奥马拉汗‧马苏迪对守护秘密很有一套。他是位于喀布尔的阿富汗国家博物馆馆长，就如同第二次世界大战期间把艺术品藏在乡间、以免它们落入纳粹手中的法国人民一般，当马苏迪和几个值得信任的守钥人看到他们的国家沦为人间地狱时，便将阿富汗的古代珍宝收藏了起来。先是苏联于1979年入侵阿富汗，接着大约十年之后，一场激烈的内战让大部分的喀布尔沦为废墟。在阿富汗军阀掀起漫天战端、争夺喀布尔的控制权时，士兵们 洗劫这座国家博物馆，把最上等的文物拿到黑市贩卖，还用博物馆的纪录文件来点燃营火。1994年，博物馆的建筑遭到炮击，屋顶和顶楼因而毁坏。最后一击出 现在2001年，一队队挥舞着榔头的塔利班狂热分子前来，把他们认为是偶像崇拜的艺术品砸毁。破坏殆尽之后，有超过2000件文物化为碎片。
Omara Khan Massoudi knows how to keep a secret. Massoudi is director of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. Like the French citizens during World War II who hid works of art in the countryside to prevent them from falling into Nazi hands, Massoudi and a few trusted tahilwidars - key holders - secretly packed away Afghanistan's ancient treasures when they saw their country descend into an earthly hell.
First came the Soviet invasion in 1979, followed about ten years later by a furious civil war that reduced much of Kabul to ruins. As Afghan warlords battled for control of the city, fighters pillaged the national museum, selling the choicest artifacts on the black market and using museum records to kindle campfires. In 1994 the building was shelled, destroying its roof and top floor. The final assault came in 2001, when teams of hammer-wielding Taliban zealots came to smash works of art they deemed idolatrous. When they finished, more than 2,000 artifacts lay in smithereens.
在那些黑暗的岁月中，马苏迪和其他几名博物馆人员对藏匿起来的博物馆文物守口如瓶，这其中有阿富汗最珍贵的宝藏——著名的大夏金器。1988年，苏联的占 领结束、内战继而爆发，马苏迪把这些金器藏在总统宫殿底下的地窖。世界各地的研究人员对于能否再见到这些珍宝已不抱希望，他们认为大夏金器已一件件被卖到 非法的古董市场，或是在塔利班最后的扫除偶像狂潮中摧毁。
Throughout those dark years, Massoudi and a handful of other museum officials kept quiet about the hoard of museum artifacts - among them the crown jewels of Afghanistan, the famed Bactrian gold - that they had hidden in vaults under the presidential palace in 1988, as the Soviet occupation gave way to civil war. Researchers the world over despaired of ever seeing the objects again, thinking they'd been sold piecemeal into the illicit antiquities trade or destroyed by the Taliban in their final, iconoclastic frenzy.
到了2003年10月，距离美国领军的多国部队推翻塔利班政权已超过两年，大多数守钥人都已经失踪或逃离阿富汗，马苏迪觉得是该看看这些文物是否在战火中 幸存下来的时候了。一组锁匠在当月撬开保险箱时，大夏金器一件不少。五个月后，研究人员打开堆在同一个地窖中的一组贮物柜，于是又有了一个让人惊讶不已的 发现：有2000年历史的象牙雕刻与玻璃器皿。它们是在1930年代从名为贝格拉姆的遗址发掘出来的无价之宝，世人原本以为已经遗失了。马苏迪的馆员也将 它们收藏起来，并保存得相当完好。
By October 2003 - more than two years after U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban regime - most of the key holders had disappeared or had fled Afghanistan. Massoudi felt it was time to see if the objects had survived the war. When a team of locksmiths wrenched open the safes that month, every last piece of the Bactrian gold was there, trussed in the same tissue paper in which the museum staff had wrapped it. Five months later, researchers opened a set of footlockers stashed in the same underground vault and made another jaw-dropping discovery: priceless 2,000-year-old ivory carvings and glassware that had been excavated in the 1930s from a site known as Begram and given up for lost. Massoudi's staff had cloistered those away too, and they were remarkably well preserved.
「如果我们没有将它们藏起来，阿富汗的珍宝将永劫不复。这是事实，知道真相的人都守口如瓶。」马苏迪说，并且一边在他布置十分简陋的办公室中啜饮着姜 茶。他的博物馆——阿富汗的博物馆——已在联合国教科文组织以及其他国际捐助者的协助下进行重建，目前馆内也非常忙碌。展览规画人员穿梭于一间又一间的展 览厅，为日后的各项设施进行测量；教师们以达利语向一群戴着头巾的女学生讲课。在门口，穿着灰色法兰绒制服的警察保持着严密的警戒。博物馆的参观人数缓慢 增加到一年约6000人次，储藏室中装满了失而复得的文物；世界各地的报关员拦下这些遭掠夺的文物，归还给阿富汗，其中约5000件是瑞士与丹麦没收的。 在伦敦希斯罗机场的一座仓库中，英国警方查获、超过四吨的赃物正等着送回阿富汗。
"If we had not hidden them, the treasures of Afghanistan would have been lost. That is a fact. Those who knew the truth kept silent," says Massoudi, sipping ginger tea in his spartanly furnished office. His museum - Afghanistan's museum - has been rebuilt with help from UNESCO and other international donors, and it hums with activity now. Exhibit planners stroll from gallery to gallery, taking measurements for future installations; teachers lecture in Dari to groups of schoolgirls in head scarves. At the door, policemen in gray-flannel uniforms keep a close watch. Visitor numbers have inched up to about 6,000 a year. Storerooms are filling with looted artifacts intercepted by customs agents around the world and restituted to Afghanistan, including some 5,000 confiscated artifacts returned from Switzerland and Denmark. More than four tons of loot seized by British police sit in a warehouse in London's Heathrow Airport awaiting repatriation.
在博物馆大厅，马苏迪说明重建先人的遗产有什么意义。展示柜里立着一尊真人大小的菩萨雕像（菩萨是一种佛教神明），它的历史可回溯到公元3世纪，那个年代 的阿富汗是个佛教盛行的地方。塔利班的榔头敲碎了这尊粘土烧塑像，而馆方的保存专家最近才将碎片拼组完成。裂痕仍然可见，但是菩萨的容颜再度散发喜悦虔诚 的光辉。
In the museum lobby, Massoudi demonstrates what it means to rebuild heritage. Standing in a display case is a life-size statue of a bodhisattva, a type of Buddhist deity, dating from the third century A.D., an era when Afghanistan was a predominantly Buddhist land. Taliban hammers had shattered the fired-clay statue, and museum conservators recently finished reassembling the fragments. A jigsaw of cracks is still visible, but the statue's face again glows with rapturous piety.
「我们一把碎片复原完成，就会将它们一件一件公诸于世。这项工作将进行好多年。」马苏迪说。然而那些万中选一、他与馆员们隐藏了许久的文物，在可见的未 来并不会在喀布尔公开展出。这座博物馆缺乏适当的保全系统，人手也一直短缺；同时，喀布尔周边一连串的自杀炸弹事件也突显出危险依然存在。
"As we finish the restoration of pieces, we bring them out to show the public, one by one. We will be doing this for many years," says Massoudi. Yet the choicest artifacts - the ones he and his staff concealed for so long - won't be on display in Kabul for some time to come. The museum lacks an adequate security system and remains short on staff, while a series of suicide bombings around Kabul have underlined the continuing risks.
即使面对这些问题，阿富汗人还是将他们的古代珍宝汇集成一套令人赞叹的展品，让它们进行国际巡回展出。阿富汗政府请求国家地理学会清点这些文物、协助安排 展览的相关事宜，在欧洲巡回展出两年之后，目前正于美国华盛顿特区的国家美术馆展出。阿富汗人希望这项展览除了能保护宝物的安全以外，也能提升他们国家的 形象。
Faced with these problems, Afghans have gathered their ancient treasures into a dazzling exhibition and sent it on an international tour. The Afghan government asked National Geographic to inventory the artifacts and help organize the exhibition, which is currently at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., after a two-year spell in Europe. In addition to safeguarding the treasures, the Afghans hope the exhibit will elevate the image of their country.
马苏迪说：「阿富汗的历史是一部接受他人的艺术、然后将它们转变为我们自己的表现方式的历史。」他相信这项展览能帮助人们不只看到阿富汗偏狭孤立的近代历史；毕竟长久以来，四海一家的开放精神始终是这个创意大熔炉以及丝路贸易枢纽的特色。
"The history of Afghanistan is one of receiving the arts of others, and then turning them into our own way of expression," says Massoudi. He believes the exhibit will help people see beyond his country's recent history of intolerance and isolation to the open, cosmopolitan spirit that long characterized this creative melting pot and hub of the Silk Road trade.
走过喀布尔或马萨沙里夫的市集，你就会看到原因何在。2000多年以来，人们都称阿富汗为亚洲的十字路口，这张脸看起来像是地中海人，另一张脸则像阿拉伯 人——或印度人、中国人，或东欧人。眼珠的颜色从青豆绿到栗子棕、到某种类似橘色的颜色都有。连续不断的外来入侵和影响编成一块由多元种族构成的织锦，留 下了这次巡回展策展人、国家地理学会的菲德列克‧希伯特口中所谓「全中亚最耀眼的某些考古发现」。
Walk through the bazaars in Kabul or Mazar-e Sharif and you'll see why, for more than two millennia, people have been calling Afghanistan the crossroads of Asia. One face looks Mediterranean, another Arab - or Indian, or Chinese, or eastern European. Eyes range from pea green to chestnut brown to something approaching orange. Successive invasions and influences wove a tapestry of ethnicities and left behind what the exhibition curator, Fredrik Hiebert of the National Geographic Society, calls "some of the most remarkable archaeological finds in all of Central Asia." |
发表于 2008-5-14 22:55
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