古代伊朗－透视伊朗的波斯灵魂
8月号/2008
伊朗南部的珀瑟波利是古代波斯帝国的都城，在被亚历山大大帝征服后烧毁。它的遗址之所以这么引人注目，是因为其石墙遗迹上并没有留下什么暴力的图像。雕刻中有士兵，但是他们并没有在打斗；里面也有兵器，但它们并没有出鞘。你看到的大部分图案反而让人觉得这里散发着人情味──来自不同国家的人民和平地聚集在此地、带着礼物、友好地互搭肩膀。在那个以暴戾著称
的时代，珀瑟波利相对而言似乎是个四海一家的地方。而对现今许多的伊朗人来说，珀瑟波利的遗迹则是一个惊人的提醒，让他们想起自己的波斯祖先是谁，以及他们曾经成就过哪些事迹。
这个国家本身的信史横跨了2500年左右，最后演变成现在的伊朗伊斯兰共和国。它在经历过一场有部分是因保守派神职人员赶走西方支持的国王而催生的革命后，于1979年成立，可以说是世界上第一个现代的神权统治立宪政体，也是一场重大的实验：那些将激进派伊斯兰教强加在受到波斯丰富历史熏陶的人民身上的神职人员，是否能有效地治理国家？
波斯是个屡战屡胜的帝国，同时在某些方面也被视为较为灿烂荣耀且仁慈宽厚的古文明之一。我想知道人民对于呈现在残留檐壁上的那个部分的历史，可能还有多强烈的认同感，于是开始着手探究「波斯人」对伊朗人的意义是什么。我去年两度造访时，伊朗人正受到国际社会抵制，他们的文化也被西方电影妖魔化。在和华盛顿特区逐渐升高的论战中，他们的领导人更被形容为可能会动手制造核武的潜在邪恶恐怖分子。
你无法将伊朗人完全划分为某一种身分。广泛来说，他们有部分属于波斯、部分属于伊斯兰、部分属于西方，而这些矛盾全部都同时并存着。但是有一种属于波斯的特色跟伊斯兰教没有关系，同时又融合了伊斯兰文化（在珀瑟波利遗址周边的扩音器所播送的伊斯兰教祷文就是个明证。它向访客暗示，他们所在之处不仅是个波斯王国，也是个伊斯兰共和国）。从这点就可以看出，有的伊朗人依然认同他们的波斯祖先——起码有部分是如此。这里是现今世界上情势一触即发的地区之一；在这样的外表下，也许还是有一些千年的溢流在流动着。波斯人所遗留下来热爱生命的天性（酒、爱、诗、歌），是否融入了禁酒、祷告和宿命论这些经常跟伊斯兰教连结在一起的特质里，就像隐藏的计算机程序般，在背景中默默地运作？
波斯遗风
伊朗的首都德黑兰位于艾布士山脉的山脚下，是个充满活力、但污染严重的大都会。这里的建筑物有很多是用很小的浅棕色砖头建造而成，并以金属栏杆围起来，看起来像一座接着一座的小宅邸，停工的工程件和公园则穿插其中。这里仍然有一些美丽的花园，包括一座波斯时期遗留下来的庭园和其它私人花园。园中有果树和喷泉、鱼池以及禽鸟，让砖墙内充满了生气。
我在伊朗期间，有两位伊朗出生的美籍学者在返乡访问时遭到了拘禁，被控煽动一场反政府柔性革命的罪名。最后他们获得释放；但在美国的亲友都会问我，待在伊朗难道不怕吗？他们都假设我必然是处于身陷囹圄的危险中。
但我在伊朗是客人。在伊朗，客人享有最崇高的地位、最甜美的一块水果、最舒服的座位。这是复杂礼仪制度「塔洛夫」的一部分，这种礼仪决定了当地生活的内涵。无论好客、求爱、家庭大事、政治谈判；关于大家应该如何彼此对待，塔洛夫是不成文的规范。塔洛夫（taarof）一词源自阿拉伯文的arafa，意思是知道或得到知识。然而美国明尼苏达大学的语言人类学家威廉‧毕曼说，塔洛夫中贬抑自我、尊崇对方的观念来自波斯。他把塔洛夫形容为「抢着居于下风」，但做法十分细腻，使大家在像伊朗这种阶级分明的社会中，能在矛盾中平等对待彼此。
无论我到哪里，大家都把我奉为上宾，并确定我所有需求都获得了满足。可是他们也会为了一心想要讨好别人（或表面上如此）或婉拒他人款待（或表面上如此），而把真正的意图隐藏起来。在双方来回地邀请和婉拒，直到真相呈现的过程中，充满了心思的解读，以及漫不经心、没有意义的对话。
在隐藏真正感受的同时，保持圆滑与表面上的真诚并巧妙伪装，被视为塔洛夫的高度表现，以及一项庞大的社会资产。「你绝对不会把你的意图或真正的个性表现出来，」一名现在住在法国的前伊朗政治犯说。「你要确定自己不会暴露在危险中，因为在我们的历史上，危险一向都很多。」…
Persia: Ancient Soul of Iran
A glorious past inspires a conflicted nation.
By Marguerite Del Giudice
Photograph by Newsha Tavakolian
What's so striking about the ruins of Persepolis in southern Iran, an ancient capital of the Persian Empire that was burned down after being conquered by Alexander the Great, is the absence of violent imagery on what's left of its stone walls. Among the carvings there are soldiers, but they're not fighting; there are weapons, but they're not drawn. Mainly you see emblems suggesting that something humane went on here instead—people of different nations gathering peace fully, bearing gifts, draping their hands amiably on one another's shoulders. In an era noted for its barbarity, Persepolis, it seems, was a relatively cosmopolitan place—and for many Iranians today its ruins are a breathtaking reminder of who their Persian ancestors were and what they did.
The recorded history of the country itself spans some 2,500 years, culminating in today's Islamic Republic of Iran, formed in 1979 after a revolution inspired in part by conservative clerics cast out the Western-backed shah. It's argu ably the world's first modern constitutional theocracy and a grand experiment: Can a country be run effectively by holy men imposing an extreme version of Islam on a people soaked in such a rich Persian past?
Persia was a conquering empire but also regarded in some ways as one of the more glorious and benevolent civilizations of antiquity, and I wondered how strongly people might still identify with the part of their history that's illustrated in those surviving friezes. So I set out to explore what "Persian" means to Iranians, who at the time of my two visits last year were being shunned by the international community, their culture demonized in Western cinema, and their leaders cast, in an escalating war of words with Washington, D.C., as menacing would-be terrorists out to build the bomb.
You can't really separate out Iranian identity as one thing or another—broadly speaking, it's part Persian, part Islamic, and part Western, and the paradoxes all exist together. But there is a Persian identity that has nothing to do with Islam, which at the same time has blended with the culture of Islam (as evidenced by the Muslim call to prayer that booms from loudspeakers situated around Persepolis, a cue to visitors that they are not only in a Persian kingdom but also in an Islamic republic). This would be a story about those Iranians who still, at least in part, identify with their Persian roots. Perhaps some millennial spillover runs through the makeup of what is now one of the world's ticking hot spots. Are vestiges of the life-loving Persian nature (wine, love, poetry, song) woven into the fabric of abstinence, prayer, and fatalism often associated with Islam—like a secret computer program running quietly in the background?
Surviving, Persian Style
Iran's capital city of Tehran is an exciting, pollution-choked metropolis at the foot of the Elburz Mountains. Many of the buildings are made of tiny beige bricks and girded with metal railings, giving the impression of small compounds coming one after the other, punctuated by halted construction projects and parks. There are still some beautiful gardens here, a Persian inheritance, and private ones, with fruit trees and fountains, fishponds and aviaries, flourishing inside the brick walls.
While I was here, two Iranian-born American academics, home for a visit, had been locked up, accused of fomenting a velvet revolution against the government. Eventually they were released. But back in the United States, people would ask, wasn't I afraid to be in Iran?—the assumption being that I must have been in danger of getting locked up myself.
But I was a guest in Iran, and in Iran a guest is accorded the highest status, the sweetest piece of fruit, the most comfortable place to sit. It's part of a complex system of ritual politeness—taarof—that governs the subtext of life here. Hospitality, courting, family affairs, political negotiations; taarof is the unwritten code for how people should treat each other. The word has an Arabic root, arafa, meaning to know or acquire knowledge of. But the idea of taarof—to abase oneself while exalting the other person—is Persian in origin, said William O. Beeman, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of Minnesota. He described it as "fighting for the lower hand," but in an exquisitely elegant way, making it possible, in a hierarchical society like Iran's, "for people to paradoxically deal with each other as equals."
Wherever I went, people fussed over me and made sure that all my needs were met. But they can get so caught up trying to please, or seeming to, and declining offers, or seeming to, that true intentions are hidden. There's a lot of mind reading and lighthearted, meaningless dialogue while the two parties go back and forth with entreaties and refusals until the truth reveals itself.
Being smooth and seeming sincere while hiding your true feelings—artful pretending—is considered the height of taarof and an enormous social asset. "You never show your intention or your real identity," said a former Iranian political prisoner now living in France. "You're making sure you're not exposing yourself to danger, because throughout our history there has been a lot of danger there."
Geography as Destiny
Indeed, the long course of Iranian history is satu rated with wars, invasions, and martyrs, including the teenage boys during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s who carried plastic keys to heaven while clearing minefields by walking bravely across them. The underlying reason for all the drama is: location. If you draw lines from the Mediterranean to Beijing or Beijing to Cairo or Paris to Delhi, they all pass through Iran, which straddles a region where East meets West. Over 26 centuries, a blending of the hemispheres has been going on here—trade, cultural interchange, friction—with Iran smack in the middle.
Meanwhile, because of its wealth and strategic location, the country was also overrun by one invader after another, and the Persian Empire was established, lost, and reestablished a number of times—by the Achaemenids, the Parthians, and the Sassanids—before finally going under. Invaders have included the Turks, Genghis Khan and the Mongols, and, most significantly, Arabian tribesmen. Fired with the zeal of a new religion, Islam, they humbled the ancient Persian Empire for good in the seventh century and ushered in a period of Muslim greatness that was distinctly Persian. The Arab expansion is regarded as one of the most dramatic movements of any people in history. Persia was in its inexorable path, and, ever since, Iranians have been finding ways to keep safe their identity as distinct from the rest of the Muslim and Arab world. "Iran is very big and very ancient," said Youssef Madjidzadeh, a leading Iranian archaeologist, "and it's not easy to change the hearts and identity of the people because of this." |
发表于 2008-7-17 01:23
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