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他们踏上骑行世界之旅,却被ISIS夺去生命与梦想

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2018年08月09日

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Asked why they had quit their office jobs and set off on a biking journey around the world, the young American couple offered a simple explanation: They had grown tired of the meetings and teleconferences, of the time sheets and password changes.

当被问到他们为什么辞掉了白领工作,踏上自行车周游世界之旅时,这对年轻的美国情侣给出了一个简单的解释:他们厌倦了开会、电话会议、时间表和密码更改。

“There’s magic out there, in this great big beautiful world,” wrote Jay Austin who, along with his partner, Lauren Geoghegan, gave his two weeks’ notice last year before shipping his bicycle to Africa.

“在这个巨大的、美丽的世界里,有一种魔力,”杰伊·奥斯汀(Jay Austin)写道,他和伴侣劳伦·盖根(Lauren Geoghegan)去年提前两周申请了离职,然后把他的自行车寄去了非洲。

They were often proved right.

事实时常证明他们是正确的。

On Day 319 of their journey, a Kazakh man stopped his truck, said hello and handed them ice cream bars. In a meadow where they had pitched their tent on Day 342, a family showed up with stringed instruments and treated them to an open-air concert. And on Day 359, two pigtailed girls met them at the top of a pass in Kyrgyzstan with a bouquet of flowers.

在他们旅程的第319天,一名哈萨克男子停下卡车,打了个招呼,递给了他们雪糕。第342天在他们搭帐篷的草地上,一家人拿着弦乐器出现,为他们表演了一场露天音乐会。第359天,两个扎辫子的女孩在吉尔吉斯斯坦一个山口顶上带着一束花和他们相遇。

There were hardships, too, including punctured tires, snarling dogs, freezing hail and illness. But for Austin and Geoghegan, both 29, these were far outweighed by moments of human connection.

当然也有艰苦,包括轮胎被刺破、狂吠的狗、寒冷冰雹以及疾病。但是对于同为29岁的奥斯汀和盖根来说,人与人之间产生联系的时刻远远盖过了这些。

Then, just over a week ago, came Day 369, when the couple was biking in formation with a group of other tourists on a panoramic stretch of road in southwestern Tajikistan. It was there, on July 29, that a carload of men who are believed to have recorded a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group spotted them.

然后,就在一周多前的第369天,这对情侣和其他一群游客一起,在塔吉克斯坦西南部一段风景壮美的公路上骑着自行车。7月29日,就在那里,一车被认为录制了宣誓效忠伊斯兰国视频的男人看到了他们。

A grainy cellphone clip recorded by a driver shows what happened next: The men’s Daewoo sedan passes the cyclists and then makes a sharp U-turn. It doubles back and aims directly for the bikers, ramming into them and lurching over their fallen forms. In all, four people were killed: Austin, Geoghegan and cyclists from Switzerland and the Netherlands.

司机录制的模糊手机视频显示了接下来发生的事情:这群男人的大宇轿车经过了骑自行车的人,然后急转弯。它转了回来,直接瞄准自行车手,撞向他们,从他们倒下的身体上碾过。总共有四人被杀:奥斯汀、盖根以及来自瑞士和荷兰的自行车手。

Two days later, the Islamic State released a video showing five men it identified as the attackers, sitting before the ISIS flag. They face the camera and make a vow: to kill “disbelievers.”

两天后,伊斯兰国发布了一段视频,显示了坐在ISIS旗帜前的五名被其确认为袭击者的男子。他们面对镜头发誓:杀死“不信者”。

It was a worldview as diametrically opposed as imaginable to the one Austin and Geoghegan were trying to live by. Throughout their travels, the couple wrote a blog together and shared Instagram posts about the openheartedness they wanted to embody and the acts of kindness reciprocated by strangers.

这是一种与奥斯汀和盖根试图履行的信念截然相反的世界观。在旅程中,这对情侣一起写了一个博客,并在Instagram上发帖分享了他们希望体现的真诚,以及陌生人对他们的善意回报。

Back in Washington, where the pair met, Austin lived in a tiny house, an experiment in the principles that eventually led him to his journey around the world.

在华盛顿,两人相识的地方,奥斯汀住在一栋小房子里,这是一项对原则的测验,那些原则最终促使他踏上了环游世界的旅程。

After earning a master’s degree from Georgetown University, he began working at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Convinced that many of the belongings people accrue are unnecessary, he began adopting a minimalist lifestyle, said his childhood friend Ashley Ozery.

在乔治城大学(Georgetown University)获得硕士学位后,他开始在美国住房和城市发展部(Department of Housing and Urban Development)工作。他儿时的朋友阿什莉·奥泽里(Ashley Ozery)说,他确信人们积攒的许多财产都是不必要的,于是开始采用极简主义的生活方式。

With his own hands, he built a house, nicknamed “The Matchbox,” that was so small — just 140 square feet — that it was profiled on numerous TV shows. To free up space, the walls were constructed with built-in magnets, so that he could store metal objects by sticking them to the paneling, like his spice collection.

他亲手建造了一栋房子,绰号“火柴盒”,它很小——只有140平方英尺——以至于被许多电视节目介绍过。为了挪出空间,墙壁里嵌入了磁铁,这样他就可以把金属物品粘在镶板上,比如他收集的香料。

If one of his goals was to pare down his life to the bare essentials, another was to enlarge his world. Because he had no mortgage weighing him down, his miniature house meant that he could take unpaid leave from his government job and travel the globe.

如果他的目标之一是把生活缩减到最基本的程度,另一个目标就是扩大他的世界。因为他没有抵押贷款,所以他的迷你房子意味着他可以从这份政府工作中休无薪假期,环游世界。

“At HUD at the end of each year, you could ask for a higher salary or more vacation,” said Ozery. “He always chose more vacation.”

“在住房和城市发展部,每年年底你可以要求更高的工资或更多的假期,”奥泽里说。“他总是选择更多的假期。”

First, he took a scooter trip around the United States. That was followed by a rail voyage in Europe. Next came a stint in Namibia. Then it was a weekslong trip across India, said Ozery, who became friends with Austin in 1999 at their elementary school in Manalapan, New Jersey.

奥泽里说他一开始在美国骑踏板摩托车旅行。随后在欧洲进行了一次铁路旅行。接下来是在纳米比亚待了一段时间。接着是一次为期一周的印度之旅。她是1999年在新泽西州麦纳拉潘的小学与奥斯汀成为朋友的。

In 2012, he met Lauren Anne Geoghegan, a native of Southern California, who like him had graduated from Georgetown and was now working in the college’s admissions office.

2012年,奥斯汀遇见了劳伦·安·盖根,一名南加州本地人,她和他一样毕业于乔治城大学,现在学校的招生办公室工作。

“Outside-the-box.” “Challenges me to grow.” “Adventurous.” That was how Geoghegan described Austin to her closest friends, said Kristen Bautz Robinson, who had known her since their first year at Georgetown.

“打破常规。”“挑战我,让我成长。”“有冒险精神。”盖根是这样向她最亲密的朋友描述奥斯汀的,从在乔治城大学的第一年就认识盖根的克里斯汀·鲍兹·罗宾逊(Kristen Bautz Robinson)说。

Although Geoghegan, too, was a seasoned traveler — she had spent a summer in Beirut learning Arabic and a semester in Madrid becoming fluent in Spanish — the rugged, do-it-yourself journeys that had become Austin’s hallmark were new to her.

虽然盖根也是一位经验丰富的旅行者——她在贝鲁特度待了一个夏天学习阿拉伯语,在马德里度过的一个学期让她学会了一口流利的西班牙语——但奥斯汀特有的粗糙、自己动手式的旅行对她来说很新鲜。

His values began to rub off on her, say her friends. She bought a bike-share day-pass, which turned into an annual membership. Soon she purchased her own bike.

盖根的朋友说,奥斯汀的价值观开始影响她。她买了一张自行车共享日间通票,然后成了年费会员。又过了一阵她已经买了自己的自行车。

Austin was a vegan. Geoghegan became a vegetarian, said her close friend Amanda Kerrigan. 奥斯汀是个纯素食者。盖根成为了素食主义者,她的密友阿曼达·凯利甘(Amanda Kerrigan)说。

It was in 2016 that Geoghegan told Kerrigan that she was planning to quit her job and bike around the world. Kerrigan could not suppress a little concern. “I said, ‘This is not the Lauren I know,'” she said, adding: “Jay changed the trajectory of Lauren’s life.”

正是在2016年,盖根告诉凯利甘,她计划辞去工作,骑自行车环游世界。凯利甘抑制不住一丝担忧。“我说,‘这不是我认识的劳伦,’”她补充道:“杰伊改变了劳伦的生活轨道。”

The day Geoghegan and Kerrigan said goodbye, the two friends hugged outside Geoghegan’s apartment.

盖根和凯利甘告别的那天,两个朋友在盖根的公寓外拥抱。

“The minute your instinct tells you something is wrong — leave,” Kerrigan told her. She was concerned for her friend, in part because of how big-hearted she was and in part because she feared that Austin had a higher tolerance for danger than Geoghegan did.

“一旦直觉告诉你什么地方不对劲,那就赶紧离开,”凯利甘告诉她。她关心自己的朋友,一是因为盖根的慷慨善良,二是因为,她担心奥斯汀对危险比盖根更不敏感。

Their journey was a series of tedious, and occasionally grueling, physical tests, punctuated by human kindness.

他们的旅行是一系列对身体的繁重考验,偶尔也很艰苦,不时穿插着人性的善意。

But in the course of their travels, their blog posts also noted flashes of cruelty.

但在旅行过程中,他们的博客文章也偶尔提到了一些残酷行为。

On one mountain pass, a group of men blocked their path and tried to shove the couple off their bikes.

在一个山口,一群人挡住他们的路,试图将这对恋人从车上推下来。

And just 50 yards from the Spanish border in bumper-to-bumper traffic, Austin signaled to a driver that he wanted to cut into his lane. The driver let him enter and then — slowly and deliberately — began to run him over, trapping Austin’s bike between the advancing car and the vehicle ahead of them.

在距离西班牙边境仅有50码的一处拥堵路段,奥斯汀向一个司机打手势,表示想并入他的车道。司机让他进来了,然后故意在后面慢慢逼近,把奥斯汀的车困在他的车和前面的车辆之间。

Still, by the time they reached that bend in the road in Tajikistan just over a week ago, they had embraced the notion that the world was overwhelmingly good, the dozens of annotated photographs and the thousands of words they left behind show.

不过,当他们在一个多星期前到达塔吉克斯坦公路的那个弯道时,他们已经有了这样一个观念:世界是非常美好的,几十张带图说的照片和他们留下的几千字的文章表明了这一点。

“You read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place,” Austin wrote. “People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil.

“从报纸上看你会相信这个世界是个又大又可怕的地方,”奥斯汀写道。“那些文章说,人们不值得信任。人们很糟糕。人们是邪恶的。”

“I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own … By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind.”

“我不相信。邪恶是我们发明出来的一种虚构的概念,用来应付那些持与我们不同的价值观、信仰和观点的人类的复杂性……总的来说,人类是善良的。有时自私,有时短视,但他们是善良的。他们慷慨、美好而且善良。”

“No greater revelation has come from our journey than this,” he wrote.

“这是我们在旅程中获得的最大启示,”他写道。

In the video released by the Islamic State group after the couple’s death, the men pledging allegiance to the group can be seen sitting on a stone slab, an aquamarine lake partially visible over their left shoulders. It is the kind of panorama that the young couple might have stopped to capture and post on their blog.

这对情侣去世后,在伊斯兰国发布的视频中,可以看到那些宣誓效忠该组织的人们坐在一块石板上,越过他们的左肩可以远远地看见一片湛蓝的湖泊。这对年轻情侣本可能会停下来给它拍照,并且发布在他们的博客上。

But in the clip, when these men point to the scenery around them, they vow to slaughter the “disbelievers” who have overrun their land.

但这段视频中,这些人指点着周围的风景,发誓要杀死那些踏上他们的土地的“不信者”。
 


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