對抗塔利班的壁球冠軍 圖帕凱瓦齊爾

A few weeks ago, I met a young squash champion at a conference in Manhattan called “Women in the World”. Normally, that would not excite me, since I am not much of a sports fan.

不久前，我在曼哈頓的“當今女性”(Women in the World)會議上遇到一位年輕的壁球冠軍。通常，這不會令我雀躍，因爲我並不是個體育迷。

But this particular woman, Maria Toorpakai Wazir, left me feeling profoundly humbled; indeed, after chatting with her I will never look at a racquet in the same way again.

但這一位女性，瑪麗亞•圖帕凱•瓦齊爾(Maria Toorpakai Wazir)卻讓我深感卑微；真的，跟她聊過後，我再也不會像過去那樣看待壁球這項運動了。

Twenty-five years ago, Toorpakai was born in Waziristan, a mountainous, tribal corner of north-west Pakistan that is struggling with Islamist fundamentalism. As it happens, this is close to the birthplace of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot by the Taliban in 2012 because she was attending school (she survived and later won the Nobel Peace Prize for championing female education). Toorpakai, like Malala, grew up chafing at the oppression she saw. So much so that when she was five years old, she refused to wear girls’ clothes.

25年前，圖帕凱在瓦濟里斯坦(Waziristan)出生。該地位於巴基斯坦西北部，是一個過着部落生活的山區，在伊斯蘭原教旨主義的困擾下一直生存艱難。無獨有偶，馬拉拉•優薩福扎伊(Malala Yousafzai)也出生在這附近。因堅持上學，這位巴基斯坦女學生在2012年遭到塔利班的槍擊（馬拉拉活了下來，後來因捍衛婦女教育權利而獲得諾貝爾和平獎)。與馬拉拉一樣，圖帕凱從小就目睹着社會對女性的壓迫，並感到憤憤不平。於是當她5歲時，就拒絕再穿上女裝。

“I wanted to hang out just like my brothers,” she recalls. “They were running around, and wrestling, and I thought I would be just like them. So I tossed all my girly clothes in a fire [and] cut my hair.”

“我想像我的兄弟們一樣出去玩，”她回憶說，“他們跑來跑去，互相打鬧，我認爲自己也能和他們一樣。於是我把自己的女孩衣服全都扔進火裏，還把頭髮剪了。”

Initially, her family was horrified. But, eventually, her father, Shamsum Quayyum Wazir, let her do some weightlifting, dressed as a boy and using the nickname “Genghis Khan” — and she won some competitions.

起初，她的家人嚇壞了。但後來，父親沙姆斯姆•加堯姆•瓦齊爾(Shamsum Quayyum Wazir)允許她練習舉重，女扮男裝，化名“成吉思汗(Genghis Khan)” ——她逐漸在一些比賽中脫穎而出。

Then, when her family moved to Peshawar, Toorpakai tried squash too, a popular sport in Pakistan. “Genghis” proved even better at that, and she started winning (boys’) championships. But when the organisers asked to see her birth certificate, she was exposed as a girl — and the Taliban threatened to kill her for the “crime” of wearing shorts.

後來，她們家搬到白沙瓦(Peshawar)，圖帕凱也試着玩巴基斯坦流行的壁球。事實證明她更擅長這項運動，並開始在（男子）比賽中獲勝。然而，當主辦方要求她出示出生證明後，她的女兒身暴露了——塔利班威脅要處死她，“罪名”是穿着短褲。

She tried to face the Taliban down. The government even posted snipers on the squash courts to protect her. But Toorpakai became haunted by a vision of exploding glass. “I wasn’t scared for myself,” she said. “I was scared for everyone out there, because if I [went] to a squash court, it was going to get blown up.”

她試圖直面塔利班的威脅。政府甚至在壁球場安插了狙擊手來保護她。但漸漸地，球場爆炸、玻璃飛濺的景象老是浮現在她的想象中。“我並不擔心自己，”她說，“我擔心的是球場裏的人，因爲如果我去某個球場，它很有可能會炸掉。”

So, eventually, she gave up, and then spent several years as a teenager trapped at home, endlessly hitting balls against the walls. To pass the time, she wrote “thousands” of emails to squash champions around the world, asking for support. One day, Jonathon Power, a Canadian squash luminary, answered her call. And, as Toorpakai turned 20, she entered the professional circuit in Canada. She is now ranked 56 in the world and number one in Pakistan (although the latter ranking is somewhat academic, since she can no longer actually play there).

因此，最終，她放棄了。接下來的幾年，她困在家中，沒完沒了地對着牆壁擊球。爲了打發時間，她寫了“數千”封電子郵件，向世界各地的壁球冠軍求助。直到某一天，加拿大壁球名將喬納森•鮑爾(Jonathon Power)迴應了她。於是，當圖帕凱年滿20歲時，她進入了加拿大職業巡迴賽。目前她在世界排名第56位，在巴基斯坦排名第一（雖然後項排名有些空談，因爲她已不能在當地比賽）。

In some senses, this is a profoundly depressing story. Three decades ago, I worked as a charity volunteer in north-west Pakistan during a gap year and, while it was conservative, back then it was also a society of great kindness, courtesy and hospitality. As a teenage girl, I moved fairly freely, albeit wearing a headscarf. But now, as Toorpakai’s story shows, this sense of civility has been ripped apart by the war(s) in next-door Afghanistan, by corruption in the Pakistani state and by a rising tide of Islamist fundamentalism. It is a sad indictment of a national dream gone wrong.

在某種意義上，這是一個讓人深感沮喪的故事。30年前，我利用間隔年在巴基斯坦西北部做慈善志願者，那時，當地雖然守舊，但卻是一個民風純樸、禮貌好客的社會。雖然要戴着頭巾，但十幾歲的我仍然行動自如。而現在，圖帕凱的故事卻顯示出，鄰邦阿富汗的戰亂、巴基斯坦政府的腐敗以及伊斯蘭原教旨主義崛起的浪潮，已將這種彬彬有禮的感覺粉碎殆盡。這反映的是對一個民族夢想的破滅，令人悲哀。

Yet Toorpakai’s story is also uplifting: if nothing else, it shows the courage that people sometimes display in the face of horror. And this is not just on the part of Toorpakai; her parents have also been extremely brave. And that highlights a crucial point that can be forgotten by feminists or at “women’s” conferences: that whenever a story emerges about a woman who has escaped from religious oppression, there is often a brave man involved too.

然而，圖帕凱的故事也有鼓舞人心之處：它表現出人們在面對恐懼時，有時展現出的勇氣。不僅圖帕凱相當勇敢，她的父母亦然。它還突出了一個女權主義者和“女性”會議可能會忽視的關鍵點：一個女人逃脫宗教壓迫的故事裏，往往有一個英勇的男人。

If you are a father in a place such as Waziristan or Peshawar today, it takes guts to permit your daughter to defy the gender convention. The behaviour of women is deemed crucial for family “honour”. As an anthropologist might say, the cultural identity of the community is embedded in female behaviour, and any breach of the rules is viewed as a symbolic threat. Yet Toorpakai says that her father was “very supportive” of her desire to hit squash balls. “He believes in equality,” she insists. The same is true of Malala’s father: he took the brave decision to let her attend school.

如果你是一位父親，身處瓦濟里斯坦或白沙瓦這樣的地方，允許女兒反抗性別傳統需要極大的勇氣。那裏的人普遍認爲，婦女的舉止對家族的“顏面”至關重要。人類學家或許會說，羣體的文化認同植根於女性的言行，對規則的任何觸犯都被視爲一種象徵性的威脅。然而圖帕凱卻說，她父親“非常支持”她打壁球的意願。“父親相信平等，”她堅稱。馬拉拉的父親也是如此：勇敢地讓女兒去上學。

So the next time I see a squash racquet, I will silently salute girls such as Malala and Maria Toorpakai — and be profoundly grateful for the freedom that women take for granted in the west. But I will also pay tribute to Shamsum Quayyum Wazir and the other (largely invisible) men who have been willing to break with convention. Without them, Toorpakai’s tale would not have had a happy(ish) end; and sadly this is rare.

所以下次我再看到壁球拍，我會默默向馬拉拉和瑪利亞•圖帕凱這樣的女孩們致敬——並由衷感激自己享有的自由，雖然它已被西方女性視作理所當然。我還會向沙姆斯姆•加堯姆•瓦齊爾及其他（基本默默無名的）男人致敬，他們願意衝破習俗，沒有他們，圖帕凱的故事不會有圓滿結局。很遺憾，這樣的故事結局圓滿的寥寥無幾。