2018年9月22日纽约时报：探秘约旦：贝都因人的待客之道与沙漠烧烤
Zarb: The Bedouin answer to barbecue
探秘约旦：贝都因人的待客之道与沙漠烧烤
A baby goat just had been thrust into my arms when one of the girls got an idea. “Gift!” she exclaimed. “Gift for you!” Before I had time to worry that she meant the goat itself, 11-year-old Muna was running back to her family’s tent. She returned with a smile, holding a travel-sized tube of foot lotion in her palm. It was half used. “Gift,” she repeated. Her 13-year-old sister, Nida, was not to be outdone. It was her turn to disappear and return, this time with a plastic bracelet.
刚把一只小山羊塞进我怀里，其中一个女孩就想起了一件事。“礼物！”她高声喊道。“送给你的礼物！”我还没来得及担心她说的礼物是指那只山羊，11岁的穆娜（Muna）就跑回她家的帐篷了。回来时，她一脸微笑，掌心里握着一管旅行装大小的足部护肤乳液。里面的乳液只剩一半了。“礼物，”她又说了一遍。她13岁的姐姐妮达（Nida）也不甘示弱。她跑回帐篷，回来时拿着一只塑料手镯。
The girls would not take no for an answer. I fished the only object I had out of a pocket to give them in return: a pot of lip balm. “Oooh,” Muna said. “Thank you.”
她们是不会允许我拒绝的。于是，我从衣服兜里掏出仅有的一件东西作为回礼：一罐润唇膏。“喔！”穆娜说。“谢谢。”
Together, we returned to the shade of the tent, sitting cross-legged on goat-hair rugs. As their mother watched us shyly, pouring cup after cup of tea, they showed me their drawings, taught me Arabic words, asked me to taste the ball of jameed – a hard, chalky goat’s milk cheese, sun-dried on top of the tent – that they pressed into my hands. Across the partition, a handwoven blanket that separated the women’s and men’s quarters, I could hear as my guide to the desert chatted with his father in Arabic. A rooster crowed; one of the sheep baa-ed. The hearth filled the tent with the cosy smell of wood smoke.
我们一起回到帐篷的阴凉中，盘腿坐在山羊毛地毯上。她们的母亲一边害羞地看着我们，一边一杯接一杯地倒茶，两个小姑娘给我看她们画的画，教我阿拉伯语单词，让我品尝塞到我手里的贾米德（jameed）球。这是一种坚硬的如石灰岩般的奶酪，是将羊奶放在帐篷顶上晒干而成。一块手织的毯子将男宾区和女宾区分隔开来。隔着毯子，我能听到带领我去沙漠的导游用阿拉伯语和他父亲聊天。鸡叫声响起，一只绵羊随之发出咩咩声。壁炉燃烧木头散发出香味，在帐篷里弥漫开来，令人身心放松。
This, I thought, was what I had come to Jordan to find.
我想，这就是我来约旦要找的东西。
By the time I arrived in Wadi Rum, I had been beginning to think my trip to Jordan was a mistake. I’d had high hopes for the tiny Middle Eastern kingdom. Friends had told me about its striking sights and delicious food. But they had gushed about one thing in particular: the country’s warmth and hospitality. That’s what I had been looking forward to most.
抵达瓦迪拉姆（Wadi Rum）的时候，我已经开始觉得来约旦是个错误了。我曾对这个中东小国寄予厚望。朋友和我说过这里的美景和美食非比寻常。但他们尤其大谈特谈一件事：这个国家的人民温暖、热情好客。这正是我最期待的。
In my first 48 hours, I’d experienced little of it. In Aqaba, a resort town on the Red Sea where I began my journey, I was leered at, laughed at and, finally, groped. “Men here are not used to a woman alone,” one policeman shrugged. I wanted to shut myself in my hotel room and not come out again until my flight home.
在抵达后的最初48小时里，我几乎没有感受到这种热情。在我出发的地方，红海岸边的度假小镇亚喀巴（Aqaba），人们不怀好意地打量我、嘲笑甚至触摸我。“这里的男人不习惯女人独自出门，”一名警察耸了耸肩说。我想把自己关在酒店的房间里，再也不出门，直到启程返家。
Instead, I went to the desert.
但实际上，我去了沙漠。
Located near Jordan’s southern border with Saudi Arabia, Wadi Rum intrigues visitors with its undulating hills of white and red sand and unearthly-looking towers of rock. But the real reason to visit Wadi Rum isn’t the landscape. It’s the people who make their home here.
地处约旦南部与沙特阿拉伯的边界附近，因其绵延起伏的白色和红色沙丘，以及看上去颇有神秘感的岩石山而吸引着游客。但来瓦迪拉姆的真实原因不是这里的风景，而是以这里为家的人。
Many foreigners were first introduced to the area’s Bedouins by Wadi Rum’s most famous Western visitor, TE Lawrence – the British officer who adapted so completely to Bedouin life that he was nicknamed Lawrence of Arabia.
很多外国人最早是通过劳伦斯（TE Lawrence）才知道生活在这里的贝都因人的。劳伦斯是瓦迪拉姆最有名的西方游客，这位英国军官完完全全适应了贝都因人的生活，所以有了绰号“阿拉伯的劳伦斯”（Lawrence of Arabia）。
One aspect of Bedouin culture Lawrence described was the importance of treating guests well. This was so key, he wrote, it almost ruined the Arab Revolt. The Arabs had planned to raise the flag, announcing their revolution against the Turks, on arriving in Medina. But at the last moment, they were joined on their journey by a couple of Turkish military officers. Some thought the officers should simply be despatched – after all, they were about to be sworn enemies. But the Bedouin code of hospitality made this inconvenient. Technically, after all, they were “two uninvited guests to whom, by the Arab law of hospitality, [they] could do no harm,” Lawrence wrote. (The guests were escorted back to Damascus before the flag was raised).
劳伦斯说，贝都因文化的一个方面是，对款待宾客看得很重要。他写道，这一点非常关键，差点毁了阿拉伯革命（Arab Revolt）。阿拉伯人计划一登陆麦地那（Medina），就竖起旗帜，宣布发起对土耳其的革命。但在最后一刻，几名土耳其军官加入了他们的征途。一些人认为，应该直接把这几名军官打发走，毕竟他们即将成为死敌。但贝都因人的好客为此带来了不便。毕竟严格说来，他们是“两位不速之客，按照阿拉伯人的好客法则，（他们）不能伤害客人，”劳伦斯写道。（最后，在不速之客被护送回大马士革后，阿拉伯人才竖起旗帜。）
In the decades since Lawrence’s visit, the Bedouin way of life has changed; closed borders have cut off their long-ranging, nomadic way of life, while technology and tourism have provided both opportunities and challenges.
在劳伦斯到来后的几十年里，贝都因人的生活方式发生了变化。封闭的边界中断了他们历史悠久的游牧生活方式，科技和旅游业则带来了机遇和挑战。
But some tenets of Bedouin culture have remained surprisingly consistent.
但贝都因文化中的一些信条却惊人地保持不变。
“You want to know about Bedouin hospitality?” asked Attayak Ali al Zilabia, the director of the Bedouin Roads camp where I was staying, when I arrived at the village of Wadi Rum. “Don’t worry. We will show you hospitality.”
“你想了解贝都因人的好客？”我到达瓦迪拉姆村时，我住的贝都因人街道（Bedouin Roads）营地的负责人齐拉比亚（Attayak Ali al Zilabia）问道。“别担心。我们会让你看到什么是热情好客。”
I soon realised that asking a Bedouin to explain hospitality was as superfluous as asking someone to describe how a sand dune feels between the toes. You don’t have to ask about it. It’s just there.
很快我就意识到，让一个贝都因人解释好客，就好比让人描述沙丘在脚趾间的感觉一样多余。根本不用问。它就在那里。
My guide to the desert was Abu Rashid, a slight, handsome man who wore his agal rope, the black cord that keeps his red-and-white shemagh (traditional Middle Eastern scarf) in place, at a rakish angle. (His full name, he told me with a laugh when I asked, was Sabbah Abu Rashid al Zalabiyah, but even that wasn’t complete: Bedouin naming practices mean that a man’s full name includes a first name, father’s name, grandfather’s name, specific tribe name and larger ‘parent’ tribe name).
引领我去沙漠的导游拉希德（Abu Rashid）身形偏瘦，相貌英俊，黑色的头巾绳把他的红白两色的传统中东头巾固定成一个倾斜的角度。（我问起时，他笑着告诉我他的全名是Sabbah Abu Rashid al Zalabiyah，即便如此，这个名字还是不全，因为贝都因人的起名习惯是，一个人的全名要包括名字、父亲的名字、祖父的名字、具体的部落名和更大的“父系”部落名）。
It was easy to tell that Abu Rashid had lived his whole life in Wadi Rum. I quickly learned he could walk up near-vertical canyon walls as quickly and gracefully as a spider, make camels walking a mile away halt and look up by yodelling out a simple call, and, perhaps most impressively of all, keep his white thoab – the long, loose clothing traditionally worn by Bedouin men – pristine even after a day of scrambling through red sand dunes.
不难看出，拉希德一生都生活在瓦迪拉姆。我很快得知，他可以像蜘蛛一样在峡谷两边近乎垂直的岩壁上迅速、优雅地攀爬，只需用约德尔唱腔喊一声就能让走了一英里的骆驼停下脚步，抬起头来。或许最令人震惊的是，他身穿贝都因男性传统的宽松长袍，即便在红色的沙丘之间奔波了一天，也能够保持自己的白色长袍一尘不染。
“I am Bedouin,” he would say with a shrug and a smile when any of these skills seemed to surprise me.
每当我对其中任何一种技巧感到惊讶时，他都会微笑着耸耸肩说，“我是贝都因人。”
One day, Abu Rashid and I had been driving for an hour without seeing another human. The sea of sand turned from red to white, with streaks of purple in the distance. We had come far south of the central touristic artery, an area that – while wild – was dotted with overnight camps and well-known sights like Lawrence’s Spring, where Lawrence was said to drink (and where Peter O’Toole did, too, in the 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia).
一天，我和拉希德开车走了一个小时也没看到人。沙海由红变白，远处出现了一道道紫色。我们深入到了中部旅游干线的南部。这片地区虽然荒凉，但仍散布着过夜的营地和著名景点，比如劳伦斯泉（Lawrence's Spring）。据说劳伦斯喝过那里的水（在1962年的电影《阿拉伯的劳伦斯》（Lawrence of Arabia）中，奥图尔[Peter O'Toole]也喝过）。
I had lost any sense of where I was; even the dozens of rock formations, so bizarre they could have come from the Moon, were starting to look the same. I only knew that we weren’t driving in circles because Abu Rashid kept pointing out each pillar from our 4x4. “All of the mountains have names – all of them,” he explained. That applied as much to a ‘mountain’ no bigger than 10m high as it did to titans like Jebel Umm al-Ishrin, a massif that soars 700m above the sand.
我完全不知道自己身在何处。就连那几十处奇怪得像来自月球一样的岩石群，在我眼里也开始变得一模一样。我只知道我们不是在兜圈子，因为拉希德一直坐在我们的四轮驱动车里对柱子一样的岩石山指来指去。“所有的山都有名字——所有的，”他解释说。无论是一座不超过10米高的“山”，还是像沙漠中700米高的乌姆伊施林山（Jebel Umm al-Ishrin）这样的大山，都有名字。
At the end of the day, when I asked Abu Rashid to trace our route on the map, I was shocked to see that we’d covered only about one-fifteenth of the desert. I shouldn’t have been; Wadi Rum’s protected area alone is 720 sq km, about the size of the entire New York City metropolitan area, all five boroughs included. Abu Rashid knew every metre.
在一天结束的时候，我让拉希德在地图上标出我们走过的路线。我惊讶地发现，我们只走了大约十五分之一的沙漠。我其实不应该感到震惊。仅瓦迪拉姆的保护区就有720平方公里，大约相当于纽约市的整个都市区，包括五个行政区在内。拉希德对这里的每一寸土地都了如指掌。
To those who were raised here, the desert is more than their backyard: it is home itself.
对那些在这里长大的人而言，沙漠不仅仅是后院：沙漠就是家本身。
This, after all, is the meaning of the word Bedouin. It comes from bedu in Arabic – ‘desert dwellers’.
毕竟，这就是贝都因这个词的意思。贝都因这个词来自阿拉伯语中的bedu，意思是“住在沙漠里的人”。
Bedouin I met throughout Jordan told me how they felt that their true home wasn’t a place with a bed and a roof, but the desert wilderness. This was true in Wadi Rum, too, where several guides said that even when there’s a tent available at the camps, they often prefer to sleep in an open-top 4x4 or even on the sand, under the stars.
我在约旦各地遇到的贝都因人告诉我，他们觉得真正的家不是有床和屋顶，而是有荒凉的沙漠的地方。在瓦迪拉姆也一样，我听过多名导游说，即便营地里有帐篷，他们也常常喜欢睡在敞篷四轮驱动车里，甚至是星空下的沙子上。
Despite being a popular tourist destination, Wadi Rum remains wild today. The small village at the desert’s edge is its only fixed settlement. If you arrive with a car, you must leave it there: camels, donkeys and 4x4s are the only way through the desert. There are no signs or roads, and barely any mobile phone service, either.
虽然是一个热门旅游景点，但瓦迪拉姆至今仍保持着原始的本色。位于沙漠边缘的小村庄是这里唯一的固定居住地。如果你是开车来的，必须把车停在那里：要穿过沙漠只能骑骆驼、驴子和驾驶四轮驱动车。沿途没有路标和公路，也几乎没有移动电话服务。
As a result, seeing someone else in the desert almost always has been a cause for celebration. It has shaped a code of hospitality that is more than romantic; it’s pragmatic. Even if one day you are helping a stranger who stumbles upon your tent – hungry, thirsty and in need of a night’s sleep – the next time, you could be the one in need of aid.
因此，在沙漠里遇到其他人几乎总是一件值得庆祝的事情。它形成了一种不仅仅是浪漫，更是务实的好客准则。即便有一天，你在帮助一个跌到在帐篷上的陌生人，他饥渴交加，需要睡上一晚好觉，下一次你可能就是需要帮助的一方。
Now, as we crossed from red sand to white near Um Sabatah, we ran into camels loping along slowly, nibbling at the bushes. Abu Rashid stopped the 4x4 and jumped out. He greeted the camel shepherd by name and gave him some food we were carrying with us, a pastry packaged in plastic. The shepherd wasn’t a cousin or Bedouin; he was an African immigrant, relatively new to Wadi Rum. But in the desert, everyone is a friend.
现在，在我们跨过红色的沙漠，前往萨巴塔（Sabatah）附近的白色沙漠时，我们遇到了一队慢慢迈着大步、吃着灌木树叶的骆驼。拉希德停下车，跳了下去。他直呼其名地和那个放骆驼的人打招呼，并把我们随身携带的食物给了他一些，那是一块塑料包装的油酥糕点。此人不是拉希德的亲戚，也不是贝都因人。他是非洲移民，对瓦迪拉姆来说相对陌生。但在沙漠里，每个人都是朋友。
Later, Abu Rashid and I visited his 75-year-old father, Sheikh Ali Lafi al Zalabiyah. The sheikh goes to the village every week or so to visit his first wife and to get supplies and news. But his true home is the desert, where he lives with his second wife and his two daughters. His location changes every couple of months.
后来，我和拉希德去看望他75岁高龄的父亲谢赫扎拉比亚（Sheikh Ali Lafi al Zalabiyah）。老人几乎每周都要去村里看望第一个妻子，同时取走补给和打听消息。但他真正的家是沙漠。他和第二个妻子及两个女儿就住在沙漠里。他的住处每隔几个月就会换一次。
To reach him, we had to drive far south, just a couple of kilometres from the Saudi Arabian border. The family’s tent stood in the shade against a rock mountain. There was no other settlement, or person, within sight. As we entered, Ali Lafi smiled and gestured for me to sit.
为了去他住的地方，我们必须一直往南开，直到距离沙特阿拉伯边境只有几公里。他家的帐篷搭在一座石山的庇荫处。视线所及看不到别的定居点和人。我们走进帐篷，拉菲（Ali Lafi）微笑着示意我坐下。
“A guest is treated as a guest whether you know him or not, whether he’s a stranger or not,” he told me as Abu Rashid translated. “You should accept him either way. And by Bedouin tradition, when he arrives, you don’t ask where he came from. Maybe he just has come for a visit and he continues on his way. But if he stays more than one day, two days, maybe you ask him – because perhaps he wants to talk to you about something, or needs something. Then you have to ask him and if he needs help, you help him.
“无论认不认识，是不是陌生人，都应该以客相待，”他通过拉希德的翻译告诉我。“不管怎样都应该接受他。并且按照贝都因人的传统，他来了之后，不要问他来自哪里。也许他只是来看看，然后还要接着赶路。但如果他停留的时间超过一天、两天，也许你可以问他，因为他可能想和你谈些什么事情，或是需要什么。那么你必须问他，而且如果他需要帮助，你就要帮他。”
“But the most important thing is that you tell him ‘Welcome.’ Whether he is from the same tribe or a different tribe, from Jordan or outside of Jordan, he is a guest.”
但最重要的是，你要亲口告诉他，“欢迎到来。无论他来自同一个部落还是其他部落，来自约旦还是其他国家，他都是客人。”
When I asked which rules I should be following in return, he chuckled. “You are foreign,” Abu Rashid translated. “He accepts your behaviour because you are not Bedouin.” There was how I’d sat with the men, for a start: “If you were Bedouin, you would use the Bedouin system for women. When a lady comes, she goes straight to the lady place. And you would have to cover your body and your head. Your face is your choice.”
我问道，反过来我应该遵守哪些规则，他笑了。拉希德翻译说，“你是外国人。他接受你的行为，因为你不是贝都因人。”一开始，我和男性坐在一起：“如果你是贝都因人，你就会采用贝都因人为女性设计的制度。女性来家里时，她会径直走向女宾区。并且你必须遮住自己的身体和头部。遮不遮脸你自己选。”
Assuming I were a Bedouin man, I’d be offered coffee, Ali Lafi went on. Once I’d finished one cup, if I wanted more, I should move my cup forward in a straight line, not lifting it up or down. If I didn’t want any more coffee, I should give the empty cup a little shake. And I should only have three cups: any more is seen as greedy.
假设我是一名贝都因男性，主人会为我奉上咖啡，拉菲接着说。喝完一杯后，如果还想喝，我应该把杯子沿直线往前移动，而不是上下移动。如果不想再喝了，我应该轻轻摇一摇空杯子。而且我只能喝三杯：再多就会被认为贪得无厌。
But the coffee could symbolise that I needed something more than hospitality. “The man of the house, like my father, he would say, ‘Drink your coffee’,” Abu Rashid said. “The guest would say ‘No. We drink our coffee only if you do something for us.’ My father would say, ‘If I can do it, without breaking a rule of Allah, I will do it.’” That could be settling a blood feud (though those are rare these days, Abu Rashid said) or arranging a marriage (if the bride agrees). If he can do it, Abu Rashid said, he’ll say “Okay, drink your coffee.” And if he can’t? “The guest leaves angry,” Abu Rashid said, laughing.
但咖啡可能代表我需要的不仅仅是热情款待。拉希德说，“家里的男主人，比如我父亲，会说，‘喝咖啡’。客人会说'不了。只有你帮我们做件事，我们才会喝咖啡。我父亲会说，‘如果我能做到，并且不违背真主的旨意，我就会去做。’”这件事可能是解决血海深仇（不过据拉希德说，现在这种情况很少见）或安排一桩婚姻（如果新娘同意的话）。拉希德说，如果能做到，他会说，“好，喝咖啡吧。”“如果做不到呢?”“客人会生气地离开，”拉希德笑着说。
Food should be offered, too. “If you have guests from far away, or you love them and they are your friends, you should kill a goat for them, if they agree to let you do that,” Abu Rashid said. The goat is to make mansaf: a traditional dish of meat, flatbread and rice, drizzled with a broth made from jameed, the same hard goat’s cheese I tried with the girls.
还应该提供吃的。拉希德说，"如果客人远道而来，或者你爱他们，他们是你的朋友，你应该为他们杀一只羊，如果他们同意的话。"杀羊是为了做曼萨夫（mansaf），这是一道用肉、烤饼和米饭做成的传统美食，上面还会浇上用贾米德，就是那两个小姑娘让我品尝的那种硬奶酪做的浓汤。
From killing the goat to cooking the yoghurt, mansaf takes several hours to make. So if guests are in a hurry, the alternative is zarb: a dish of vegetables and meat, like lamb, slow-cooked in an underground pit that is the Bedouin answer to barbecue. Although zarb can be left for two or three hours, it can also be ready in a third of the time, and it doesn’t need to be watched – making it a faster, and more convenient, alternative.
从杀羊到用奶酪做汤，做成一顿曼萨夫需要好几个小时。因此，如果客人赶时间，可以选择扎布：一道用蔬菜和肉，比如羊肉做的菜肴。这道菜要在地下的坑里慢慢烹制，它是贝都因人的烧烤。制作扎布时可以两三个小时不用管，但也可以只用三分之一的时间就把它做好，而且不需要看着。这使扎布成了一个更快、更方便的替代方案。
Several hours later, my wrist still adorned with the plastic bracelet Nida and Muna had given me, I was back at the camp, watching Abu Rashid and the camp’s cook, Muhammed, lifted a three-tiered grill arranged with lamb, zucchini and potatoes into a hole in the sand. Closing it with a lid, they shovelled it over with desert.
几小时后，我的手腕上还戴着妮达和穆娜送我的那个塑料手镯。我已经回到了营地，看着拉希德和营地的厨师穆罕默德（Muhammed）拿起一盘用羊肉、西葫芦和土豆做的三层烤菜放进沙地里的一个洞中。他们盖上盖子，然后又用沙子盖在上面。
Over the next couple of hours, there was almost no sign that the zarb was being cooked: sealed beneath sand, not even the scent of smoke gave it away. After the sun had gone down, we ate in front of the campfire as one of the guides strummed a rebab, a traditional Bedouin string instrument. If this was the second-best meal for guests, it certainly wasn’t bad.
在接下来的几个小时里，几乎没有迹象表明他们正在做扎布：在沙子的密封下，连香味都飘不出来。太阳下山后，我们面对着营火吃饭，其中一名导游弹着贝都因人的传统弦乐器rebab。如果这是排名第二的待客美食，必然不会难吃。
