{"id":10631,"date":"2021-12-31T06:03:21","date_gmt":"2021-12-31T06:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/?page_id=10631"},"modified":"2021-12-31T06:03:37","modified_gmt":"2021-12-31T06:03:37","slug":"translated-excerpt-a-hunger-jamal-ouariachi","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/translated-excerpt-a-hunger-jamal-ouariachi\/","title":{"rendered":"Translated Excerpt – A HUNGER – Jamal Ouariachi"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n<\/div>\n\n

A HUNGER\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jamal Ouariachi<\/strong><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Minibus (1)<\/b><\/strong><\/h5>\n
Faster than was safe, the minibus raced through the grey slush, spawn of snow and road salt; the outside temperature was minus 9\u00b0C, while inside an old-fashioned car heater shot out well-intentioned but nauseating hot air which, in combination with the moist carbon dioxide from the mouths of twelve passengers, recreated the clammy atmosphere of an indoor tropical water park. Aside from the windscreen, all of the windows had steamed up.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Only two voices could be heard, one male, one female, both originating from a Radio 1 programme in which a very lively conversation about politics was being held for so early on a Saturday morning.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Speed bumps, bends, brakes, acceleration: the two bites of sandwich in Aur\u00e9lie Lindeboom\u2019s stomach sloshed backwards and forth in a puddle of coffee. She\u2019d forgotten to take her pills, carsickness had joined forces with the hangover from her leaving party that had only ended when there was barely enough time left for sleep.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

She rested her heavy head on the shoulder of Yohannes who was sitting to her right. A waft of vanilla and the coconut spell of his frizzy hair activated her salivary glands and, despite her clenched stomach, she hankered after something sweet. Bag, containing a packet of Oreos amongst other stuff, out of reach. To compensate, she chewed on the middle section of her index finger.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Are you sucking your thumb?\u2019 Yohannes asked.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

She pulled her finger from her mouth, ashamed, and glanced at the man to her left, the man she\u2019d only known from TV and the papers until very recently. He didn\u2019t seem to have heard and used the arm of his jacket to wipe condensation from the window next to him. Outside, the city was waking up, the lazy winter sun rose, or to be more precise: daylight swelled. There was nothing to see of the sun on this overcast winter morning. At ten to eight, she\u2019d inspected the contents of her fluorescent green suitcase one last time, checklist in hand. But was everything on the checklist? Over the past weeks, she\u2019d sometimes jerked awake in the middle of the night with something – how could she have forgotten? \u2013 that hadn\u2019t even crossed her mind yet. At moments like that, the panic was reinforced by the possibility of all the other things she hadn\u2019t thought about during with the day when her mind was clear, things that might come and surprise her in her sleep. It wasn\u2019t until she was actually in Ethiopia that she would fully comprehend just how much stuff she had failed to take with her and then it would be too late, because they didn\u2019t have a thing there, of course.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Emergency Kit contained a portable operating theatre consisted of first world frivolities such as sterile hypodermic needles and scalpels and latex gloves and bandage gauzes. It was also crammed with diarrhea inhibitors, dozens of sachets of ORS, malaria pills, broad-spectrum antibiotics and the special yellow vaccination passport listing her inoculations against DTP, hepatitis A and yellow fever. In a shop that sold travel equipment, she\u2019d allowed them to ply her with all kinds of insect repellents, plus soap you didn\u2019t need water for, water purification powder, a tick tweezer, flea powder and the most powerful DEET spray (50%) she could find.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Check.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

For the nighttime: pyjamas, head torch, anti-transpiration sleeping bag, books about Ethiopia she hadn\u2019t got around to reading yet.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Check.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Clothes: jeans, plain t-shirts, a lot of colonial linen \u2013 what kind of ridiculously austere mood had she been in when she\u2019d made that selection? Had she managed to inherit some of the drab idealism the Olds had surrendered to with so much joyless passion?<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

She quickly chucked two cheerful dresses into the case and some make-up into her toiletry bag.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hand luggage: food for the journey, toothbrush, notebook, camera, dictaphone. Laptop in a waterproof cover = portable laboratory. Last change: out with Stiglitz\u2019s\u00a0Globalization and Its Discontents<\/i><\/em>\u00a0(what was that doing there? As if she was going to read that on a plane!), in with Hemingway\u2019s\u00a0A Farewell to Arms<\/i><\/em>: a leaving gift from Alice who had \u2018never read such a nice love story\u2019, even though she\u2019d said the same thing a year previously about that overrated lightness book by Kundera, and the year before that it had been something else again, what? The English Patient<\/i><\/em>? Sure, Alice had a big heart.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Packed and ready to go.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two minutes past eight: the bell. Yohannes.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Yo, Yoyo!\u2019<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

They hugged.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018Late night?\u2019 He released her and studied her face.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018You could say that. You too, by the looks of it?\u2019<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

His whinnying laugh, hoarse voice: \u2018Inhumanly late.\u2019<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

He courageously lifted up her over-stuffed princess\u2019 suitcase and they staggered down the stairs together. They stepped out into the bitter cold of the dark morning to the clanging, banging, drumming sound of metal on metal, and wood on metal: the stall builders were busy setting up the market beneath the orange light of the street lamps. Tears in her eyes from the cold, but she didn\u2019t allow herself to complain: she\u2019d miss this cold in the weeks to come.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

At the check-in at Schiphol airport, the group (minus driver Koter Tewolde, who\u2019d headed home with the bus) was met by Machteld, the lady from the charity magazine\u00a0Tesfa<\/i><\/em>, and Harm, the only professional journalist who\u2019d been able to summon up interest in the expedition. Or well, interest\u2026 Aur\u00e9lie had met him a few weeks earlier, during the meet and greet at the Keizersgracht, and even then she\u2019d got the strong impression he\u2019d rather have been sent to Afghanistan or Iraq. Those were the places to be now because simply everyone was there, but\u00a0Infinite Lowlands<\/i><\/em>, the magazine he worked for had had other ideas.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u2018And you, who do you write for?\u2019 he\u2019d asked Aur\u00e9lie, and she replied, with some hesitation, \u2018Oh, you know, just the faculty\u2019s paper at uni. I\u2019m actually going for my graduation project, but I sort of liked the idea of sort of writing a travel reportage.\u2019<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Harm had nodded and then gone to fetch another drink, while Aur\u00e9lie cursed herself for her \u2018you know\u2019 and \u2018actually\u2019 and \u2018sort of\u2019: twice. He hadn\u2019t asked about her graduation project that evening.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Now he stood before her, yawning in a denim jacket and combat trousers. Machteld was the very picture of cheerfulness and greeted everyone with a protracted series of kisses, even Aur\u00e9lie, who was now clearly a member of the family. She found Machteld quite adorable, such a delicious plump woman with a practical haircut, everything suggested she had redirected her caring nature to the service of her needy fellow men after her children had flown the nest; a woman who\u2019d never be put off by cynicism, a member of a dying breed.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

The group now contained thirteen members and although Aur\u00e9lie wasn\u2019t superstitious, the number gave her an uneasy feeling, which merrily joined in with the already present ensemble of tiredness, angry liver, tormented stomach and nervous intestines. It wasn\u2019t until after customs, when there was finally an opportunity to sit down and eat something, that she came to a little. The large windows at the gate revealed ice-blue KLM planes on frosted tarmac, shrouded in thick trails of mist. She ate an apple she\u2019d brought from home and drunk half a bottle of water.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lots of Ethiopians in the waiting room. It shouldn\u2019t be a surprise and yet it was. The way they looked. Businessmen in neat suits. Happy families, visibly affluent. What had she expected then? White people of course, wearing UNICEF t-shirts or Save the Children or Oxfam or whatever those charities were called. But clearly people also went to Ethiopia for business or pleasure. And with that insight, her participation in the trip suddenly seemed a complete charade. Aur\u00e9lie Lindeboom joining the VSO \u2013 her! Aur\u00e9lie, whose commitment to the third world had consisted of watching an old video of Band Aid. Feed the world, but only because you couldn\u2019t get the song out of your head. She could only remember one instance in which she\u2019d asked her parents \u2013 in a brief phase of adolescent idealism \u2013 no, ordered her parents to transfer quite a large sum (50 guilders) to the national fundraising campaign Giro 555. Somewhere halfway through the nineties that was, when they\u2019d shown Rwandan victims with chopped off limbs on TV, bits of bodies in the mud, the endless steams of refugees on their way to the Congolese border on foot. There was a countrywide drive with an accompanying TV show and Aur\u00e9lie wanted to be part of the collective philanthropy that held her country in its grip. \u2018The money never reaches the people who need her,\u2019 the Olds countered. She thought that cynical and after a lot of whining, the cheque book finally appeared on the table. A warm feeling flooded through her when the sum was filled out, parental signature added. That yellow-tinted indulgence stood for her contribution to the concerted efforts of one people trying to save another. She almost shed tears of pride.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

A year or so later, it transpired that the Olds had been right in their scepticism alas: Aur\u00e9lie saw a reportage about what had actually happened to the money raised. The refugee camps in Congo were mainly filled with Hutus: the perpetrators of the genocide. Not the victims, the Tutsis, as the national TV campaign had suggested.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

She still felt cheated on behalf of her thirteen year old self. But what had possessed her? Where had the sudden attack of do-goodish behavior come from?<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

School probably. Peer pressure. It was almost religious, the way Dutch children were raised to feel guilty about their easy lives. Children\u2019s stamps: that was where it started. Aur\u00e9lie had rarely hated Charity and the Third World more intensely than during the rainy autumnal day when she\u2019d had to knock on the doors of hostile strangers peddling philatelic sheets.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

(The previous autumn she\u2019d come across another of those breezy items in the newspaper \u2013 \u2018a hundred thousand primary school pupils hit the streets once again\u2026\u2019 that medieval torture method to instill the Dutch charitable spirit in children (helping is suffering) still existed!)<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet here she sat now, waiting to board the large Airbus that would take her to Ethiopia, where for the nth time in human history a famine threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of people. Her graduation project would broker no change, but the reportage she wanted to write for her faculty\u2019s paper \u2013 which she secretly hoped a serious paper or maybe even a magazine like\u00a0Infinite Lowlands<\/i><\/em>\u00a0would want to republish \u2013 might possibly make a small, a tiny difference. Raising awareness, that was the point. No one needed to be afraid of a repeat of the Rwanda confusion. The little she had learned about Ethiopia up to now was that that was no war and no genocide; there wasn\u2019t even a crazy dictator at the helm; it was simply a country where it hadn\u2019t rained for so long that there was nothing to eat. Simple truths still existed. They still did. And she could help by drawing the world\u2019s attention to the misery \u2013 attention that was currently focused on the war against terrorism and nothing else.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

– <\/i><\/em>Translated from Dutch by Michele Hutchison<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A HUNGER\u00a0 Jamal Ouariachi   Minibus (1) Faster tha   …\u66f4\u591a\u5185\u5bb9<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10631"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10631"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10633,"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10631\/revisions\/10633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eu-china.literaryfestival.eu\/zh-hans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}