see him for years. The siege went on for three and a half years, and it was a siege without water, without power, without electricity, without heat, without food, in the middle of Europe, in the middle of the 20th century.
几个星期后,我的那位朋友在一群人里 抱着自己怀里的婴儿,推搡着前面的人, 她要把他送给一个大巴上的陌生人 这是离开萨拉热窝的最后一个巴士之一 为了把孩子带到安全的地方 她记得她和母亲挣扎着抢到前面 成群成片的人大喊着:"带走我的孩子!带走我的孩子!" 并将她的儿子通过一个窗口传递给他人 她很多年没见到自己的孩子了。 这次的围攻持续了三个半年 那时没有任何的水源 没有电源,电力,暖气,食物, 在 20 世纪中的欧洲中部。
I had the honor of being one of those reporters that lived through that siege, and I say I have the honor and the privilege of being there because it's taught me everything, not just about being a reporter, but about being a human being. I learned about compassion. I learned about ordinary people who could be heroes. I learned about sharing. I learned about camaraderie. Most of all, I learned about love. Even in the midst of terrible destruction and death and chaos, I learned how ordinary people could help their neighbors, share food, raise their children, drag someone who's being sniped at from the middle of the road even though you yourself were endangering your life, helping people get into taxis who were injured to try to take them to hospitals.
身为诸多记者中的一员,我有幸的 在战争中活了下来 我感到我很幸运,很荣幸 因为这次的经历教会了我很多的事情, 不只身为一名记者,而作为一名人类 我学到了同情。 我明白了普通人也能成为英雄 我学会了共享,我学会了友情。 最重要的是,我学到了爱。 即使在可怕的破坏,死亡,和混乱之中, 我学到了如何普通人可以帮助他们的邻居, 分享食物、 养育对方的儿女, 比如从路中间拉回一个将被射死的人 即使这个举动会危及你的生命, 帮助受伤的人上出租车 尝试把他们带到医院。
I learned so much about myself. Martha Gellhorn, who's one of my heroes, once said, "You can only love one war. The rest is responsibility." I went on to cover many, many, many wars after that, so many that I lost count, but there was nothing like Sarajevo.
我重新认识了自己。 我心目中的英雄之一,玛莎 · 盖尔霍恩,曾经说过: "你只能爱一场战争。其余是只是责任" 在那以后,我报导了许多许多的战争 多到我无法数清 但没有任何一个和萨拉热窝一样。
Last April, I went back to a very strange -- what I called a deranged high school reunion. What it was, was the 20th anniversary of the siege, the beginning of the siege of Sarajevo, and I don't like the word "anniversary," because it sounds like a party, and this was not a party. It was a very somber gathering of the reporters that worked there during the war, humanitarian aid workers, and of course the brave and courageous people of Sarajevo themselves. And the thing that struck me the most, that broke my heart, was walking down the main street of Sarajevo, where my friend Aida saw the tank coming 20 years ago, and in that road were more than 12,000 red chairs, empty, and every single one of them symbolized a person who had died during the siege, just in Sarajevo, not in all of Bosnia, and it stretched from one end of the city to a large part of it, and the saddest for me were the tiny little chairs for the children.
而去年 4 月,我到了一个很奇怪的— 一个我称为扭曲的高中聚会 它其实是战争的二十年周年庆祝会 纪念着萨拉热窝围攻的初始 我不喜欢"周年庆祝会"这个词,因为它听起来像一个派对 它不是一个派对 而是一个非常抑郁的聚会,为了在战争里工作的记者 为了在那里工作的人道主义援助工作者 当然,还有萨拉热窝的英勇人民 一件影响我最大的事, 一件伤碎了我的心的事是 当我走在萨拉热窝的大街上 就是我的朋友阿依达初次看到坦克的那一条街 在这条街上有着超过 12,000 的红色椅子, 空无一人 而每一个椅子代表了 战争期间死亡的人 只是在萨拉热窝去世的,还不包括所有的波斯尼亚亡者, 它从这座城市的一端延伸 到更远的地方 而对我来说最可悲的是那些 为死去的儿童而留的小椅子。
I now cover Syria, and I started reporting it because I believed that it needs to be done. I believe a story there has to be told. I see, again, a template of the war in Bosnia. And when I first arrived in Damascus, I saw this strange moment where people didn't seem to believe that war was going to descend, and it was exactly the same in Bosnia and nearly every other country I've seen where war comes. People don't want to believe it's coming, so they don't leave, they don't leave before they can. They don't get their money out. They stay because you want to stay in your home. And then war and chaos descend.
我现在正在叙利亚报道, 我在那里报道是因为我相信 我一定要这么做。 我相信那里有一个必须让人知道的故事。 我再次看到了波斯尼亚战争的模板。 当我首次抵达大马士革 我看见一个很奇怪的现象 人们似乎并不相信战争正要降临, 同样的态度也曾在波斯尼亚出现过 和我见过几乎每个面临战争的国家一样。 人们不愿相信它的到来, 所以他们不离开,他们从不在可以离开时离开。 他们不把钱汇出去 他们滞留在原地,因为他们想留在家里 而在这时,战争和混乱降临了。
Rwanda is a place that haunts me a lot. In 1994, I briefly left Sarajevo to go report the genocide in Rwanda. Between April and August, 1994, one million people were slaughtered. Now if those 12,000 chairs freaked me out with the sheer number, I want you just for a second to think of a million people. And to give you some example, I remember standing and looking down a road as far as I could see, at least a mile, and there were bodies piled twice my height of the dead. And that was just a small percentage of the dead. And there were mothers holding their children who had been caught in their last death throes.
卢旺达是一个我忘不了的地方。 1994 年,我暂时离开萨拉热窝去报告卢旺达的种族灭绝。 4 月至 1994 年 8 月 100 万人被屠杀。 现在,如果那 12,000 椅子纯粹的因为数量 而把我吓着了 你想一下,一百万人是什么概念? 给你举几个例子,我记得 我遥望着一条很长的路 至少离我一英里以内,所有的尸体堆积到了我身高的两倍, 尸体。 我所看到的只是所有亡者中很小的一个百分比。 在那里,母亲抱着她们曾经 垂死挣扎的儿女。
So we learn a lot from war, and I mention Rwanda because it is one place, like South Africa, where nearly 20 years on, there is healing. Fifty-six percent of the parliamentarians are women, which is fantastic, and there's also within the national constitution now, you're actually not allowed to say Hutu or Tutsi. You're not allowed to identify anyone by ethnicity, which is, of course, what started the slaughter in the first place. And an aid worker friend of mine told me the most beautiful story, or I find it beautiful. There was a group of children, mixed Hutus and Tutsis, and a group of women who were adopting them, and they lined up and one was just given to the next. There was no kind of compensation for, you're a Tutsi, you're a Hutu, you might have killed my mother, you might have killed my father. They were just brought together in this kind of reconciliation, and I find this remarkable. So when people ask me how I continue to cover war, and why I continue to do it, this is why.
因此所见,我们可以从战争学到很多事情, 我之所以提起卢旺达 是因为它是一个像南非一样的地方, 在 20 年过去了之后逐渐愈合 百分之五十六的议员是女性, 这是奇妙的事情 此外,现在它们的国家的宪法要求 你不允许称呼认为胡图族或图西族 你不能以族裔来称呼别人 因为种族歧视是导致大屠杀的第一原因 我的一位朋友,一名援助工作者,曾告诉我一个美丽的故事, 至少我认为很美丽 有一群孩子,包括了胡图族和图西人, 和一群准备领养他们的妇女, 他们排起队,一个孩子分给一个人 而这是没有任何补偿的。如果你是一个图西人 或者一个胡图族人,你可能杀了我的母亲, 或者杀了我父亲。 但是他们在这种无形的状况下和解, 我觉得这是很奇妙的。 所以,当人们问我我如何继续报导战争, 为什么我继续做着这件事情 这就是我的原因。
When I go back to Syria, next week in fact, what I see is incredibly heroic people, some of them fighting for democracy, for things we take for granted every single day. And that's pretty much why I do it.
当我回到叙利亚,其实我下周就去, 我看到的是令人难以置信的英勇的人, 他们为民主主义而战 为了我们认为理所应然的东西 这就是为什么我做着我做的事情
In 2004, I had a little baby boy, and I call him my miracle child, because after seeing so much death and destruction and chaos and darkness in my life, this ray of hope was born. And I called him Luca, which means "The bringer of light," because he does bring light to my life. But I'm talking about him because when he was four months old, my foreign editor forced me to go back to Baghdad where I had been reporting all throughout the Saddam regime and during the fall of Baghdad and afterwards, and I remember getting on the plane in tears, crying to be separated from my son, and while I was there, a quite famous Iraqi politician who was a friend of mine said to me, "What are you doing here? Why aren't you home with Luca?" And I said, "Well, I have to see." It was 2004 which was the beginning of the incredibly bloody time in Iraq, "I have to see, I have to see what is happening here. I have to report it." And he said, "Go home, because if you miss his first tooth, if you miss his first step, you'll never forgive yourself. But there will always be another war."
2004 年,我生了个小男孩, 我叫他奇迹的孩子 因为看到这么多的伤亡 在我的生活里那破坏,混乱和黑暗之中 一线希望出生。 我叫他卢卡,意味着"光明使者", 因为他给我的生活带来光明。 我只所以提起他,是因为他四个月大时 我的外国编辑迫使我回到巴格达 在萨达姆政权中报导整个过程 在巴格达沦陷期间以及之后, 我记得自己哭着上飞机 因为我和儿子的分离而哭泣 我在那里(巴格达)时, 我的朋友,一个相当有名的伊拉克政治家 对我说: "什么你在这里? 你怎么不和卢卡在家里?" 我说,"嗯,因为我必须见证这一切。"在 2004 年 在伊拉克血腥的一段时期的初段 "我要看着,我一定要看着这里发生了什么。 我必须报告它"。 他说,"回家吧, 因为如果你错过了他(卢卡)第一次的脱牙 如果你错过了他迈出的第一步,你永远不会原谅自己。 但是世界上总会有另一场战争。
And there, sadly, will always be wars. And I am deluding myself if I think, as a journalist, as a reporter, as a writer, what I do can stop them. I can't. I'm not Kofi Annan. He can't stop a war. He tried to negotiate Syria and couldn't do it. I'm not a U.N. conflict resolution person. I'm not even a humanitarian aid doctor, and I can't tell you the times of how helpless I've felt to have people dying in front of me, and I couldn't save them. All I am is a witness. My role is to bring a voice to people who are voiceless. A colleague of mine described it as to shine a light in the darkest corners of the world. And that's what I try to do. I'm not always successful, and sometimes it's incredibly frustrating, because you feel like you're writing into a void, or you feel like no one cares. Who cares about Syria? Who cares about Bosnia? Who cares about the Congo, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, all of these strings of places that I will remember for the rest of my life? But my métier is to bear witness and that is the crux, the heart of the matter, for us reporters who do this. And all I can really do is hope, not to policymakers or politicians, because as much as I'd like to have faith that they read my words and do something, I don't delude myself.
而可悲的是,战争是不会停止的。 我尽量的说服自己:作为一名记者, 作为一名记者,一个作家, 我做什么都不可能阻止他们。我不行。 我不是科菲 · 安南。他不能停止战争。 他试图在叙利亚谈判,而失败了。 我不是一个联合国冲突决议人。 我甚至不是一个人道主义援助的医生, 我不能告诉你,我那时感到多么的无助 有的人死在我面前,而我救不了他们。 我是一名证人。 我的角色是为那些没有发言权的人出声。 我的同事形容其为用光照亮 世界最黑暗的角落。 而这正是我尽量去做的。 我不会每次都成功 有时候甚至是让人非常令人沮丧的, 因为你会觉得你做着无用功 或你觉得没有人会在乎。 谁在乎叙利亚?谁在乎波斯尼亚? 有谁会在乎刚果、 象牙海岸、 利比里亚、 塞拉利昂, 这一整串的地方, 我会一辈子记住吗? 但我的职业是一名见证人 这就是问题症结所在,问题的核心 我们这样的记者。 我只能做的只有盼望, 不是对政策制定者或政客, 因为我尽管希望 他们会读我的报导,会改变现况 我不会欺骗自己。
But what I do hope is that if you remember anything I said or any of my stories tomorrow morning over breakfast, if you can remember the story of Sarajevo, or the story of Rwanda, then I've done my job.
但我真正的希望的是,如果你能记得我所说的话, 或者明天早上吃早餐时想起我的故事 如果你能记住萨拉热窝的故事 或者卢旺达的故事 我完成了我的工作。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)