Nawal El-Saadawi The uses of anger
Nawal El-Saadawi, campaigner for women's rights, died on March 21st, aged 89. One day, at the age of ten, Nawal El-Saadawi was sent to put on her cream dress .
纳瓦勒·萨达维，女权运动领袖，于3月21日去世，享年89岁。一天，家人让十岁的纳瓦勒·萨达维被派去穿上她淡黄色的连衣裙。
Such a thing was special in their poor household, in the huddled village of Kafr Tahla in the delta of the Nile. Her father, she was told, had a guest for her to meet.
在这个尼罗河三角洲卡夫塔拉拥挤的村庄里，换装对这个贫穷的家庭来说有特别的意义。家人告诉她，父亲要她见一位客人。
So she put on the cream dress, but also smeared raw aubergine on her teeth to turn them black. That way the guest, who was meant to be her future husband, would never, ever want to marry her.
于是她穿上了淡黄色连衣裙，还在牙齿上涂上生茄子，好让牙齿变黑。那样的话，这位注定要成为她未来丈夫的客人，就打消了想娶她的念头了。
She got a beating for it, but it worked, and that first victory gave her strength for the rest of her life: giant self-belief , and she needed it. {Her campaign against the oppression of women in Egypt, from genital mutilation to routine marital thrashings ,
她为此遭到一顿打，但这种方式挺见效，第一次胜利为她余生提供了力量支撑：强大的自信，而她需要这种自信。她发起的反对埃及妇女压迫的运动，从割礼到司空见惯的婚姻*力暴**，
from puny inheritance rights to the wearing of the veil, hurled her against the authorities.} Her writing was censored, her books banned.
从微不足道的遗产继承权到女性被迫戴面纱，以上种种让她不得不与当局“为敌”。她的作品受到审查，她的书籍遭到封禁。
"Women and Sex", published in 1969, cost her her job in the ministry of health. {Eight years later "The Hidden Face of Eve", which spared no details of the cuttings she had seen as a doctor in the villages,
1969年出版的《妇女与性》使她失去了在卫生部的工作。八年后，她在《夏娃隐藏的一面》一书中将在乡村当医生时看到的割礼细节披露无疑，
shot that taboo into general conversation and herself into electric peril, like a field of mines. }In 1981 Anwar Sadat's government jailed her for three months, and in the 1990s death threats sent her abroad.
也将这个禁忌话题变成了大众谈资，让她自己身陷雷区般的危险境地之中。1981年，安瓦尔·萨达特(Anwar Sadat)政府将她囚禁了3个月，90年代，她迫于死亡威胁不得不移居国外。
Each time, like a winning horse, she cleared every obstacle . In prison, while the other women wept, she sang, danced and wrote a memoir on toilet paper, using a s muggled eye-pencil.
每一次，她都像一匹获胜的马一样，跨过了每一道障碍。在监狱那段日子，当其他女人哭泣时，她唱歌、跳舞，用偷偷带进来的眼线笔在厕纸写回忆录。
When her publisher in 2007 burned her play in which God was out-argued and gave up, she declared that if she said all she wanted to say she would be burned herself, like Joan of Arc.
2007年，她在剧本里说真主被压制并且认输，出版商就烧掉了她的剧本，她宣称，如果她说出了她想说的一切，她就会像圣女贞德一样被烧死。
A savage, dangerous woman, many said. So, truth was savage, too. That was why the words poured out, in 55 books that encompassed short stories, novels, poetry, lectures and plays.
很多人说，萨达维是个野蛮、危险的女人。所以，真相也是野蛮的。这就是为什么这些内容会在55本书中呈现出来，其中包含短篇故事、小说、诗歌、演讲和戏剧等形式。
She spoke for all Egypt's women as they struggled in silent subordination, shouting "I insist on it!", until, sometimes, she got through. One of those voices belonged to Firdaus, a "Woman at Point Zero", awaiting death for killing just one of the men who had abused her.
她代表所有埃及妇女发声，当她们在沉默的服从中挣扎时，她还在高喊着“我就要坚持到底!”，直到有时她能度过难关。其中一个声音来自菲达斯，《处于零点的女人》的主角，因为她杀死了虐待她的其中一个男人而面临着死亡。
Another was her own smothered, terrified voice when, at six, she had been taken from her warm bed, held in an iron grasp on the icy bathroom tiles by the village midwife who stank of sweat, henna and iodine,
另一个声音则是萨达维自己窒息般、恐惧的声音，当时6岁的她被村里的接生婆从温暖的被窝里拽出来，无法动弹地被按在冰冷的浴室地板上。接生婆浑身散发着汗水、指甲花和碘酒混合的刺鼻味道，
and slashed with a fiery razor between her thighs, as if she was a sheep being butchered for Eid. Against that razor, part of a merciless campaign to paralyse girls' capacity to think and understand, she now had her pen.
手里拿着一把红色剃须刀在她大腿间划动着，她仿佛一只为开斋节献祭的羔羊。为了反抗那把剃须刀，这把旨在麻痹女孩的思考和理解能力的无情运动一部分的剃须刀，她现在握住了笔。
It could be just as sharp. So could a scalpel. She had no wish to be a doctor, but did so well at school that it became inevitable.
笔尖若刀刃般锋利。手术刀也可以作为反抗工具。可她无意成为一名医生，不过因为在学校表现优异，自然而然成为了医生。
As a girl she was lucky to be properly educated at all, when her place was in the kitchen among the onions. The only praise she ever received was when she learned to light the kerosene stove.
作为女孩，她很幸运地受到了良好的教育，毕竟以当时的社会定位，她应该围绕着厨房的洋葱转悠。她唯一一次被表扬是学会点燃煤油炉的时候。
Girls, her grandmother told her, were a blight; a boy was worth 15 times as much. Yet in the dissection room at medical school, where she had gone on a scholarship, she saw how equally frail men's and women's bodies were under her probing blade.
祖母跟她讲，女孩是祸害；一个男孩的价值抵得上十五个女孩。然而，在获得奖学金后就读的医学院的解剖室里，她发现，在她的刀片下，男性和女性的身体是一样地脆弱不堪。
Since that was so, why were they so unequal everywhere else? Why, as a doctor back in Kafr Tahla, did she have to spend nights at the bedside of child brides
既然如此，为什么在其他领域两性却如此不平等呢？为什么她在卡夫塔拉村当医生时，不得不整夜守在儿童新娘的床边，
who had been pre-emptively deflowered for their husbands by the coarse unwashed nails of a midwife, and were still bleeding?
照顾这些被接生婆污秽、粗糙的指甲抢先夺走了贞洁，好满足男性私欲，并且还在流血的姑娘们?
In 2008 a law was passed in Egypt to ban female genital mutilation. It was a solid achievement for her, but she was hardly satisfied. The ban was cosmetic; the country simply wanted to cover up the disgrace she had exposed.
2008年，埃及通过了一项法律，禁止女性“割礼”。这对她来说是一项实实在在的成就，但她并不满足于此。这种禁令只是表面文章；这个国家只是想掩盖她所揭露的耻辱。
Second, it was ineffective against such an ingrained habit: 90% of Egyptian women were cut before it, and almost as many were being cut a decade later.
其次，对于这种根深蒂固的陋习，表面功夫是徒劳的；90%的埃及女性在法律出台前已经接受了割礼，十年后也差不多有同样多的女性会接受割礼。
Also, it was merely a start. Women still needed easier divorce, and she showed the way, divorcing all three of her husbands ("I'm not fit for the role of a wife, you may be sure of that!").
而且，这仅仅是个开始。女性仍然需要更加容易的离婚（手续），她是在这方面的先驱，她和三任丈夫离了婚 (“我不适合做一位妻子，你们可能确信这一点!”)。
They needed protection from sexual harassment, proper equality before the law, an equal chance to get jobs. More of them, not fewer, were wearing veils, a symbol to her of the veiled minds of both women and men.
她们需要得到免受性骚扰的保护，法律面前应有的男女平等，以及就业的平等机会。戴着头纱的女性不减反增。在她看来，头纱象征着男女被蒙蔽的思想。
Matters would never improve until the system itself was changed. By "the system", she meant everything. As a secularist, she wanted God gone, and with it the grip of Islamic law over all women's lives.
除非制度根基被撼动，否则永远只是治标不治本。她所说的“体制”指的是一切。作为一名世俗主义者，她希望真主消失，同时让支配所有女*生活性**的伊斯兰法律彻底消弭。
But her diehard Marxism told her that it was really the patriarchal class system, not Islam, that kept them down. All would be well if wealth were distributed equally, so that the poor no longer laboured for bread while the rich basked in opulence.
但是她坚定的马克思主义告诉她，是父权阶级制度在压制剥削女性，而不是伊斯兰教。如果财富得到平均分配，那么一切都会好起来，如此穷人就不用在富人悠闲享受富足生活时为了糊口而拼命劳作。
All would be even better if, as Nasser had wanted, Egypt's oil revenue was no longer drained away by foreigners into the coffers of Western multinationals. That was the path to real, equal democracy, and her answer to every problem.
如果像纳赛尔希望的那样，埃及的石油收入不再被外国人拿走，流入西方跨国公司的金库，那么一切都将改善。这是通往真正、平等的民主道路，也是她解决所有问题的答案。
Reforms in isolation were a sideshow. The whole lot had to go.
孤立的改革只是表面文章。整个体制需要被颠覆。
She beat this drum for decades. In TV debates she would try to fill every minute, desperate to deliver her whole manifesto. She dreamed of a pan-Arab women's movement of peasants, professionals and factory workers, mobilising to force change.
她为争取女性权利奔波数十年。在电视辩论中，她惜时如金，尽全力发表她的全部宣言。她梦想着召集一场由农民、专业人士和工厂工人组成的泛阿拉伯妇女运动，鼓舞各方力量推动变革。
As far as she could see, there were no proper feminists left; those she had met in America seemed to tolerate husbands even more brainlessly macho than Egyptian men. She was feted in the West, and her exile in the 1990s was spent teaching at Duke University in North Carolina.
在她看来，已经没有真正的女权主义者了；她在美国遇到的那些“女权主义者”似乎可以容忍比埃及男人更无脑、更大男子主义的丈夫。她在西方受到了热情款待，上世纪90年代，当时被流放的她到北卡罗来纳州的杜克大学教书。
But the West was still the colonising enemy. In 2011 she naturally went to Tahrir Square to demand the toppling of Hosni Mubarak,
但西方国家依旧是进行殖民统治的敌人。2011年，她自发来到解放广场，要求*翻推**胡斯尼·穆巴拉克(Hosni Mubarak)的统治。
whom she had meant to run against in 2005 until he banned her from media appearances: pointing a furious finger, tossing her mane of white hair. But she denounced the Muslim Brotherhood, when they won democratic elections the next year,
2005年，她本打算与穆巴拉克同台竞选，但对方禁止她在媒体上露面：媒体的照片显示，她愤怒地伸出手指，甩动浓密的白发。但是，当穆斯林兄弟会在第二年的民主选举中获胜时，
as capitalist patriarchs tied to Islam and abetted by the West: unacceptable on every count. Better just to shout all the more.
她谴责他们是与伊斯兰教密切相关、受到西方教唆的资本主义父权者：无论如何都是不可接受的。高声疾呼才是王道。
On a childhood visit to the seaside once, forbidden to bare her chest to the sunshine like her elder brother, she had watched the weed floating in the sea and felt her anger growing inside her.
小时候去海边游玩时，家人不许萨达维像哥哥那样在阳光下袒胸露背，她看着海草漂浮在海面上，感到愤怒在心中滋长。
The shoots were a tender green at first, like the weed, but gradually turned blue, then black. There was simply so much injustice in the world, tangling root and branch, ever growing.
愤怒的种子起初是嫩绿的，像野草一样，但逐渐变成蓝色，然后变成黑色。世界上有太多的不公，根与枝盘根错节，不断滋长。
Could her anger overwhelm it? She would try.
她的愤怒能压倒这一切吗？我们拭目以待。