第二章: 天生有罪 Born a Crime
In any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn’t merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent. Race-mixing proves that races can mix — and in a lot of cases, want to mix. Because a mixed person embodies that rebuke to the logic of the system, race-mixing becomes a crime worse than treason.
在任何将种族歧视当作惯例的社会中，种族融合这件事不仅质疑了这个社会的不公，还揭露了其无法良性运转且不合逻辑的事实。种族融合，不仅证明了不同种族可以融合，而且在多数情况下还希望去融合。一个混血儿就能够折射出社会逻辑的可笑荒谬，因此，种族融合变成了一个比叛国罪还严重的罪行。
I grew up in South Africa during apartheid, which was awkward because I was raised in a mixed family, with me being the mixed one in the family. My mother, Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah, is black. My father, Robert, is white. Swiss/German, to be precise, which Swiss/Germans invariably are. During apartheid, one of the worst crimes you could commit was having sexual relations with a person of another race. Needless to say, my parents committed that crime.
我成长于种族隔离时期的南非，这其实挺尴尬的，因为我生在一个混合种族的家庭里，而我就是那个混血儿。我的母亲帕特莉莎·努拜因赛罗·诺亚是黑人。我的父亲罗伯特是白人，准确说是瑞士/德国人——瑞士/德国人总会强调这一点。在种族隔离期间，最严重的罪行之一，就是你和其他种族的人发生性关系。很显然，我父母就犯了这样的罪。
Humans being humans and sex being sex, that prohibition never stopped anyone. There were mixed kids in South Africa nine months after the first Dutch boats hit the beach in Table Bay. Just like in America, the colonists here had their way with the native women, as colonists so often do. Unlike in America, where anyone with one drop of black blood automatically became black, in South Africa mixed people came to be classified as their own separate group, neither black nor white but what we call “colored.” Colored people, black people, white people, and Indian people were forced to register their race with the government. Based on those classifications, millions of people were uprooted and relocated. Indian areas were segregated from colored areas, which were segregated from black areas — all of them segregated from white areas and separated from one another by buffer zones of empty land. Laws were passed prohibiting sex between Europeans and natives, laws that were later amended to prohibit sex between whites and all nonwhites.
人是人，性是性，禁令并不能阻止什么。荷兰的船在塔布尔湾靠岸后的第九个月，南非就迎来了第一波混血儿的降生。就像在美洲那样，这里的殖民者也知道怎么勾搭本地女人，所有的殖民者似乎都对此驾轻就熟。但和美国不同的是，那里的人只要身上带有一丁点儿黑人的血统，他就会被认定为黑人。而在南非，混血儿被当作是一个单独的种群，不是黑人，也不是白人，而是“有色人种”。政府强迫人民将自己的血统记录在案，有色人种、黑人、白人、印度人，根据这些种族区分，数百万人被迫背井离乡，按规定重新安置自己的家。印度人聚居区和有色人种聚居区要分开，有色人种聚居区要和黑人聚居区分开，而他们这几类人全部要和白人社区分开，中间还要隔出一片空无人烟的缓冲地带。之前的法律规定的是严禁欧洲人和本地原住民发生性关系，之后不久，这条法律就修订为，严禁白人和所有非白人发生性关系。
If you ask my mother whether she ever considered the ramifications of having a mixed child under apartheid, she will say no. She wanted to do something, figured out a way to do it, and then she did it. She had a level of fearlessness that you have to possess to take on something like she did. If you stop to consider the ramifications, you’ll never do anything. Still, it was a crazy, reckless thing to do. A million things had to go right for us to slip through the cracks the way we did for as long as we did.
如果你问我妈，她有没有考虑过在种族隔离政策下生一个混血儿的后果，她会说，没有。要是她想做什么事，她就想方设法去做，然后她就做到了。你得先拥有她身上的那种无畏精神，才能做出她所做的那些决定。如果你稍有迟疑，稍微顾虑一下结果，那你什么也做不了。尽管如此，这依然是一件疯狂且不计后果的事。长久以来，为了维持日常生活的正常，我们要在一万件事情上如履薄冰。
The government went to insane lengths to try to enforce these new laws. The penalty for breaking them was five years in prison. There were whole police squads whose only job was to go around peeking through windows — clearly an assignment for only the finest law enforcement officers. And if an interracial couple got caught, God help them. The police would kick down the door, drag the people out, beat them, arrest them. At least that’s what they did to the black person. With the white person it was more like, “Look, I’ll just say you were drunk, but don’t do it again, eh? Cheers.” That’s how it was with a white man and a black woman. If a black man was caught having sex with a white woman, he’d be lucky if he wasn’t charged with rape.
人是人，性是性。政府为了推行这项新法律也是大费周折。违反了这个法条的处罚是蹲五年监狱。有专门的警察小队，别的什么也不管，成天就在别人家后窗边儿上瞄来瞄去——很明显，这类警察自己一定严守法规，才能得以委任。如果一对跨种族的情侣被抓，那就只有祈祷上帝来帮他们了。警察会踢开他们家门，把他俩拖出去，暴打一顿，再带回监狱。至少他们对情侣中的那个黑人会这么做，对于另一个白人，他们会说：“呃，看啊，我就说你喝醉了，下不为例，懂了吗？拜拜。”这一般指的是白种男人和黑人妇女的情况。如果抓到一个黑人男子和一个白人妇女发生了关系，男方要不被指控为强奸都算走运。
In the early 1980s, the South African government began making minor reforms in an attempt to quell international protest over the atrocities and human rights abuses of apartheid. Among those reforms was the token hiring of black workers in low-level white-collar jobs. Like typists. Through an employment agency she got a job as a secretary at ICI, a multinational pharmaceutical company in Braamfontein, a suburb of Johannesburg.
20世纪80年代初，为了缓解国际社会对国内暴乱的抗议和对种族隔离侵犯人权的指责，南非政府开始做出一些小小的改变。在这些改变措施中，有一项就是开始在一些低级的白领工作岗位上雇佣黑人，譬如打字员。通过职业介绍所，我妈找了一份秘书的工作，雇主是ICI，一家跨国制药公司，工作地点在约翰内斯堡郊区的布朗芳田。
Under apartheid, if you were a black man you worked on a farm or in a factory or in a mine. If you were a black woman, you worked in a factory or as a maid. Those were pretty much your only options. My mother didn’t want to work in a factory. She was a horrible cook and never would have stood for some white lady telling her what to do all day. So, true to her nature, she found an option that was not among the ones presented to her: She took a secretarial course, a typing class. At the time, a black woman learning how to type was like a blind person learning how to drive. It’s an admirable effort, but you’re unlikely to ever be called upon to execute the task. By law, white-collar jobs and skilled-labor jobs were reserved for whites. Black people didn’t work in offices. My mom, however, was a rebel, and, fortunately for her, her rebellion came along at the right moment.
在种族隔离制度下，如果你是一名黑人，而且又是个男人，那你的工作范围将会是农场、工厂或矿区。如果你是一位黑人女性，你会是工厂女工或女佣。这些是你仅有的人生选项。我母亲不想在工厂工作，又不擅长煮饭，也无法忍受每天被白人雇主使唤来使唤去。所以，根据她的性格，她做出了一个以上既有选项之外的选择：她报名参加了秘书培训课，学习打字。在那时，黑人女性学打字，等同于盲人想学开车。这份努力值得尊敬，但是你不太可能会因为拥有这项技能而找到工作。根据法律，白领和技工的工作都是留给白人的，黑人不能在办公室工作。但是，我妈却是个反叛者，而且很幸运的是，她的反叛恰巧赶上了好时候。
The ultimate goal of apartheid was to make South Africa a white country, with every black person stripped of his or her citizenship and relocated to live in the homelands, the Bantustans, semi-sovereign black territories that were in reality puppet states of the government in Pretoria. But this so-called white country could not function without black labor to produce its wealth, which meant black people had to be allowed to live near white areas in the townships, government-planned ghettos built to house black workers, like Soweto. The township was where you lived, but your status as a laborer was the only thing that permitted you to stay there. If your papers were revoked for any reason, you could be deported back to the homelands.
种族隔离的终极目的，就是要让南非变成一个白人国家，试图取消黑人的南非国籍，将他们全部安置到黑人家园“班图斯坦”去，那里将会成为一个半自治的黑人领地，但其实还是受制于首都比勒陀利亚的傀儡政权。不过这种所谓的白人社会，依旧离不开黑人劳动力的奉献，而这就意味着必须要让一部分黑人住在白人社区附近。政府在城市周边建了一些贫民窟小镇，来安置黑人劳动力，索韦托就是这样的一个地方。你可以住在小镇上，但那只是因为你在城里有工作。如果一旦因为任何原因丢了工作，导致证件不足，你就可能会被遣返回黑人家园。
When my mom started working, she still lived with my grandmother in Soweto, the township where the government had relocated my family decades before. But my mother was unhappy at home, and when she was twenty-two she ran away to live in downtown Johannesburg. There was only one problem: It was illegal for black people to live there.
我妈开始工作时，还和我外婆一起住在索韦托，那是政府几十年前让我们家搬去的地方。但是我妈在家里住得并不开心，所以满21岁后，她便离开家，搬到了约翰内斯堡市中心。不过，这样做有一个问题：黑人住在那里是违法的。
To leave the township for work in the city, or for any other reason, you had to carry a pass with your ID number; otherwise you could be arrested. There was also a curfew: After a certain hour, blacks had to be back home in the township or risk arrest. My mother didn’t care. She was determined to never go home again. So she stayed in town, hiding and sleeping in public restrooms until she learned the rules of navigating the city from the other black women who had contrived to live there: prostitutes.
离开小镇到城市去，不论是去工作或去干别的，你都要带好写有身份证号码的通行证，否则就会被逮捕。另外还有宵禁，到了一个特定时间，所有黑人都必须回到位于小镇上的家中，否则也会被逮捕。我母亲完全不在乎这些，她已经铁了心再也不要回家。所以留在了城里，躲藏在公共厕所过夜，之后，她从一个特别的群体那里学到了操控城市生活的规则，那群人也是硬要留在城市中的黑人妇女：妓女。
Many of the prostitutes in town were Xhosa. They spoke my mother’s language and showed her how to survive. They taught her how to dress up in a pair of maid’s overalls to move around the city without being questioned. They also introduced her to white men who were willing to rent out flats in town. A lot of these men were foreigners, Germans and Portuguese who didn’t care about the law and were happy to sign a lease giving a prostitute a place to live and work in exchange for a steady piece on the side. My mom wasn’t interested in any such arrangement, but thanks to her job she did have money to pay rent. She met a German fellow through one of her prostitute friends, and he agreed to let her a flat in his name. She moved in and bought a bunch of maid’s overalls to wear. She was caught and arrested many times, for not having her ID on the way home from work, for being in a white area after hours. The penalty for violating the pass laws was thirty days in jail or a fine of fifty rand, nearly half her monthly salary. She would scrape together the money, pay the fine, and go right back about her business.
城市里很多妓女都是科萨人。她们和我母亲说着同样的语言，并教会了她如何在城市中生存。她们教她穿上女佣的连体工服，这样在城里走动就不会被拦下来质询。她们给她介绍愿意出租公寓给她的白人房东。这类房东通常是外国人，譬如德国人或者葡萄牙人，他们并不在乎禁止跨种族发生关系的法条，很乐意把公寓分租给妓女，并且还能偶尔和她们上上床。好在我母亲有工作，付得起房租，所以对这类交易并不感兴趣。经一位妓女朋友的介绍，她认识了一个德国人，愿意把自己的一套公寓租给她。她搬进了新家，买了几套女佣工服。不过，她时不时还是会被抓，原因是下班路上没带身份卡，或者在白人社区停留太久。等待她的惩罚就是要么蹲三十天牢，要么交五十兰特的罚金，相当于她半个月的工资。她会东拼西凑地凑齐罚金，交了钱后直接回去上班。
My mom’s secret flat was in a neighborhood called Hillbrow. She lived in number 203. Down the corridor was a tall, brown-haired, brown-eyed Swiss/German expat named Robert. He lived in 206. As a former trading colony, South Africa has always had a large expatriate community. People find their way here. Tons of Germans. Lots of Dutch. Hillbrow at the time was the Greenwich Village of South Africa. It was a thriving scene, cosmopolitan and liberal. There were galleries and underground theaters where artists and performers dared to speak up and criticize the government in front of integrated crowds. There were restaurants and nightclubs, a lot of them foreign-owned, that served a mixed clientele, black people who hated the status quo and white people who simply thought it ridiculous. These people would have secret get-togethers, too, usually in someone’s flat or in empty basements that had been converted into clubs. Integration by its nature was a political act, but the get-togethers themselves weren’t political at all. People would meet up and hang out, have parties.
我妈妈的秘密公寓位于希尔布洛，房间号203。同一条走廊上，住着一个高个子、棕色头发、棕色眼睛的瑞士/德国人，名叫罗伯特，房间号206。作为前贸易殖民地，南非有着大量的外国移民。人们从世界各个角落来到这里。这里有无数的德国人，还有很多荷兰人。那时的希尔布洛就是南非的格林尼治村，充满了世界主义理想和自由不羁的精神，一派欣欣向荣。那里有很多画廊和地下剧院，艺术家和演员敢于在这样的地方发声，在成群的观众面前批评政府。那里还有很多餐厅和夜总会，多数是外国人开的，而且面向所有人提供服务，不论是对现状不满的黑人，还是觉得种族歧视很可笑的白人，都可以前来消费。在一些由公寓或空地下室改成的俱乐部里，人们还会悄悄地聚会。集会本质上是一种政治行为，但是他们的聚会并不带有政治意味。人们只是聚在一起玩乐，开派对。
My mom threw herself into that scene. She was always out at some club, some party, dancing, meeting people. She was a regular at the Hillbrow Tower, one of the tallest buildings in Africa at that time. It had a nightclub with a rotating dance floor on the top floor. It was an exhilarating time but still dangerous. Sometimes the restaurants and clubs would get shut down, sometimes not. Sometimes the performers and patrons would get arrested, sometimes not. It was a roll of the dice. My mother never knew whom to trust, who might turn her in to the police. Neighbors would report on one another. The girlfriends of the white men in my mom’s block of flats had every reason to report a black woman — a prostitute, no doubt — living among them. And you must remember that black people worked for the government as well. As far as her white neighbors knew, my mom could have been a spy posing as a prostitute posing as a maid, sent into Hillbrow to inform on whites who were breaking the law. That’s how a police state works — everyone thinks everyone else is the police.
我妈妈立刻投入了这样的生活。她总是出去参加聚会，派对、跳舞、见朋友。她是希尔布洛塔的常客，希尔布洛塔是非洲最高的建筑之一，顶层有一个带旋转舞池的夜总会。那是一段快乐的时光，但也同时隐藏着危险，因为这些餐厅和俱乐部有时会被关停，有时不会。那些演员和顾客有时会被逮捕，有时不会。就像掷骰子一样。我妈妈从不知该相信谁，谁又会突然向警察举报她。邻居之间经常相互举报。那些白人的女性朋友有上百种理由去举报一个混迹在他们中的黑人女性——毫无疑问肯定是妓女。你应该记得我之前说黑人也可以为政府工作。在邻居们看来，我妈很可能是一个间谍，她伪装成妓女，平日里打扮成女佣，潜伏在希尔布洛塔的夜总会里，暗中观察那些有违法倾向的白人。警察国家就是这样运作的——每个人都觉得其他人是警察。
“I don’t want kids,” he said.
“我不想要孩子。”他说。
I know that there was a genuine bond and a love between my parents. I saw it. But how romantic their relationship was, to what extent they were just friends, I can’t say. These are things a child doesn’t ask. All I do know is that one day she made her proposal.
我知道我父母之间的感情是真挚的，我看得出来。但是他们的关系有多浪漫，或者他们多大程度上只是朋友，并不好说。有些事情，小孩子是不会问的。我只知道有一天我妈妈向他提出了一个要求。
“I’m Catholic,” he said. “We don’t do such things.”
“我是天主教徒，”他说，“我不能做这样的事。”
Living alone in the city, not being trusted and not being able to trust, my mother started spending more and more time in the company of someone with whom she felt safe: the tall Swiss man down the corridor in 206. He was forty-six. She was twenty-four. He was quiet and reserved; she was wild and free. She would stop by his flat to chat; they’d go to underground get-togethers, go dancing at the nightclub with the rotating dance floor. Something clicked.
在城市里孤单一人生活，不被信任也无法信任别人，我妈妈开始和一个让她有安全感的人越走越近：那个住在走廊另一端的206房间的高个子瑞士男人。他46岁，她24岁。他安静保守，她自由奔放。她会在经过他房间的时候停下来聊聊天。他们会一起去地下派对，在有旋转舞池的夜店跳舞。火花不期而至。
“I want to have a kid,” she told him.
“我想要个孩子。”她对他说。
“You do know,” she replied, “that I could sleep with you and go away and you would never know if you had a child or not. But I don’t want that. Honor me with your yes so that I can live peacefully. I want a child of my own, and I want it from you. You will be able to see it as much as you like, but you will have no obligations. You don’t have to talk to it. You don’t have to pay for it. Just make this child for me.”
她回道：“你知道，我可以和你睡完就走，你永远也不知道你会不会有一个孩子。但是你一定不想那样。答应我的请求吧，这样我能问心无愧地活下去。我只想要一个属于自己的孩子，我希望你能给我这个孩子。只要你想见他，随时都可以，而且你不用承担任何责任。你不用陪他玩，也不用给他钱。给我这个孩子吧。”
“I didn’t ask you to have a kid. I asked you to help me to have my kid. I just want the sperm from you.”
“我没说让你要孩子。我想请你帮我，让我有个孩子。我只需要你的精子。”
Nine months after that yes, on February 20, 1984, my mother checked into Hillbrow Hospital for a scheduled C-section delivery. Estranged from her family, pregnant by a man she could not be seen with in public, she was alone. The doctors took her up to the delivery room, cut open her belly, and reached in and pulled out a half-white, half-black child who violated any number of laws, statutes, and regulations — I was born a crime.
在父亲同意后的第九个月，1984年2月20日，我妈妈在希尔布洛医院做了剖腹产。由于她和家人关系疏远，还和一个她无法公开关系的男人怀了孩子，所以自己一个人去了医院。医生将她推入产房后，剖开她的肚子，取出了一个身上流着一半白人血液、一半黑人血液的婴儿，这个婴儿违反了无数的法条，章程与规则——所以，我生下来就有罪。
When the doctors pulled me out there was an awkward moment where they said, “Huh. That’s a very light-skinned baby.” A quick scan of the delivery room revealed no man standing around to take credit.
医生把我拿出来后的一瞬间很尴尬。他们说：“呃，这个孩子肤色真浅啊。”环视四周，好像没有哪个男人像孩子的父亲。
For my mother’s part, the fact that this man didn’t particularly want a family with her, was prevented by law from having a family with her, was part of the attraction. She wanted a child, not a man stepping in to run her life. For my father’s part, I know that for a long time he kept saying no. Eventually he said yes. Why he said yes is a question I will never have the answer to.
其实对我母亲来说，这个男人不想和她组建家庭，或说法律不允许他们两个组建家庭，反而增加了这件事对她的吸引力。她只是想要一个孩子，并不想要某个男人介入她的生活。而我父亲那边，我只知道虽然他最终同意了，但之前的很长一段时间内都是拒绝的。只是他为什么会同意，我永远也无法知道答案了。
“Who is the father?” they asked.
“孩子的父亲是谁？”他们问。
My father isn’t on my birth certificate. Officially, he’s never been my father. And my mother, true to her word, was prepared for him not to be involved. She’d rented a new flat for herself in Joubert Park, the neighborhood adjacent to Hillbrow, and that’s where she took me when she left the hospital. The next week she went to visit him, with no baby. To her surprise, he asked where I was. “You said that you didn’t want to be involved,” she said. And he hadn’t, but once I existed he realized he couldn’t have a son living around the corner and not be a part of my life. So the three of us formed a kind of family, as much as our peculiar situation would allow. I lived with my mom. We’d sneak around and visit my dad when we could.
我的父亲也没出现在我的出生证上。从法律意义上说，他从来不是我的父亲。我妈妈曾亲口告诉我，她做好了我父亲完全不管我的准备。她自己在朱伯特公园附近新租了一处公寓，那里离希尔布洛很近，她带着我从医院出来后，就径直去了新公寓。过了一周，她去见我父亲，没带我。令她惊讶的是，他问她我在哪儿。“你说你不想和他有关系的啊。”她说。他之前确实是不想，但我出生后，他觉得自己无法接受儿子就住在旁边，但和自己无关的事实。所以我们三个在法律允许的范围内，勉强组成了一个家庭。我和我母亲住在一起，偶尔会偷偷跑去看望我父亲。
“His father is from Swaziland,” my mother said, referring to the tiny, landlocked kingdom in the west of South Africa.
“他爸爸是斯威士兰人。”我妈妈说。斯威士兰是南非西边的一个小国。
They probably knew she was lying, but they accepted it because they needed an explanation. Under apartheid, the government labeled everything on your birth certificate: race, tribe, nationality. Everything had to be categorized. My mother lied and said I was born in KaNgwane, the semi-sovereign homeland for Swazi people living in South Africa. So my birth certificate doesn’t say that I’m Xhosa, which technically I am. And it doesn’t say that I’m Swiss, which the government wouldn’t allow. It just says that I’m from another country.
他们很可能猜到了她在说谎，但是接受了这个说法，毕竟他们需要一个解释。在种族隔离制度下，政府会在你的出生证上打上所有的标签：种族、部落、国籍。所有的东西都要被归类。我妈妈撒了谎，说我生在卡恩瓦格尼，那是供斯威士兰人在南非居住的半自治黑人家园。所以我的出生证上没写我是科萨人，其实我是；也没写我是瑞士人，因为政府不允许。我的出生证上写着我来自另一个国家。
Where most children are proof of their parents’ love, I was the proof of their criminality. The only time I could be with my father was indoors. If we left the house, he’d have to walk across the street from us. My mom and I used to go to Joubert Park all the time. It’s the Central Park of Johannesburg — beautiful gardens, a zoo, a giant chessboard with human-sized pieces that people would play. My mother tells me that once, when I was a toddler, my dad tried to go with us. We were in the park, he was walking a good bit away from us, and I ran after him, screaming, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” People started looking. He panicked and ran away. I thought it was a game and kept chasing him.
大多数孩子是他们父母的爱的结晶，而我是我父母犯罪的结晶。我唯一能和我父亲相处的时间都是在室内。如果我们去外面的话，他就得到路对面走。我和我妈经常去朱伯特公园散步。那是约翰内斯堡的中央公园，有花园、动物园，还有一个巨大的棋盘，每个格子上都能站下一个人。我妈妈有次告诉我，我还小的时候，我父亲曾和我们一起去散过步。在公园里时，他和我们保持了一定的距离，但我却在后面追着大叫：“爸爸！爸爸！爸爸！”人们开始看我们，而他吓坏了，拔腿就跑。我当时可能以为这是个游戏吧，所以还在后面一直追着他跑。
I couldn’t walk with my mother, either; a light-skinned child with a black woman would raise too many questions. When I was a newborn, she could wrap me up and take me anywhere, but very quickly that was no longer an option. I was a giant baby, an enormous child. When I was one you’d have thought I was two. When I was two, you’d have thought I was four. There was no way to hide me.
我也不能和妈妈一起散步。一个浅色皮肤的孩子和一个黑人女人走在一起，会引发诸多问题。当我还是婴儿的时候，她可以把我包起来，抱着到处去，但很快我就长大了。我小时候长得特别快，我一岁的时候，你会以为我两岁了。我两岁的时候，你会以为我四岁了。她想把我藏起来，但做不到。
My mom, same as she’d done with her flat and with her maid’s uniforms, found the cracks in the system. It was illegal to be mixed (to have a black parent and a white parent), but it was not illegal to be colored (to have two parents who were both colored). So my mom moved me around the world as a colored child. She found a crèche in a colored area where she could leave me while she was at work. There was a colored woman named Queen who lived in our block of flats. When we wanted to go out to the park, my mom would invite her to go with us. Queen would walk next to me and act like she was my mother, and my mother would walk a few steps behind, like she was the maid working for the colored woman. I’ve got dozens of pictures of me walking with this woman who looks like me but who isn’t my mother. And the black woman standing behind us who looks like she’s photobombing the picture, that’s my mom. When we didn’t have a colored woman to walk with us, my mom would risk walking me on her own. She would hold my hand or carry me, but if the police showed up she would have to drop me and pretend I wasn’t hers, like I was a bag of weed.
于是，就像她是如何租到房子，如何穿女佣衣服在路上走那样，我妈妈又找到了社会系统的漏洞。混血儿（父母一个是黑人一个是白人）是违法的，但是有色人种（父母两个人都是有色人种）是不违法的。所以我妈妈把我当成一个有色人种小孩在养。她在有色人种聚居区找了个托儿所，把我放在那里之后，自己就可以去上班了。我们的公寓楼里有个叫奎恩的女人，她是有色人种。我们想去公园散步时，我妈妈就会邀请她和我们一起。奎恩走在我旁边，装成她是我妈妈的样子，而我妈妈走在我们后面几步远的地方，表现得好像她是奎恩的女仆。我有很多张和奎恩一起散步的照片，我们长得像，但她不是我妈；后面站着的那个看起来好像是闯入照片的路人的黑人女人，才是我妈。如果奎恩没时间和我们散步，有时候我妈也会冒着风险自己带我出去。她会牵我的手，或抱着我，但警察一出现，她会立刻把我放开，假装我不是她的孩子，假装我是一袋大麻。
Soweto was designed to be bombed — that’s how forward-thinking the architects of apartheid were. The township was a city unto itself, with a population of nearly one million. There were only two roads in and out. That was so the military could lock us in, quell any rebellion. And if the monkeys ever went crazy and tried to break out of their cage, the air force could fly over and bomb the shit out of everyone. Growing up, I never knew that my grandmother lived in the center of a bull’s-eye.
索韦托的设计思路就是要人口爆炸——这体现了那些种族隔离设计师们的远见。小镇本身是一个城市的体量，人口数量接近一百万人，但进出小镇就只有两条路。这样的话，军队就可以轻易地将我们锁在里面，有助于平息任何暴乱。假如这群野蛮猴子发了狂，想要冲破牢笼，空军就可以过来扔几个炸弹，把所有人炸得屁滚尿流。在成长过程里，我从未意识到我的外婆就住在靶子的中心。
In the city, as difficult as it was to get around, we managed. Enough people were out and about, black, white, and colored, going to and from work, that we could get lost in the crowd. But only black people were permitted in Soweto. It was much harder to hide someone who looked like me, and the government was watching much more closely. In the white areas you rarely saw the police, and if you did it was Officer Friendly in his collared shirt and pressed pants. In Soweto the police were an occupying army. They didn’t wear collared shirts. They wore riot gear. They were militarized. They operated in teams known as flying squads, because they would swoop in out of nowhere, riding in armored personnel carriers — hippos, we called them — tanks with enormous tires and slotted holes in the side of the vehicle to fire their guns out of. You didn’t mess with a hippo. You saw one, you ran. That was a fact of life. The township was in a constant state of insurrection; someone was always marching or protesting somewhere and had to be suppressed. Playing in my grandmother’s house, I’d hear gunshots, screams, tear gas being fired into crowds.
在城里住，尽管出行艰难，我们还是可以想办法解决。因为城里人多，黑人、白人、有色人，大家上班下班，我们藏在人群里不会很显眼。但是索韦托只有黑人。像我这种肤色的人，藏起来会很困难，而且政府在那里查得更严。在白人区，你很少会看到警察，即使看到也是那种文质彬彬的警官，穿着立领衬衫和制服裤子。在索韦托，警察是随处可见的军队。他们不穿立领衬衫，而是用防爆装备全副武装。他们是军人。他们的队伍被称为闪电特攻队，只要需要，他们可以立刻不知道从何处钻出来，驾驶着装甲车——我们称之为“河马”——一种装有巨型轮胎的坦克，侧面还有长圆孔的切口，枪支可以从里面伸出来扫射。你绝不能和“河马”闹着玩。你看到它，就得跑。这是生活的真谛。小镇上冲突不断：总有人在哪里游行抗议，总有人在镇压游行抗议。在外婆家玩的时候，我常常听见枪炮声、尖叫声，还有催泪瓦斯丢进人群的爆炸声。
When I was born, my mother hadn’t seen her family in three years, but she wanted me to know them and wanted them to know me, so the prodigal daughter returned. We lived in town, but I would spend weeks at a time with my grandmother in Soweto, often during the holidays. I have so many memories from the place that in my mind it’s like we lived there, too.
我出生的时候，我妈妈已经三年没有见过她的家人。但是她希望我能认识她的亲人，也希望他们能认识我，于是，这位在外漂泊的女浪子回家了。我们住在城里，但放假时，我也会去索韦托和外婆住上几周。我对索韦托有无数的记忆，好像那儿也是我的一个故乡。
“No! They’re going to take you!”
“不行！他们会把你抓走的！”
My memories of the hippos and the flying squads come from when I was five or six, when apartheid was finally coming apart. I never saw the police before that, because we could never risk the police seeing me. Whenever we went to Soweto, my grandmother refused to let me outside. If she was watching me it was, “No, no, no. He doesn’t leave the house.” Behind the wall, in the yard, I could play, but not in the street. And that’s where the rest of the boys and girls were playing, in the street. My cousins, the neighborhood kids, they’d open the gate and head out and roam free and come back at dusk. I’d beg my grandmother to go outside.
直到五六岁的时候，我才第一次看到“河马”和闪电特攻队——那时，种族隔离制度终于开始瓦解了。在那之前，我从没见到过警察，因为我不能被警察看到。每次我们去索韦托，外婆都不让我出去。她得看着我：“不不不，他可不能出去。”我可以在屋子里或院子里玩，但不能上街。所有的孩子都在街上玩。我的兄弟、邻居家的小孩，他们可以打开门冲出去，在外面疯玩一天，回家时还带着满身泥巴。所以我也求过外婆让我出去。
“Please. Please, can I go play with my cousins?”
“求你了。求你了，我能和我的兄长一起玩吗？”
For the longest time I thought she meant that the other kids were going to steal me, but she was talking about the police. Children could be taken. Children were taken. The wrong color kid in the wrong color area, and the government could come in, strip your parents of custody, haul you off to an orphanage. To police the townships, the government relied on its network of impipis, the anonymous snitches who’d inform on suspicious activity. There were also the blackjacks, black people who worked for the police. My grandmother’s neighbor was a blackjack. She had to make sure he wasn’t watching when she smuggled me in and out of the house.
很长时间里，我一直以为她的意思是其他小孩会把我拐跑，但其实她说的“他们”，指的是警察。小孩是可以被抓走的，曾经就有小孩被抓走过。那些皮肤颜色不“正确”的小孩，如果被发现出现在不该出现的地区，政府会过来剥夺他父母的抚养权，把他丢进孤儿院。为了维持小镇的治安，政府仰赖着一套奸细网络，一群匿名举报者会随时随地监视各种可疑行为。也有给警察局工作的黑人，被称为“黑夹克”。我外婆的邻居就是个黑夹克。每次外婆把我偷偷带回家或带出门时，都要提防这个邻居，确保他看不见我。
So I was kept inside. Other than those few instances of walking in the park, the flashes of memory I have from when I was young are almost all indoors, me with my mom in her tiny flat, me by myself at my gran’s. I didn’t have any friends. I didn’t know any kids besides my cousins. I wasn’t a lonely kid — I was good at being alone. I’d read books, play with the toy that I had, make up imaginary worlds. I lived inside my head. I still live inside my head. To this day you can leave me alone for hours and I’m perfectly happy entertaining myself. I have to remember to be with people.
所以我就一直被关在家里。除了那几次在公园散步之外，我的童年记忆几乎全部在室内。我和妈妈在她的小公寓里，我自己待在外婆家。我没有任何朋友，除了兄弟，我不认识任何同龄的小孩。但我不是个孤独的孩子——我还挺擅长一个人待着的。我读书，玩我的那些玩具，脑子里能幻想出一整个世界。我可以在我的脑子里玩。我现在依然可以这样。此刻，如果你让我自己待上几个小时，我仍可以玩得很开心。我有时还得提醒自己，该多和人接触接触了。
My gran still tells the story of when I was three years old and, fed up with being a prisoner, I dug a hole under the gate in the driveway, wriggled through, and ran off. Everyone panicked. A search party went out and tracked me down. I had no idea how much danger I was putting everyone in. The family could have been deported, my gran could have been arrested, my mom might have gone to prison, and I probably would have been packed off to a home for colored kids.
我外婆曾告诉我，在我三岁的时候，有一天，我受不了成天被关在家里，就在门边挖了个洞，钻了出去。所有人都吓了个半死，全家出动去找我。我完全不知道我给大家带来了多大的危险：整个家庭都可能会被驱逐出境，我外婆可能会被逮捕，我妈要蹲监狱，而我很可能会被送到专门收留有色人种小孩的孤儿院。
Obviously, I was not the only child born to black and white parents during apartheid. Traveling around the world today, I meet other mixed South Africans all the time. Our stories start off identically. We’re around the same age. Their parents met at some underground party in Hillbrow or Cape Town. They lived in an illegal flat. The difference is that in virtually every other case they left. The white parent smuggled them out through Lesotho or Botswana, and they grew up in exile, in England or Germany or Switzerland, because being a mixed family under apartheid was just that unbearable.
很显然，我肯定不是唯一一个在种族隔离制度之下由黑人和白人父母结合生下的小孩。现在我在全世界旅行时，总能碰见其他生在南非的混血儿。我们故事的开头总是差不多。我们的年龄也差不多。他们的父母也是在希尔布洛或开普敦的某个地下派对上遇见彼此，他们也住在某个非法公寓里。但我和他们有个不同之处，他们后来几乎都离开了南非。父母中身为白人的那个，会带着他们从莱索托或博茨瓦纳偷渡出去，然后他们分别在英国、德国或瑞士长大成人。毕竟，在种族隔离制度下，成长于混血家庭的生活是难以忍受的。
Once Mandela was elected we could finally live freely. Exiles started to return. I met my first one when I was around seventeen. He told me his story, and I was like, “Wait, what? You mean we could have left? That was an option?” Imagine being thrown out of an airplane. You hit the ground and break all your bones, you go to the hospital and you heal and you move on and finally put the whole thing behind you — and then one day somebody tells you about parachutes. That’s how I felt. I couldn’t understand why we’d stayed. I went straight home and asked my mom.
曼德拉当选后，我们终于可以自由地生活了。一部分曾经流亡海外的人开始回迁。我在17岁的时候遇到了一个回来的孩子。他给我讲了他的经历，我简直难以置信：“等等，什么？你意思是，我们还能离开？还有这个选项？”想象一下，有人把你从飞机上丢下去，你摔到地上，全身骨骼粉碎，你去了医院，痊愈了，准备开始面对后面的人生，然后，就在你几乎已经忘了之前的痛时，有人告诉你，有个东西叫降落伞。这就是我的感受。我不理解，为什么那些年我们要留在南非。我径直跑回家，问我妈妈。
“Why? Why didn’t we just leave? Why didn’t we go to Switzerland?”
“为什么？我们当时为什么不出国？我们为什么不去瑞士？”
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“Because I am not Swiss,” she said, as stubborn as ever. “This is my country. Why should I leave?”
“因为我不是瑞士人，”她答道，和以往一样固执，“这是我的国家，我干吗要走？”
South Africa is a mix of the old and the new, the ancient and the modern, and South African Christianity is a perfect example of this. We adopted the religion of our colonizers, but most people held on to the old ancestral ways, too, just in case. In South Africa, faith in the Holy Trinity exists quite comfortably alongside belief in witchcraft, in casting spells and putting curses on one’s enemies.
南非这个国家是新与旧、古老与现代的综合体，南非基督教就是个绝佳的例子。我们接受了殖民者带来的宗教，但是很多人也保留了祖先传下来的古老信仰，以防万一。在南非，人们信奉圣父圣子圣灵三位一体，也接受巫术，相信咒语，向敌人施加诅咒。
I come from a country where people are more likely to visit sangomas — shamans, traditional healers, pejoratively known as witch doctors — than they are to visit doctors of Western medicine. I come from a country where people have been arrested and tried for witchcraft — in a court of law. I’m not talking about the 1700s. I’m talking about five years ago. I remember a man being on trial for striking another person with lightning. That happens a lot in the homelands. There are no tall buildings, few tall trees, nothing between you and the sky, so people get hit by lightning all the time. And when someone gets killed by lightning, everyone knows it’s because somebody used Mother Nature to take out a hit. So if you had a beef with the guy who got killed, someone will accuse you of murder and the police will come knocking.
在我成长的国家，人们生病以后，比起去看西医，更愿意去找萨满，即传统医生，这个职业现在会被轻蔑地称为“巫医”。在我成长的国家，人们会因为使用巫术而被判刑——这是写在法律里的。我不是在说1700年的事，我说的是五年前的事。我记得某个人曾在法庭上被指控用雷劈死了另一个人。在黑人家园，这是司空见惯的事。那里没有高楼，也没有很高的树，你和天空之间没有什么东西遮挡，人们总是被雷劈到。而每当有人被雷劈死，所有人都清楚，肯定是有人利用了自然力量干的好事。如果那个人死掉的时候，你正在吃牛排，那你很可能就会面临谋杀的指控，警察会来敲你的门。
“Mr. Noah, you’ve been accused of murder. You used witchcraft to kill David Kibuuka by causing him to be struck by lightning.”
“诺亚先生，你被指控谋杀。你用巫术杀死了大卫·柯步库，令他被雷劈死。”
“The evidence is that David Kibuuka got struck by lightning and it wasn’t even raining.”
“证据就是大卫·柯步库被雷劈死了，可当时并没有下雨。”
“What is the evidence?”
“证据在哪儿？”
And you go to trial. The court is presided over by a judge. There is a docket. There is a prosecutor. Your defense attorney has to prove lack of motive, go through the crime-scene forensics, present a staunch defense. And your attorney’s argument can’t be “Witchcraft isn’t real.” No, no, no. You’ll lose.
然后，你就得上法庭接受审判。法庭上坐着一位法官、一位笔录员、一位检察官。你的辩护律师会竭力论证你缺乏杀人动机，反复分析犯罪现场，为你进行有力的辩护。但这个辩护律师可不能说：“巫术并不存在。”不不不，这样你会输的。
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