雙語暢銷書《我是馬拉拉》第18章:女人與海(1)
18 The Woman and the Sea
Aunt najma was in tears. She had never seen the sea before.
那瑪姑姑眼眶裏滿是淚水，她此生從未看到過大海。My family and I sat on the rocks, gazing across the water, breathing in the salt tang of the Arabian Sea.
我們一家人坐在大石頭上，眺望着一望無際的海面，呼吸着阿拉伯海鹹鹹的空氣。
It was such a big expanse, surely no one could know where it ended.
這海如此廣闊，沒有人知道它延伸到哪裏去。At that moment I was very happy.
我的心情非常愉悅。'One day I want to cross this sea,' I said.
“我希望有一天能到這片海洋的對面去。”我說。'What is she saying?' asked my aunt as if I were talking about something impossible.
“她在說什麼啊？”我的姑姑問道，好像我說了什麼不可能的事一樣。I was still trying to get my head round the fact that she had been living in the seaside city of Karachi for thirty years and yet had never actually laid eyes on the ocean.
而我還在試圖理解她已經在卡拉奇這個海濱城市生活了三十年，卻從未親眼看過大海這件事。Her husband would not take her to the beach, and even if she had somehow slipped out of the house, she would not have been able to follow the signs to the sea because she could not read.
她的丈夫不會帶她去海邊，即使她有辦法溜出屋外，也沒有辦法跟着路標走到海邊，因爲她不識字。I sat on the rocks and thought about the fact that across the water were lands where women were free.
我坐在石頭上，想着大海另一邊女人們的自由生活。In Pakistan we had had a woman prime minister and in Islamabad I had met those impressive working women, yet the fact was that we were a country where almost all the women depend entirely on men.
巴基斯坦有女總理，我在伊斯蘭堡也見過令人佩服的女性工作者，但事實上國內絕大多數女性必須完全依賴男性才能生存。My headmistress Maryam was a strong, educated woman but in our society she could not live on her own and come to work.
我的班主任瑪麗安女士是個很堅強，也受過教育的女性，但在我們的社會裏，她不被允許獨居，也不能獨自去工作。She had to be living with a husband, brother or parents.
她必須要與丈夫、兄弟或是父母住在一起才行。In Pakistan when women say they want independence, people think this means we don't want to obey our fathers, brothers or husbands.
在巴基斯坦，如果女人表示希望獨立，人們會認爲她是不想服從父親、兄弟或丈夫的指令。But it does not mean that. It means we want to make decisions for ourselves.
但事實並非如此。我們希望獨立，是希望我們能自己做決定。We want to be free to go to school or to go to work.
我們希望能夠自由地去上學或者工作。Nowhere is it written in the Quran that a woman should be dependent on a man.
《古蘭經》裏沒有任何一句話寫到女人必須依賴男人生活。The word has not come down from the heavens to tell us that every woman should listen to a man.
真主並沒有告訴我們，女人一定要聽男人的話。
