恐袭阴影下法国人的生活

Normally, after the parties of Bastille Day, the French begin drifting off on holiday. People disappear to country homes, beaches or resorts where they spend weeks eating, drinking and lazing. Meanwhile foreign tourists — one of France’s few growing income streams — flood the world’s most visited country.

“巴士底日”（Bastille Day，即法国国庆日）狂欢后，法国人通常会开始外出度假。人们遁往乡间别墅、海滩或度假胜地，享受数周的休闲时光，吃喝消遣。与此同时，外国游客（法国为数不多还在增长的收入来源之一）也会纷纷涌入这个世界最热门的旅游目的地国。

But after a jihadist in a truck killed 84 people in Nice on Bastille Day, the French are trying to comprehend their new normal: terror attacks. As prime minister Manuel Valls admitted: “France must live with terrorism.” In just 18 months, the country has fundamentally changed.

但经历了国庆日当天的尼斯惨案（一名圣战分子驾驶卡车冲进人群导致84人死亡）之后，法国人正在试着接受他们的新常态：恐怖袭击。法国总理曼努埃尔•瓦尔斯(Manuel Valls)承认道：“法国不得不与恐怖主义生活在一起。”不过一年半时间，这个国家就发生了翻天覆地的变化。

There are three layers to French life. Layer one is everyday perfection: that glass of wine in an ordinary bistro in a commonplace street. The Germans call it “living like God in France”. Layer two is economic stagnation, the sense that set in early this century that the country’s model is stuck. In December 2014, a fairly typical survey by BVA-WIN found that only 17 per cent of French people thought 2015 would be better than 2014. That ranked France 60th out of 65 countries for pessimism. Moreover, the French were unhappier than people in other rich countries — a finding now so commonplace in happiness research that it’s known as the “French paradox”.

法国人的生活包含三个层次。第一层是完美的日常生活：在街头巷尾普通的小酒馆里喝上一杯。德国人称“在法国活得像上帝”。第二层是不景气的经济，本世纪初人们就开始觉得法国模式不行了。2014年12月，法国民调机构BVA与WIN联合进行的一项相当具有代表性的调查发现，仅有17%的法国人认为2015年会比2014年更好些。因此以悲观程度而言，法国在65个国家中排名第60位。此外，与其他富裕国家的民众相比，法国人的幸福感更低——在关于幸福的研究中这个结论已是如此常见，以至于被称为“法国悖论”。

And French pessimists were right: 2015 began with the deadly attacks on Charlie Hebdo newspaper and the kosher supermarket in Paris. Since then, the surface layer of French life has been fear of terrorism.

法国的悲观论者没看错：2015年一开始就发生了针对巴黎《查理周刊》(Charlie Hebdo)总部以及犹太超市的致命袭击。自那时起，对恐怖主义的恐惧就成了包裹法国人生活的表层了。

This fear is the parents’ meeting to discuss whether terrorists could break into your children’s school. It’s the university seminar you can only attend if you register in advance, with full passport details. It’s the security guard who searches you before you can enter your local post office. (Incongruously, the booming anti-terror sector has created thousands of jobs for low-skilled Muslim men.)

家长们聚在一起讨论恐怖分子是否可能闯入孩子们的学校；只有提前登记并提供完整的护照信息，你才能参加大学研讨会；走入当地邮局前，你得接受保安人员搜身——这些无不体现了这种恐惧。（奇怪的是，急速发展的反恐产业为没有一技之长的穆斯林男性创造了数千个就业岗位。)

The French now live with the constant worry that the sky could fall on their heads. One glorious afternoon during the Euro 2016 football tournament, over a drink in Marseille’s Old Port, the friend I was with half-joked: “Shall we go, before this terrace is raked with machinegun fire?” The terror in Nice soon afterwards was terrifyingly predictable. The previous day in Paris, passing a poster advertising James Watkins’ new movie Bastille Day, about a massive terrorist plot, I had thought: Don’t let this be prescient.

如今，法国人生活中挥之不去的担忧是：天可能会塌下来。2016年欧洲杯赛事期间一个阳光明媚的下午，我和一位友人在马赛老港(Marseille’s Old Port)喝酒，朋友半开玩笑地说：“我们是不是该在这个露台遭到机枪扫射之前离开？”不久后发生的尼斯惨案被料中了。惨案发生前一天，在巴黎街头走过詹姆斯•瓦特金斯(James Watkins)执导的关于一场大规模恐怖主义阴谋的新电影《巴士底日》(Bastille Day)的宣传海报时，我心想：但愿这不会成为预言。

France has experienced some variety of terrorism in every postwar decade, but never as bad as this. The last seven months have seen the two deadliest acts of terrorism in modern French history: the Paris attacks in November that killed 130 people, and Nice.

战后每一个十年中，法国都经历了某种形式的恐怖主义，但情况从未像今天这样严重。过去七个月见证了造成法国现代史上伤亡最惨重的恐怖活动：去年11月导致130人遇难的巴黎恐怖袭击以及刚刚过去的尼斯惨案。

Before Nice, fear was focused on Paris. Almost every aspect of French life is overcentralised, and the capital had suffered disproportionately from terror. But if hell can break out in a sleepy beach town that lacks only a sandy beach, a place where millions of French people have happy holiday memories, then nowhere in France feels safe.

尼斯惨案发生前，恐惧主要集中在巴黎。法国人生活的几乎每一个方面都过度集中，因此，首都巴黎是遭受恐怖袭击最多的地方。但是，在一座悠闲的只差一片沙滩就完美、给数百万法国人留下开心假日记忆的海滨城市都能发生如此残暴的袭击，那法国就没有任何能让人感到安全的地方了。

Like other recent terrorists, the Nice jihadi seems to have acted alone. Whereas al-Qaeda liked to orchestrate elaborate attacks, Isis has “crowdsourced” terrorism, says the Soufan Group, a security consultancy. And France has a reservoir of thousands of potential do-it-yourself jihadis.

像近期其他的恐怖分子一样，制造尼斯惨案的圣战分子似乎是单独行动。安全咨询公司Soufan Group表示，基地组织(al-Qaeda)喜欢精心策划复杂而周密的攻击，而ISIS已将恐怖活动“众包”出去。而法国境内存在成千上万的潜在的“独狼”圣战分子。

Terrorism that requires barely any planning beyond renting a truck is almost unstoppable. The French authorities cannot turn the entire country into a kind of airport security zone. Perhaps it’s lucky that France lost the final of Euro 2016 to Portugal last Sunday. Had Les Bleus won, the crowds waving tricolours in every town square could have been targets. Only one other developed country lives with comparable everyday danger: the US, with its bizarre gun laws.

只需租一辆卡车就可以发动的恐怖袭击几乎无法被阻止。法国当局不可能把整个国家变成一个类似机场安全区的地方。法国在2016年欧洲杯决赛中输给葡萄牙或许并非坏事。如果法国队赢了决赛，每个城市广场上挥舞三色旗的人群都可能成为袭击目标。在其他发达国家中，只有一个国家的民众每天生活在类似危险中——有着奇怪枪支法律的美国。

So far, the French have remained surprisingly tolerant in the face of Islamist terror. The annual survey by the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights found that racism decreased in 2015. In regional elections last December, just after the worst attack, the French mainstream voted tactically for Socialist and Republican candidates to prevent the anti-immigrant Front National from winning a single region. Voters may repeat the trick in next year’s presidential elections.

迄今为止，法国在面对伊斯兰恐怖主义时仍保持着惊人的宽容。法国国家人权咨询委员会(CNCDH)进行的一年一度的调查发现，种族歧视在2015年有所减轻。去年12月在地区选举中（就在那次最严重的袭击发生之后），法国主流选民有策略地投票支持社会党和共和党候选人，以防反移民的法国国民阵线(National Front)在任一选区获胜。在明年的总统选举中，选民们可能还会这样做。

Still, if the French were pessimistic and unhappy before the increase in terrorism, imagine the national mood now.

不过，如果说在恐怖活动增多前法国人就已经感到悲观、不幸福，想象一下现在国民该是什么样的心态。