从波士顿到雅安：横跨太平洋的悲情

    我生活在位于波士顿以西8英里的阿灵顿地区。不过，恐怖的爆炸事件在离我家这么近的地方发生时，我刚好在8000英里以外的香港出差。等到天亮我醒来时（当时香港已经是星期二了），看见手机上有许多呼叫提示，我就有一种不详的预感，于是我下意识地寻找眼镜。就在这时，手机响了——纽约的一个朋友为了证实一下我是否还活着而打过来的电话。

    我也效仿了那位朋友的做法，给每一个我认识的人、我爱的人打电话，确认他们都安然无恙。接下来的几天，就跟所有人一样，我每天都在CNN上跟踪关注案件的发展。

    正常情况下，我是在博伊斯顿街上班，那儿距离波士顿马拉松终点线仅三个街区。我想，要不是出差，爆炸发生的时候，我可能刚好就在那儿，尽管我通常会在马拉松比赛日避免拥挤的人群。马拉松是我不感兴趣的波士顿赛事之一，尽管我在阿灵顿生活了近25年，而且我的太太出生于阿灵顿，我们一起在阿灵顿将孩子抚养成人，我们将来也很可能继续在那快乐地生活，共度余生。尽管如此，阿灵顿、剑桥、还有波士顿本身，以及以此为中心的整个区域，对我来说，从来就没有归属感。这么说吧，2004年波士顿红袜队终于打破魔咒、夺得美国联盟冠军赛冠军的时候，我很高兴（主要还是因为女儿和女婿的原因），但08年我所追随的费城费城人队夺冠的时候，我激动万分——尽管从1973年以后，我就再也没有在离费城较近的地方生活过。而波士顿，我不知道为什么，它一直不是我心的归属。

    不过，现在我对波士顿的感情不一样了，忽然就不一样了——因为我有了离爆炸地点一步之遥的朋友的消息，因为我知道其中一名遇难者——29岁的克里斯多•坎贝尔，就曾住在阿灵顿，而她曾在我和我太太有时下班后会光顾的一家位于剑桥的餐厅当经理。坎贝尔的妈妈在她位于梅德福家中的门廊里哽咽着说：“我女儿是最优秀的。我不能相信发生了这种事。她无论做什么事都是那么努力。”而这时，她的儿子戴着一顶红袜子队的帽子坚定地站在她身旁。看到这一幕，我想到了波士顿这个大家庭里其他的妈妈、其他的女儿、其他的儿子。当然，还有那口音，那独特的波士顿口音——在香港通过电波听到这样的口音，感觉很奇妙、很亲切。

    但是，因为在香港生活了两个月，看了两个月的香港报纸，经常到大陆出差或旅行，我突然意识到我与家乡之间的关系多了一层之前没有预见到的涵义。

    当三个年轻的中国女孩站在波士顿马拉松终点线附近的时候，一枚炸弹在她们中间炸响了——其中一名未受伤、一名受伤，还有一名竟以如此令人毛骨悚然的方式命殒他乡。5天后，一个星期六的下午，波士顿红袜队在芬威球场迎接爆炸案后的第一场主场比赛，纪念遇难者，并向爆炸案发生后第一时间前往救助的人们表示敬意。

    有一张红袜子球队12名球员站成一排的照，就是那天拍的。照片上我们看到的是穿着印有红色号码的白色主场队服的球员的背影——不关注这个球队的人根本认不出他们。照片上，他们没有戴棒球帽，一些球员低着头，另一些则正在抬头观看记分牌——记分牌上是一个女孩的头像，黑色的长发、中分式发型、含蓄的微笑。头像旁边配着字幕：“来自中国沈阳的吕令子”。横跨半个地球的大洋彼岸，甚至在人们把四川地震遇难者的遗体从废墟中抬出来的时候，这张图片依然在微博上如病毒般迅速地传播着。（财富中文网）

    译者：默默

    I live in Arlington, Mass., eight miles west of Boston. On the day that terror struck close to home, however, I was 8,000 miles away, on assignment in Hong Kong. I woke up at dawn on what for me was Tuesday morning, saw the ominous clutter of alerts on my phone, and was searching for my glasses when the phone started ringing. It was a friend calling from New York. Just making sure I was alive.

    I caught up quickly, confirmed that everyone I know and love was safe, and then like you, probably, I spent the next few days tracking developments on CNN.

    Normally, I work on Boylston St., about three blocks from the finish line. I could have been right there when the bombs went off, I suppose, although I usually avoid the crowds on Marathon day. It's one of those Boston things I've never really warmed to, even though I've been in Arlington for nearly 25 years. My wife was born in Arlington. We raised our kids there. We'll probably live there, happily, for the rest of our lives. And yet … Arlington, Cambridge, Boston itself — that whole Hub universe — has never really felt like home to me. Let me put it this way: I was glad (mainly for my daughters and my in-laws) when the Red Sox finally broke the damn curse in '04. But I was elated when my Phillies won in '08, even though I haven't lived anywhere near Philadelphia since 1973. Boston, I don't know. Just not my tribe.

    Except it's different now, suddenly different. Now that I've heard from friends who were close enough to hear the explosions. And now that I know that one of the victims, 29-year-old Krystle Campbell, lived in Arlington and used to be a manager at the restaurant in Cambridge where my wife and I sometimes meet after work. Watching Campbell's mother struggling for words on the porch of her Medford home — "You couldn't ask for a better daughter. I can't believe this has happened. She was such a hard worker at everything she did" — while her son stood bravely beside her in a Red Sox hat, I was reminded of other mothers, other daughters, and other sons in my wife's big Boston family. And the accent, of course; that unmistakable Boston accent. So strange to hear it coming over the airwaves in Hong Kong. Almost made me feel at home.

    But having been in Hong Kong for the past two months, reading the local papers, traveling often to the Mainland, I realize I have a second, unexpected connection to the events in my hometown.

    Three young Chinese women were standing near the finish line when one of the bombs exploded in their midst. One was unscathed. One was wounded. And one suffered a gruesome death in a faraway land. Five days later, on a Saturday afternoon at Fenway Park, the Red Sox remembered the victims and honored the first responders.

    There's a picture that was taken that day, of a dozen Red Sox all in a line. We see them from behind, anonymous to the uninitiated in their red-numbered home whites. Their caps are off. Some have bowed their heads while others are looking up at the scoreboard, at an image of a young woman with long black hair, parted in the middle, and a shy smile. "Lingzi Lu of Shenyang, China" says the caption on the scoreboard. "Age 23." Half a world away, even as bodies were being pulled from the rubble in Sichuan, the picture went viral on Weibo.