The next afternoon plainclothes agents escorted us onto the first flight out of Pakistan. Later it all would be declared a mix-up. A confusion of paperwork. I would be allowed back into Pakistan within days to resume my disrupted global walk. But on the night we landed in exile in a steaming Arabian city -- I still wore my filthy snow pants -- I felt numb. Standing dazed in the noisy airport immigration queue, I stared at the backs of my sun-blackened hands. And I recalled dusk atop Irshad Pass.
次日下午,便衣特工護(hù)送我們登上了首班離開巴基斯坦的航班。隨后這一切全都被宣布為一次亂了套的文書工作錯誤,又允許我?guī)滋熘畠?nèi)返回巴基斯坦繼續(xù)我被中斷的全球徒步。但那天晚上我以流放者的身份降落在一個熱氣騰騰的阿拉伯城市時(shí),我仍然穿著那骯臟的雪褲,感覺很麻木。睡眼惺忪地站在機(jī)場嘈雜的入境檢查處的隊(duì)伍里,我凝視著自己被太陽曬黑的手背,回憶起了伊爾沙德山口頂上的黃昏。
A pale disk of sun had slipped beneath a chink in the storm clouds. For perhaps two minutes everything gleamed with electrum light. Silver-gold shafts sprayed the Karakoram, igniting the tops of the snow pyramids that stretched in serried ranks to the edges of the world. It was the sort of light that burned away the loss in my heart. It was light through which I could imagine walking, with all my people, into the promise of new country.
一輪熾白的太陽從暴風(fēng)云里的條裂縫里露出來。大約兩分鐘后,所有的東西都閃爍著銀金礦般的光,似乎點(diǎn)燃了雪白的金字塔頂端,它們一排排緊密排列,一直延伸到世界盡頭。那是一道燒掉我心中的失落的光芒。我可以想像,有了這道光芒,我的行程中雖然會有各式各樣的人,也將輕松進(jìn)入允諾的新國家。