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18 The Woman and the Sea
18 女人与海
Aunt najma was in tears. She had never seen the sea before.
那玛姑姑眼眶里满是泪水，她此生从未看到过大海。
My family and I sat on the rocks, gazing across the water, breathing in the salt tang of the Arabian Sea.
我们一家人坐在大石头上，眺望着一望无际的海面，呼吸着阿拉伯海咸咸的空气。
It was such a big expanse, surely no one could know where it ended.
这海如此广阔，没有人知道它延伸到哪里去。
At that moment I was very happy.
我的心情非常愉悦。
'One day I want to cross this sea,' I said.
“我希望有一天能到这片海洋的对面去。”我说。
'What is she saying?' asked my aunt as if I were talking about something impossible.
“她在说什么啊？”我的姑姑问道，好像我说了什么不可能的事一样。
I was still trying to get my head round the fact that she had been living in the seaside city of Karachi for thirty years and yet had never actually laid eyes on the ocean.
而我还在试图理解她已经在卡拉奇这个海滨城市生活了三十年，却从未亲眼看过大海这件事。
Her husband would not take her to the beach, and even if she had somehow slipped out of the house, she would not have been able to follow the signs to the sea because she could not read.
她的丈夫不会带她去海边，即使她有办法溜出屋外，也没有办法跟着路标走到海边，因为她不识字。
I sat on the rocks and thought about the fact that across the water were lands where women were free.
我坐在石头上，想着大海另一边女人们的自由生活。
In Pakistan we had had a woman prime minister and in Islamabad I had met those impressive working women, yet the fact was that we were a country where almost all the women depend entirely on men.
巴基斯坦有女总理，我在伊斯兰堡也见过令人佩服的女性工作者，但事实上国内绝大多数女性必须完全依赖男性才能生存。
My headmistress Maryam was a strong, educated woman but in our society she could not live on her own and come to work.
我的班主任玛丽安女士是个很坚强，也受过教育的女性，但在我们的社会里，她不被允许独居，也不能独自去工作。
She had to be living with a husband, brother or parents.
她必须要与丈夫、兄弟或是父母住在一起才行。
In Pakistan when women say they want independence, people think this means we don't want to obey our fathers, brothers or husbands.
在巴基斯坦，如果女人表示希望独立，人们会认为她是不想服从父亲、兄弟或丈夫的指令。
But it does not mean that. It means we want to make decisions for ourselves.
但事实并非如此。我们希望独立，是希望我们能自己做决定。
We want to be free to go to school or to go to work.
我们希望能够自由地去上学或者工作。
Nowhere is it written in the Quran that a woman should be dependent on a man.
《古兰经》里没有任何一句话写到女人必须依赖男人生活。
The word has not come down from the heavens to tell us that every woman should listen to a man.
真主并没有告诉我们，女人一定要听男人的话。
