饑民 The famished

　　For all its eccentricities, MartínCaparrós’s new book powerfully captures their plight

　　馬丁·卡帕羅斯的新書雖古怪，卻有力地捕捉到饑民的困境

　　DUNCAN GREEN, an in-house thinker at Oxfam,a charity, and an academic at the London School of Economics, makes anintriguing observation. Often, he notes, a person’s views about poverty anddevelopment are shaped by the first region of the developing world that he orshe gets to know. Those who begin by studying Africa tend to have strong viewson foreign aid (whether for or against) and are obsessed with the quality ofgovernment. Those who learned first about east Asia tend to focus on economicgrowth. And those whose first experience is in Latin America are preoccupiedwith justice and power.

　　英國慈善機(jī)構(gòu)樂施會(huì)(Oxfam)的內(nèi)部顧問、倫敦政治經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)院的學(xué)者鄧肯·格林(Duncan Green)發(fā)現(xiàn)了一個(gè)有趣的現(xiàn)象。他指出，人們對貧困與發(fā)展的看法往往是由自己了解的第一個(gè)發(fā)展中地區(qū)所塑造的。那些一開始研究非洲的人對外國援助有強(qiáng)烈的看法(無論贊成或反對)，而且執(zhí)著于政府的素質(zhì)。以研究東亞起步的人傾向聚焦經(jīng)濟(jì)增長。而先接觸拉丁美洲的人則滿腦子都是公正與權(quán)力的問題。

　　Martín Caparrós is an Argentinian journalistand novelist whose book, “Hunger”, has already appeared in French, German andSpanish. It has now been updated and translated into English. The bookintroduces English-speaking readers to a Latin American perspective on poverty.But “Hunger” is also highly idiosyncratic—a peculiar, often perplexing tourthrough some of the world’s most desperate places, interspersed with muddledranting. It is an off-putting, infuriating book that nonetheless gets one bigthing right.

　　馬丁·卡帕羅斯(Martín Caparrós)是阿根廷人、新聞工作者、小說家。他的著作《饑餓：最古老的問題》(Hunger: The Oldest Problem)此前已經(jīng)出版了法語、德語和西班牙語版，目前做了修訂并譯成英文。這本書向英語讀者展現(xiàn)了一種拉美視角的貧困觀。但這本書也極為特立獨(dú)行——它穿行于世界上一些生存條件最惡劣的地方，過程離奇古怪，常常令人困惑，還夾雜著混亂的怒罵。這是一本會(huì)讓人不適甚至大為光火的書，不過它還是有一個(gè)重要的可取之處。

　　The best parts of the book are the sectionsin which Mr Caparrós interviews hungry people. He hangs out with a woman whoscavenges a rubbish tip in Argentina, with an Indian widow who has been left todie in a holy city and with a peasant farmer in Niger who keeps glancing at hischunky digital watch. He asks stupid questions, as good journalists do, andgets answers that reveal much about how extremely poor people think.

　　這本書最精彩的部分是卡帕羅斯對饑民的采訪。他的訪談對象包括一個(gè)在阿根廷的垃圾場里拾荒的女人、一個(gè)被遺棄在一座圣城里等死的印度寡婦，還有一個(gè)尼日爾農(nóng)民(他一直盯著卡帕羅斯那塊厚重的數(shù)字手表)。像優(yōu)秀記者都會(huì)干的那樣，他問了一些蠢問題，得到的答案卻有力地揭示出極度貧困的人們的想法。

　　Why, the author asks, is an Indian mothertaking her malnourished daughter out of the hospital before she has recovered?Because, the mother explains, her sister-in-law has fallen ill, and she mustlook after the household. What would a poor woman in South Sudan eat, if shecould eat anything? Walwal, she replies—a kind of sorghum porridge. But supposeyou could have meat or fish, Mr Caparrós presses. No: she would eat walwal.

　　卡帕羅斯問，為什么一個(gè)印度母親不等自己營養(yǎng)不良的女兒康復(fù)，就帶她離開了醫(yī)院?那位母親解釋說，因?yàn)樯┳硬×耍�她必須回去照料家人。他又問南蘇丹的一個(gè)貧窮婦女，如果什么都能吃到，她想吃什么?她回答說walwal(一種高粱粥)�？ㄅ亮_斯再問，但如果能吃到肉或魚呢?不要，她說，就要吃walwal。

　　“Hunger” is also a political book. Mr Caparrós believes that peoplego hungry chiefly because the powerful behave in unjust ways. He is againstmultinational agribusiness firms such as Cargill (though not against cropscience), and implies that trade is a major cause of high food prices. Hethinks little of humanitarian or development aid, and describes welfare as “away of maintaining poverty” because it keeps the poor from rebelling. Much ofthis is nonsense, and it is not even clear that the author believes it. He hastravelled too widely and interviewed too many people to hold fast to simpleexplanations.

　　《饑餓》也是一本表達(dá)政見的書�？ㄅ亮_斯認(rèn)為，人們之所以挨餓，主要是因?yàn)闄?quán)貴群體行事不公。他反對美國嘉吉(Cargill)這類跨國農(nóng)業(yè)企業(yè)(卻并不反對農(nóng)作物科學(xué))，并暗示貿(mào)易是糧價(jià)高企的主因。他不屑人道主義或發(fā)展援助，認(rèn)為福利只是“一種維持貧困的方式”，因?yàn)檫@樣可以防止窮人造反。這大部分都是胡說八道，甚至也看不明白作者是否真的深信不疑。以他走訪范圍之廣、采訪人數(shù)之多，不大可能會(huì)認(rèn)定如此簡單的解釋。

　　Strangest of all are the chapters in whichMr Caparrós steps back to address the reader and his own conscience. More thanonce he poses the question: “How the hell do we manage to live knowing thesethings?” Sometimes he seems to be fighting an internal battle, in which hisdesire for justice pushes against his feelings of despair and horror about thelives of the poorest: “I’ve got enough problems without going around thinkingabout those poor bastards in Africa or Kolkata or those places I don’t even…” Atsuch moments the book seems not just Latin American but distinctivelyArgentinian. Few countries are so thick with psychoanalysts.

　　最奇怪的是卡帕羅斯退回到自身、向讀者發(fā)問和捫心自問的那些章節(jié)。他不止一次提出這個(gè)問題：“我們他媽的怎么能明知這些事存在，還能活得下去?”有時(shí)他仿佛陷入了自我掙扎，他對公正的渴望與他對赤貧人群生活狀況的絕望與恐懼相抵觸：“我面對的問題已經(jīng)夠多了，都不用跑去考慮非洲或加爾各答或者其他我甚至都沒……的地方的可憐蟲�！痹谶@些時(shí)候，這本書似乎不僅僅是拉美視角了，而是獨(dú)具一格的阿根廷視角。很少有哪個(gè)國家有這么多心理分析學(xué)家。

　　The great thing about “Hunger” is itsrelentlessness. Most books about poverty (indeed, most articles in TheEconomist about poverty) introduce the reader to the poor, then pull back intodispassionate consideration of agricultural productivity, social safety-nets,credit constraints and the like. All that policy talk is fine, but it is nothow extremely poor people think about their lives. Deep poverty and hunger oftenmake no sense to those who suffer those things, except perhaps as evidence ofGod’s will. Misfortune simply hit them, when the rains failed, when a husbandvanished or a child fell ill. Mr Caparrós holds you there, in the unsettling presenceof the desperate, and forces you to listen to them.

　　《饑餓》的一大優(yōu)點(diǎn)是它的殘酷。大多數(shù)有關(guān)貧困的書(當(dāng)然還有本刊有關(guān)貧困的大多數(shù)文章)都會(huì)向讀者介紹窮人的生活，然后又回到對農(nóng)業(yè)生產(chǎn)率、社會(huì)保障網(wǎng)、信貸限制等問題的冷靜思索。所有這些政策討論都很好，但卻并不是赤貧人群看待自己生活的方式。對遭受這些苦難的人來說，赤貧和饑餓除了有可能是上帝旨意的證明外，往往沒有什么可以理解的意義。久旱無雨、丈夫突然消失、孩子生病——這些純粹就是不幸降臨。卡帕羅斯按住你，讓你不安地直面那些絕望的人，強(qiáng)迫你去傾聽他們的聲音。

　　注：雙語全文源自經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人