译者 snowioio
On a warm December afternoon in Rangoon, the largest city in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the country’s most popular politician, sat in the headquarters of the National League for Democracy. It is a crumbling two-story cinder-block building, with peeling green paint, exposed electrical wires, and tattered posters of Che Guevara, Aung San Suu Kyi, and her father, Aung San, a Burmese freedom fighter who helped negotiate the country’s independence from Great Britain. The N.L.D. is the main opposition party to the current military regime, and Aung San Suu Kyi, who is sixty-five, has been its nominal head since 1988. In November, the regime staged an election, and managed to extend its hold on power for five more years. A week after the vote, Aung San Suu Kyi was released from her family’s lakefront villa in northern Rangoon, where she had served seven years of house arrest在一个温暖的十二月的午后，缅甸最大的城市，仰光，昂山素季——诺贝尔和平奖获得者，这个国家最受欢迎的政治家——正坐在国家民主联盟（the National League for Democracy）的总部里。那是一个带着斑驳的绿色外漆和暴露在外的电线的破旧二层煤砖小楼，墙上贴着切·格瓦拉（ Che Guevara）、昂山素季、以及昂山素季的爸爸昂山（一个帮助缅甸同英国就国家独立进行协商的自由主义斗士）的破旧海报。国家民主联盟是缅甸现在的军事政权的主要反对党，而六十五岁的昂山素季从1988年起，就是这一党派名义上的首领。在十一月，现政权组织了一次选举，并成功的将其政权又延续了五年。投票一周后，昂山素季从她被软禁了七年的地方，她家族在仰光北部湖滨地带的住所，被释放了。
Aung San Suu Kyi now spends much of her time at N.L.D. headquarters, meeting with party members, ethnic leaders, and senior aides. The regime dissolved the party after the N.L.D.’s decision, in March, not to participate in the election because of “unjust” electoral laws. These included the banning of candidates with religious affiliations as well as those with criminal records, which eliminated all monks and hundreds of party members who have been political prisoners. Lawyers are preparing a court case to reconstitute the party. In the meantime, large crowds still gather at Aung San Suu Kyi’s public appearances, and the dictatorship closely tracks her movements, watching anyone who comes into contact with her. Half a dozen agents of the dictatorship’s intelligence division, wearing earphones and carrying digital cameras, lingered in a tea stall across the street while I interviewed her.现在，昂山素季的大部分时间都在国家民主同盟的总部度过，她在那里会见党员，宗教首领，和高级助理们。在国家民主联盟三月做出不在“不公平”的选举法下参与竞选的决定后，现政权解散了这一政党。相关的选举规定包括禁止有宗教背景的候选人参选，禁止有犯罪记录的候选人参选；这一规定剥夺了所有僧侣及数以百计的前政治犯的党员的参选权利。律师们正在准备到法院起诉以重组政党。同时，大批民众依然聚集在昂山素季的公开露面处，而独裁政权则密切关注着她的动向，监视所有试图联系她的人。在我对昂山素季进行采访的同时，就有六个独裁政权情报机构中的情报人员，带着耳机、拿着数码相机，在街对面的茶摊徘徊。
Aung San Suu Kyi sat rigidly upright on a wooden settee inside a second-floor meeting room, both hands resting in her lap. Fine lines were etched into her delicate features, and she looked gaunt, even though, according to her physician, Tin Myo Win, during her years in confinement her weight never fluctuated from a hundred and five pounds. “My doctor told me that I can’t keep going at this pace,” she said. Her diction retains something of Oxford, where she studied and lived before she returned to Myanmar, in 1988. Tin Myo Win told me that he had been monitoring her blood pressure since her release, and that he had so far given her “eight or nine” injections of “a cocktail drip”—a blend of vitamins, proteins, and glucose—to keep her from collapsing from exhaustion.在二层的会议室中，昂山素季坐在一张木质的长椅中，她坐得非常直，双手放在膝盖上。岁月在她精致的面庞上刻下痕迹，她看起来很憔悴，即使如此，据她的私人医生丁妙温（Tin Myo Win）所说，在被囚禁的几年时间里，她的体重从来都是一百零五磅，没有波动。“我的医生告诉我我不能再这样了。”她说。她的用词保持了某种牛津的风格，那是她1988年回到缅甸前学习和生活的地方。丁妙温告诉我，从她被释放后，他就一直在检测昂山素季的血压，到目前为止，他已经为她注射过“八九次”“鸡尾酒滴”——维他命、蛋白质和葡萄糖的混合物——以防止她因过度劳累而崩溃。
Her biggest frustration, she said, was that she had not found time to meditate, an integral part of her daily routine since she was placed under house arrest for the first time, in 1989. In captivity, she had practiced vipasanna meditation, an ancient technique attributed to the Gautama Buddha. At first, she said, “I found it very difficult to do, because my mind was wandering, instead of being fixed on one particular place—your breathing, the rising and falling of your abdomen. I got frustrated, thinking, My goodness, can’t I do even this little mind exercise? But, with persistence, you get there.”她最大的挫折，据她所说，是她到目前为止还没有找到时间去进行冥想，那是她自1989年第一次被软禁后日常生活的一个部分。在被囚禁期间，她曾练习过进行内观冥想，那是一种释迦牟尼佛（the Gautama Buddha）所采用的古老技法。一开始，她说，“我发现那非常非常难做，因为我的心总是辗转反侧，而不能集中在一个特定的地方——比如你的呼吸、腹腔的起伏——集中。我变得沮丧，想着，天哪，我难道连这一点心灵训练都做不了吗？但是，坚持就是胜利。”
She lived without a telephone or a computer, and her only companionship came from two female assistants, Khin Khin Win and Win Ma Ma, and a radio. The monotony was broken by occasional visits from her doctor and her attorney. Meditation proved invaluable in dealing with the “intense irritation and impatience” that she felt toward her captors. “I would think, Why can’t we just get on and do what needs to be done, rather than indulge in all this shilly-shallying?” she said. “Because I listened to the radio many hours every day, I knew what was going on in Burma, the economic problems, the poverty . . . and I’d get impatient and say, ‘Why are we wasting our time in this way?’ ” The impatience, she said, “didn’t last, because I had the benefits of meditation. Even when I was very annoyed, I would know that within twenty-four hours this would have subsided.”她曾经住的地方既没有电话也没有电脑，唯一可以同她作伴的是她的两个女助理，欣欣温（Khin Khin Win）和温妈妈（Win Ma Ma），以及一个收音机。这种千篇一律的生活偶尔会被她的医生或律师的来访打破。在处理她对于抓捕她的人“强烈的烦躁与不耐”时，冥想是极有价值的。“我曾经向，为什么我们就不能继续去做那些需要做的事，而不是不停的踌躇不前？”她说。“因为我每天都听很多个小时广播，我知道缅甸正在发生什么，经济问题，贫困问题...等等。我会变得不耐烦，然后说，‘为什么我们要这样浪费自己的时间？’”那种不耐烦，她说，“并没有持久，是冥想帮助了我。即使我非常烦躁的时候，我也知道，在二十四小时之内，一切都会平息。”
Now Aung San Suu Kyi is eager to rebuild the democracy movement, whose unity eroded in her absence. But, with the next elections five years away and people afraid to march in the streets, the opposition is arguably weaker than ever. No small part of that weakness, in the eyes of some, is Aung San Suu Kyi herself.现在，昂山素季正急切的想要重建因她的缺席而被侵蚀的民主运动。但是，由于下一次选举还有五年之遥，人们又害怕上街游行，几乎可以说，反对党现在比任何时候都要弱势。而在一些人眼中，那弱势中的一大部分便是昂山素季本人。
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, emerged about three hundred years ago out of a series of small, isolated Buddhist kingdoms, some centered on the Irrawaddy River, which originates near the mountains along the Chinese border and empties into the Andaman Sea. In the late nineteenth century, after three Anglo-Burmese wars, Burma fell entirely under the control of the British Empire, which ruled the colony as part of the Raj. George Orwell served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma for five years, an experience that was the inspiration for his 1934 novel “Burmese Days.” During the Second World War, Burma was a battleground between the Japanese Army and the Allies; the Burma Road, linking the country to China, was a vital supply route for Chiang Kai-shek, and in 1944 it was partly secured by the Allies. Burma gained its independence from Great Britain in 1948. Fourteen years later, a group of military officers led by General Ne Win toppled the democratically elected civilian government and imposed a socialist military dictatorship. Under Ne Win’s Burma Socialist Programme Party, Burma drifted into economic decrepitude and isolation.缅甸联邦共和国，也就是曾经被人们所熟知的缅甸，是从三百年前一系列小而独立的佛教王国中诞生的；这些王国中的一部分以伊洛瓦底江（Irrawaddy River）为中心分布，那是一条起源于中国边境山脉、流入安达曼海（Andaman Sea）的江流。在十九世纪晚期，三次英缅战争之后，缅甸全境沦为大英帝国的殖民地，成为印度殖民政权管辖范围的一部分。乔治·奥威尔（George Orwell）曾经在缅甸的印度皇家警察部门服役五年，这段经历成为他1934年的小说《在缅甸的日子》（Burmese Days.）的灵感来源。二次世界大战期间，缅甸是盟军同日本军队作战的战场；连接缅甸和中国的缅甸路（ the Burma Road），曾是蒋介石部队的重要补给通道，在1944年，盟军曾对它进行部分保护。缅甸在1948年脱离英国殖民者的统治而获得独立。十四年后，一伙以奈温将军（General Ne Win）为首的军事官员推翻了民主选举政府，将社会主义军事独裁政权强加给了缅甸人们。在奈温的缅甸社会主义纲领党（Burma Socialist Programme Party）的领导下，缅甸逐渐走向经济衰退和被孤立的处境。
In 1980, when I passed through as a backpacker, it was possible to exchange a fifth of Johnnie Walker Red and two cartons of Marlboros on the black market for enough kyats, the local currency, to travel in Burma for a week. Vintage nineteen-forties automobiles rumbled down the potholed streets of Rangoon, a riverside slum of mildewed British-colonial buildings with filigreed balconies draped in laundry. Most nights, the electricity failed, and the streets were cast in near-total darkness, except for the glow of battery-powered lamps illuminating the secondhand booksellers and betel-nut venders. Like all foreigners, I kept to a carefully prescribed one-week itinerary, in part because of the Communist insurgency and the ethnic rebellions then raging in parts of the countryside. I travelled by crowded trains to Mandalay, the second city, and Pagan, an ancient imperial capital strewn with the ghostly remnants of pagodas. Any signs of dissent were—to a backpacker’s eyes—deeply buried.
1980年，当我作为一个背包客经过这里时，用五分之一份的红方威士忌（a fifth of Johnnie Walker Red）和两包万宝路获取在缅甸旅行一周的缅币（当地货币）还是可能的。二十世纪四十年代的汽车从仰光崎岖不平的道路上轰鸣而下，河畔的贫民窟是带着华丽阳台外表却腐朽的典型的英殖民地建筑。大多数夜晚，供电都会中断，除了用电池供电的灯具的微弱灯光照亮着的二手书店和槟榔摊，街道几乎完全陷入黑暗。像所有外国人一样，我严格遵守着一周的旅程规定，一部分是因为当地共产主义者的暴乱和之后蔓延到部分乡村的种族暴乱。我曾乘坐拥挤的火车到达曼德勒（我的缅甸之旅的第二个城市），和帕根（Pagan），一个散布着鬼魅的小宝塔遗迹的古老帝都。在一个背包客的眼中，所有异见的痕迹，都已被深深的掩埋。
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