印巴的亲情纽带

On a mid-October afternoon, I walked on a quiet, dusty street behind the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. Hundreds of men and women lined up behind the few grilled windows opening out of the forbidding walls - mostly the elderly applying for visas to see an ageing parent or a sibling separated by history and politics when British India was divided into India and Pakistan in 1947. After the counters closed for the day, several spread out bed sheets on the footpath behind the embassy, turned their bags into pillows and prepared to sleep in the open - squatters for a night.

10月中旬的一个下午，我走在巴基斯坦驻新德里高级专员署后面的一条街上，这条街很安静，灰尘弥漫。肃穆的墙壁上开着几扇装有栅栏的窗户，数百名男女在窗口前排着队——多数是老人，他们在申请签证，想去巴基斯坦探望年老的父母或者兄弟姐妹。他们的亲人在1947年英属印度被分裂为印度和巴基斯坦时，因历史和政治原因而被分隔两地。一天结束，窗口关闭，一些排队的人在使馆后面的人行道上铺开床单，以包为枕，准备在露天睡觉。

Early morning, they would queue at the grilled windows, shuffle their piles of documents - invitation letters, copies of identity cards and address proofs of their relatives in Pakistan - and pray the visa officers didn't turn down their request to visit a dying relative or attend a niece's wedding. “My brother is sick. I haven't seen him for five years. Maybe I will get to meet him once again, said a woman from Gujarat.

大清早，他们在装着栅栏的窗口前排队，翻找出自己的一叠文件——邀请函、身份证复印件以及他们在巴基斯坦亲属的住址证明，恳求签证官不要拒绝他们的请求：见一面时日不多的亲人，或者参加侄子的婚礼。一位来自古吉拉特邦的妇女表示：“我哥病了，我已经5年没见过他了，或许我还能再见他一面。

I had been hearing similar stories for the past few months in Delhi, while interviewing families divided by Partition. Athar Abbasi is a metal worker in his late fifties based in Delhi's Muslim quarter. In 1947, his brother was taken to Karachi and grew up to become a mechanic with Pakistan International Airlines. The brothers met four times in their lives - each time when Abbasi's Pakistani brother would fly to Delhi. “He would call me from Delhi airport and I would take my wife and children with me and we would meet him in a hangar. A few years back, Abbasi's brother was killed during a robbery. Abbasi couldn't make it to the funeral. His visa would have taken months. “The Partition never ceases to be over, he told me.

过去几个月，我在德里采访因为分治而亲人分离的家庭时，听到不少类似的故事。阿塔尔·阿巴西(Athar Abbasi)是位钣金工，年近六十，住在德里的穆斯林社区。1947年，他的兄弟被带到卡拉奇，长大后成了巴基斯坦国际航空公司的一名机修工。兄弟二人一生中见过四次，每次都是借着他的兄弟飞到德里的时候见面。“他会在德里机场给我打电话，然后我带着妻子和孩子赶到机场，在飞机棚里见一面。几年前，阿巴西的兄弟在一次抢劫事件中遇害。阿巴西没能参加葬礼，因为拿到签证需要几个月的时间。他告诉我：“分治从未结束。

In the summer of 1947, as India won its freedom and was partitioned, more than 10 million people were displaced - Hindus and Sikhs leaving their homes in what became Pakistan for India, and Muslims departing India for Pakistan. About a million people were killed. Muslim mobs attacked and killed Hindus and Sikhs departing Pakistan on trains and on foot; Hindu and Sikh mobs murdered Muslims leaving India. Trains travelling between India and Pakistan often arrived at their destinations filled with corpses.

1947年夏季，印度独立并被分治，一千多万人背井离乡——印度教徒和锡克教徒离开了成为巴基斯坦的地方，前往印度；穆斯林教徒则离开印度，前往巴基斯坦。约有一百万人遇害。穆斯林暴徒袭击并杀害乘坐火车以及步行离开巴基斯坦的印度教徒和锡克教徒；印度教和锡克教暴徒则谋杀离开印度的穆斯林教徒。来往印巴之间的火车往往满载尸体抵达目的地。

Intizar Hussain, the Pakistani novelist, was 24 when his family migrated during Partition. I met Hussain, now 89, in Delhi last month and asked about his experience. “I couldn't visit Delhi for 26 years after 1947. I had no idea the new countries would be so hostile and the worlds we knew would be closed to us for decades. It choked me and my inability to return home, to return to Delhi, drove my writing, he said. An invitation to a literary festival opened the doors for Hussain. For the vast majority of ordinary citizens, such journeys remained a dream, and separated parents and siblings became fading memories.

巴基斯坦小说家印提扎尔·侯赛因(Intizar Hussain)24岁时，全家因印巴分治而迁徙。上个月，我在德里见到现年89岁的侯赛因，问起了他的经历。他说：“1947年后，我足足有26年不能去德里。我想不到两个国家会如此仇视对方，我们所熟悉的世界向我们封闭了几十年。分治阻隔着我，使我无法回家，无法回到德里，这驱使着我去写作。最终，一张文学节的邀请函为他打开了大门。然而对于广大普通公民而言，这样的旅程依然是梦想，被分开的父母、兄弟姐妹逐渐成为一份慢慢淡去的记忆。

On Wednesday and Sunday evenings, hundreds of Indian and Pakistani passengers wait for the Samjhauta Express on a dimly lit platform at the edge of a bustling Delhi railway station. Samjhauta is the Hindi and Urdu word for compromise. Also known as the Friendship Express, this bi-weekly train has linked Delhi and Lahore and united thousands of families divided since Partition. The train is slow and decrepit. Passengers travel 472km to the border town of Attari. After passing through immigration, they board a second train to go 3km across the border. Finally, once through immigration again, a third train takes them 40km to Lahore.

每周三和周日晚上，在一处喧闹的德里火车站的边缘，数百名印度和巴基斯坦乘客站在灯光昏暗的月台上，等待着Samjhauta Express列车。在印地语和乌尔都语中，Samjhauta意为“妥协。这列车又称“友谊快车(Friendship Express)，每周两班，连接了德里和拉合尔，也使数千个自分治以来被隔离的家庭得以团聚。列车缓慢而破旧。乘客首先来到472公里外的边境小镇Attari。通关以后，他们换乘第二趟列车，行驶3公里，穿过边境。最后，再次通关，第三辆列车带他们前往40公里以外的拉哈尔。

After the third India-Pakistan war, the peace treaty of 1972 agreed to establish communication and transport links. Four years later, the inaugural Samjhauta Express crossed the highly militarised border. The train continued its journeys, in spite of hostility over Kashmir throughout the 1990s. Two weeks after terrorists from Pakistan attacked the Indian parliament in 2001, the Samjhauta Express came to a halt.

第三次印巴战争以后，按照1972年签署的和平协定，两国同意建立通讯和交通联系。4年后，第一列Samjhauta Express穿过戒备森严的边境。尽管20世纪90年代印巴在克什米尔地区成敌对之势，但这辆列车的行程一直持续了下来。2001年，巴基斯坦的恐怖分子袭击了印度议会，Samjhauta Express暂停运行。

War seemed imminent. After several months of talks, India and Pakistan agreed to pull their troops back from the border but nothing symbolised the thaw more than the resumption of the Samjhauta Express in January 2004.

战争似乎一触即发。经过几个月的谈判，印巴两国同意各自从边境撤回军队，但什么都没有2004年1月Samjhauta Express恢复行驶更能象征两国解冻了。

Travel between the two countries became harder after the 2008 attack on Mumbai by Pakistan-based terrorists, but four years later, the two countries have revised their paranoid visa rules. Applicants over 65 years of age will now get visas on arrival. Businessmen will be allowed to travel to five cities without having to report to the police every morning. Other small steps in the works - allowing the Pakistani cricket team to play in India, allowing mobile phone users roaming facilities across the border, allowing Indian banks to open branches in Pakistan and Pakistani banks in India - are expected to help the two neighbours inch toward a better tomorrow, like a slow, frequently stopping train. Although they remain a long way from an answer to difficult questions like Kashmir, a poor woman from a remote Indian town might make it to see a dying brother one last time.

2008年巴基斯坦恐怖分子袭击孟买事件使来往两国之间变得更加困难，但4年后，两国修订了过度苛刻的签证制度。65岁以上申请者今后可以办理落地签证。商人前往对方国家5个城市不必每天早晨向警察报告。还有其他小力度的改进正在出现：允许巴基斯坦板球队在印度举行比赛，允动手机用户跨境漫游，允许印度银行在巴基斯坦开设分行、巴基斯坦银行在印度开设分行。这些措施将帮助两个邻国——就像一趟缓慢、频繁停站的列车一样——慢慢走向更加美好的明天。虽然要为克什米尔等棘手问题找到解决方案还需要走上一段漫长的旅途，但印度偏远小镇的贫穷妇女有望见到即将离开人世的兄弟最后一面了。