As Migrants Find the Future, They Lose the Past遺棄過去，尋找未來

by Gary Younge

Arony 譯

As Migrants Find the Future, They Lose the Past遺棄過去，尋找未來

by Gary Younge

Arony 譯

在一些動蕩的國家里，每天都有許多人冒著生命危險偷渡到其他較為發達的國家。當你了解到他們的生存狀況后或許能理解他們的遷徙行為。幸運的人可以在異國他鄉找到想要的未來，而更多不幸的人仍然遭受苦難的折磨。這些移民對生活有著別樣的看法。

T his is not a sob story.But the tears came anyhow.They1)crept up onme at the 70th birthday party of a friend a few years back.We were celebrating in a hotel ballroom in Letchworth in Hertfordshire and I had struck up a conversation with a distant acquaintance—a woman I had met only a few times before and have not met since.We talked about the primary school she worked at and the secondary school I went to, which were just five minutes’ walk apart in nearby Stevenage—both had declined—and about the local council and football team.She asked me when I was going back to New York, where I’d been living for seven years at that point, and I told her, the next afternoon.

“You’re so lucky,” she said.“You’ve done so well for yourself.Your mum would be so proud.”

And that was when my eyes started welling up.Now it could have been any number of triggers—alcohol, jet lag or the mention of my mother, who died decades ago.But what really upset me was realising that in this town, people I wasn’t even particularly close to knew me in a way that nobody else would.They knew place names that no one else in my regular life (apart from my brothers) knew.And yes, they not only knew my mother but they knew me when I had a mother.

The following day I would fy to a place where people knew a version of me, where very little of any of this applied.My friends in New York knew I had brothers and had lost my mother.They knew I grew up working class in a town near London.The rest was footnotes—too much information for transient people, including myself who would soon move to Chicago, who were travelling light.

In short, I cried for bits of my life that had been lost.Not discarded; but2)atrophied.Huge,3)formativeparts of my childhood and youth, I could no longer explain, because you would really have had to have been there, but without which I didn’t make much sense.

Migration involves loss.Even when you’re privileged, as I am, and move of your own free will, as I did, you feel it.Migrants, almost by defnition, move with the future in mind.But their journeys inevitably involve4)excisingpart of their past.It’s not workers who emigrate but people.And whenever they move they leave part of themselves behind.Efforts to reclaim that which has been lost result in something more than nostalgia but, if you’re lucky, less than exile.And the losses keep coming.Funerals,5)christenings, graduations and weddings missed—milestones you couldn’t make because your life is elsewhere.

If you’re not lucky then your departure was forced by poverty, war or environmental disaster—or all

這不是一個悲傷的故事。但不知怎的還是讓我流淚了。幾年前，在一位朋友的70歲生日派對上，眼淚悄悄地溢出了我的眼眶。我們在赫特福德郡萊奇沃思市的一家酒店的舞廳慶祝，我跟一位泛泛之交聊了起來，我之前只與這位女士見過幾次，之后就沒再見面了。我們談到她工作的小學和我曾就讀的中學，這兩所學校都在附近的斯蒂文尼奇，只有五分鐘的步行距離，但都已經衰落了。我們還聊到了當地的政府和足球隊。她問我什么時候回紐約，那時我已經在紐約生活了七年，我告訴她第二天下午就回。

“你真幸運，”她說?！澳氵@么出色，你媽媽會很自豪的?！?/p>

我就是在那時候開始熱淚盈眶的?，F在看來，酒精、時差、或提及我幾十年前去世的母親都可能是觸發我流淚的原因。但真正讓我感到難過的是，意識到連這鎮上一些與我不甚親近的人都比其他人了解我。他們知道某些地方的名字，而在我日常生活中接觸到的人（除了我的兄弟）都不知道。是的，他們不僅認識我的母親，而且在我母親還在世時他們就認識我。

第二天，我就要飛到另一個地方，那里的人知道的是我的另一面，而對我以上那些情況知之甚少?！?br>