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I had been trying to live in two worlds: spending time in China, improving my Mandarin, learning what I could of Chinese history, of my grandparents' pasts. Then there was my American life. Classes, jobs, money, rent, Netflix, friends, growing older. What country, what story, what character, what experience can I claim? Do I want to tell the story of my grandparents, or do I feel that, to do justice to them, I have to?
我一直想要生活在两个世界里：在中国待一段时间，提高我的普通话水平，尽我所能学习中国历史，了解爷爷奶奶的过去。然后是我的美国生活。课程、工作、金钱、租金、网飞、朋友、变老。什么国家，什么故事，什么性格，什么经历？我是想讲我爷爷奶奶的故事呢，还是觉得，为了公平对待他们，我必须讲？
In an essay titled No Reconciliation Allowed, Said revisits the varied landscape of his childhood. He was born in Jerusalem, spent his childhood as a refugee in Egypt, was educated in elite English-language schools, before building his career in the US. "Why, I remember asking myself, could I not have had a simple background … ?" he asks, " … all Egyptian, or all something else, and not have had to face the daily rigours of questions that led back to words that seemed to lack a stable origin?"
在一篇名为《不允许和解》的文章中，赛义德重温了他童年时多姿多彩的风景。他出生于耶路撒冷，以难民的身份在埃及度过童年，在精英英语学校接受教育，后来在美国开创了自己的事业。“我记得我问自己，为什么我没有一个简单的背景……？”他问道，“……所有的埃及人，或者其他什么人，不用每天面对严峻的问题，那些问题让我们回到那些似乎缺乏稳定来源的词上来？”
I will go back to China to visit my grandparents' graves. Meanwhile, the old apartment in Hefei has been sold. When my brother and I were children, there were so many people who gathered in that apartment. Now the generations have scattered. My aunts grow greyer every year, and my cousin's children, mostly strangers to me, will soon be teenagers. My three oldest cousins are married, and some have moved to other cities or emigrated to the US. Before, Hefei felt like the core of the family and we, the ones in the US, were the outliers, the moons in orbit around the planet. Now we are all dispersed.
我要回中国给爷爷奶奶扫墓。与此同时，合肥市的旧公寓已经出售。当哥哥和我还是孩子的时候，有很多人聚集在那个公寓里。现在几代人都散了。姑姑们的头发一年比一年白，而堂姐的孩子们——大多是我不认识的人——也将很快步入青少年时代。我那三个最年长的表兄弟姐妹都结婚了，有些已经搬到其他城市或移民到了美国。以前，合肥就像是这个大家族的核心，而我们这些在美国的人，是局外人，是绕着地球轨道运行的卫星，现在我们都散去了。
I wonder what life will be left for me in China in the future. I've long nursed vague plans of moving back to China to live for a few years, to get to know it better and solidify my place there. But with each year that passes in the US, such a move gets harder and harder to make. I wonder at what point I will have to choose – or if, with the passage of time, a choice was already made for me.
我想知道我将来在中国还有什么生活。长期以来我一直有一个模糊的计划，打算回中国生活几年以便更好地了解中国，巩固我在那里的地位。但在美国，随着时间的推移，这样的举措变得越来越难实施。我不知道在什么时候我将不得不做出选择——或者，随着时间的推移，我已经做出了选择。
