加拿大志愿者向叙利亚难民敞开怀抱
TORONTO — One frigid day in February, Kerry McLorg drove to an airport hotel here to pick up a family of Syrian refugees. She was cautious by nature, with a job poring over insurance data, but she had never even spoken to the people who were about to move into her basement.
多伦多――今年2月一个寒冷的日子里，凯莉·麦克朗格(Kerry McLorg)开车去某机场酒店接一家叙利亚难民。从事保险数据研究的她生性谨慎，但此前，她并未和即将搬进她家地下室的这家人说过话。
“I don’t know if they even know we exist,” she said.
“我甚至不知道他们是否知道我们的存在，”她说。
At the hotel, Abdullah Mohammad’s room phone rang, and an interpreter told him to go downstairs. His children’s only belongings were in pink plastic bags, and the family’s documents lay in a white paper bag printed with a Canadian flag. His sponsors had come, he was told. He had no idea what that meant.
在酒店，阿卜杜拉·穆罕默德(Abdullah Mohammad)房间里的电话铃响了起来，一个翻译告诉他可以下楼了。他的孩子们行李不多，都放在粉色塑料袋里，全家人的文件则放在一个印着加拿大国旗的白色纸袋里。他接到通知，说他的赞助者们来了。他不知道这是什么意思。
Across Canada, ordinary citizens, distressed by news reports of drowning children and the shunning of desperate migrants, are intervening in one of the world’s most pressing problems. Their country allows them a rare power and responsibility: They can band together in small groups and personally resettle — essentially adopt — a refugee family. In Toronto alone, hockey moms, dog-walking friends, book club members, poker buddies and lawyers have formed circles to take in Syrian families. The Canadian government says sponsors officially number in the thousands, but the groups have many more extended members.
在加拿大各地，有许多普通民众为溺亡儿童和背井离乡的绝望难民感到悲伤，纷纷参与到这项世界上最紧迫的问题中来。他们的国家赋予他们一项罕有的权力与责任：他们可以结成小群体，以个人身份重新安置（实质上等于收养）一个难民家庭。仅在多伦多，因孩子打冰球而结识的妈妈们、遛狗认识的朋友、读书俱乐部的成员、打扑克的牌友和律师们纷纷组成小群体，接纳叙利亚家庭。加拿大政府说，官方确认的赞助者已达数千人，但是这些小组还有更多外围成员。
When McLorg walked into the hotel lobby to meet Mohammad and his wife, Eman, she had a letter to explain how sponsorship worked: For one year, McLorg and her group would provide financial and practical support, from subsidizing food and rent to supplying clothes to helping them learn English and find work. She and her partners had already raised more than 40,000 Canadian dollars (about $30,700), selected an apartment, talked to the local school and found a nearby mosque.
麦克朗格走进酒店大厅，去迎接默罕默德和他的妻子艾曼(Eman)，她带着一封信，里面对这项赞助活动做出了解释：一年内，麦克朗格和她的小组会提供经济的以及各种实质性的援助——从食物、房租补助到衣服，甚至帮助他们学英语、找工作。她和搭档们已经筹集了4万加元（约合人民币20.6万元），选好了一处公寓，同当地学校谈好入学问题，还在附近找好了清真寺。
McLorg, the mother of two teenagers, made her way through the crowded lobby, a kind of purgatory for newly arrived Syrians. Another member of the group clutched a welcome sign she had written in Arabic but then realized she could not tell if the words faced up or down. When the Mohammads appeared, McLorg asked their permission to shake hands and took in the people standing before her, no longer just names on a form. Abdullah Mohammad looked older than his 35 years. His wife was unreadable, wearing a flowing niqab that obscured her face except for a narrow slot for her eyes. Their four children, all under 10, wore donated parkas with the tags still on.
麦克朗格是两个十几岁孩子的妈妈，她走过拥挤的大厅，这样的地方对于新来的叙利亚人不啻为一种折磨。小组的另一个成员手里拿着一块标识，上面用阿拉伯语写着表示欢迎的字样，但她发现自己其实也拿不准这块牌子有没有拿倒。穆罕默德一家出现了，麦克朗格征求对方同意后与他们握了手；他们终于站在了她的面前，不再只是表格上的名字。阿卜杜拉·穆罕默德35岁，但看上去比实际年龄要老，他的妻子则说不清年龄，松垂的面纱遮住了她的面孔，只有一条窄缝露出眼睛。他们有四个孩子，都不到10岁，穿着捐助的冲锋衣，标牌还没有撕去。
For the Mohammads, who had been in Canada less than 48 hours, the signals were even harder to read. In Syria, Abdullah had worked in his family’s grocery stores and Eman had been a nurse, but after three years of barely hanging on in Jordan, they were not used to being wanted or welcomed. “You mean we’re leaving the hotel?” Abdullah asked. To himself, he was wondering, “What do these people want in return?”
对于来到加拿大还不到48小时的穆罕默德一家来说，眼前的种种信号更加捉摸不透。在叙利亚，阿卜杜拉在自家的杂货铺里工作，艾曼曾是护士。但是在约旦逗留三年后，他们已经习惯了遭人厌恶遭人嫌这件事。“你是说我们要离开酒店了？”阿卜杜拉问。他想知道，“这些人要什么回报呢？”
Much of the world is reacting to the refugee crisis — 21 million displaced from their countries, nearly 5 million of them Syrian — with hesitation or hostility. Greece shipped desperate migrants back to Turkey; Denmark confiscated their valuables; and even Germany, which has accepted more than half a million refugees, is struggling with growing resistance to them. Broader anxiety about immigration and borders helped motivate Britons to take the extraordinary step last week of voting to leave the European Union.
在这场难民危机中，有2100万难民逃出自己的国家，其中近500万是叙利亚人，世界上的大多数地方对于这场危机的回应是犹豫，甚至是敌意。希腊把绝望的难民用船送回土耳其；丹麦没收了他们的财产；就连接纳了50多万难民的德国，对他们的抗拒也在日益增加。对移民与边境日渐增多的焦虑，使得英国人在上个星期采取极端措施，投票脱离欧盟。
In the United States, even before the Orlando massacre spawned new dread about “lone wolf” terrorism, a majority of American governors said they wanted to block Syrian refugees because some could be dangerous. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has called for temporary bans on all Muslims from entering the country and recently warned that Syrian refugees would cause “big problems in the future.” The Obama administration promised to take in 10,000 Syrians by Sept. 30 but has so far admitted about half that many.
在美国，就连在奥兰多大屠杀制造出对“独狼”恐怖主义日渐蔓延的新恐惧之前，有大半的美国州长表示，他们不希望接受叙利亚难民，因为其中一些人可能是危险分子。稳获共和党总统提名的唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)呼吁，要临时禁止所有的穆斯林进入这个国家，近来又警告说，叙利亚难民可能“在未来造成重大问题”。奥巴马政府承诺到9月30日接受1万名叙利亚难民，但到现在为止仅接受了一半不到。
Just across the border, however, the Canadian government can barely keep up with the demand to welcome them. Many volunteers felt called to action by the photograph of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler whose body washed up last fall on a Turkish beach. He had only a slight connection to Canada — his aunt lived near Vancouver — but his death caused recrimination so strong it helped elect an idealistic, refugee-friendly prime minister, Justin Trudeau.
然而，在边境对面，加拿大政府却忙于满足人们对他们的欢迎。去年秋天，很多志愿者看了尸体被冲到土耳其海滩上的叙利亚孩子阿兰·库尔蒂(Alan Kurdi)的照片后，觉得有义务采取行动。他和加拿大只有一点点关系——他的阿姨生活在温哥华附近——但他的死引发了强烈的反应，以至于加拿大人投票选举了理想主义的、对难民友善的贾斯廷·特鲁多(Justin Trudeau)担任总理。
Impatient would-be sponsors — “an angry mob of do-gooders,” The Star called them — have been seeking more families. The new government committed to taking in 25,000 Syrian refugees and then raised the total by tens of thousands.
想成为赞助者的民众迫不及待地寻找更多家庭——《星报》(The Star)称他们是“一群愤怒的热心人”。新政府承诺接纳2.5万名叙利亚难民，后来又把总数提高到了数万人。
“I can’t provide refugees fast enough for all the Canadians who want to sponsor them,” John McCallum, the country’s immigration minister, said in an interview.
“对于那些希望提供帮助的加拿大人，我没有办法马上提供那么多的难民，”加拿大负责移民事务的部长约翰·麦卡勒姆(John McCallum)在采访中说。
Advocates for sponsorship believe that private citizens can achieve more than the government alone, raising the number of refugees admitted, guiding newcomers more effectively and potentially helping solve the puzzle of how best to resettle Muslims in Western countries. The fear is that all of this effort could end badly, with the Canadians looking naive in more ways than one.
赞助工作的支持者们相信，与仅靠政府的力量相比，普通公民可以做得更多，同时增加接受移民的数量，并更有效地引导新来者，甚至还有助于解决如何在西方国家重新安置穆斯林这个难题。但也有人担心，加拿大人在很多方面看起来都太天真，这些努力有可能换来糟糕的结局。
The Syrians are screened, and many sponsors and refugees take offense at the notion that they could be dangerous, saying they are often victims of terrorism themselves. But U.S. officials point out that it is very difficult to track activity in the chaotic, multifaceted Syrian war. Several Islamic State members involved in the 2015 Paris attacks arrived on Europe’s shores from Syria posing as refugees.
叙利亚人经过了筛查，很多赞助者和难民都觉得，把难民视为危险人物是一种侮辱，他们说，难民也往往是恐怖主义的受害者。但是美国官员指出，在混乱复杂的叙利亚战争中，很难追溯一个人的行为。有几个卷入2015年巴黎恐怖袭击事件的伊斯兰国成员都是伪装成难民，从叙利亚来到欧洲。
Some of the refugees in Canada have middle- and upper-class backgrounds. But many more face steep paths to integration, with no money of their own, uncertain employment prospects and huge cultural gaps. Some had never heard of Canada until shortly before coming here.
一些来到加拿大的难民有中产或上层阶级背景。但是更多难民需要面对艰难的融合之路，他们没有钱、就业前景不明，还面临巨大的文化差异，有些人甚至到来前不久，才听说加拿大这个地方。
And volunteers cannot fully anticipate what they may confront — clashing expectations of whether Syrian women should work, tensions over how money is spent, families that are still dependent when the year is up, disagreements within sponsor groups.
志愿者们也不能完全预料到自己可能面对的情况：对叙利亚女性是否应该工作的预期存在冲突；金钱的用途可能导致的紧张；一年过后，这些家庭有可能仍然无法独立；赞助小组内部也会产生分歧。
Still, by mid-April, only eight weeks after their first encounter with McLorg, the Mohammads had a downtown apartment with a pristine kitchen, bikes for the children to zip around the courtyard, and a Canadian flag taped to their window.
然而，到4月中旬，距离见过麦克朗格第一面仅八周之后，穆罕默德一家已经在闹市拥有了一套带有全新厨房的公寓，孩子们可以在院子里骑自行车，他们的窗户上贴着一面加拿大国旗。
Abdullah Mohammad searched for the right words to describe what the sponsors had done for him. “It’s like I’ve been on fire, and now I’m safe in the water,” he said.
阿卜杜拉·穆罕默德寻找着合适的字眼来描述赞助者们为他所做的事。“就好像我本来着火了，现在我安全地呆在水里了，”他说。
There still was some culture shock. When Abdullah Mohammad took the children to a community pool, he encountered a woman in a string bikini. “I ran away,” he said later. “I’ve never seen that before in my life.”
文化冲击还是存在。阿卜杜拉·穆罕默德带孩子们到社区泳池是，遇到一个穿吊带比基尼的女人。“我跑开了，”他后来说，“我这辈子从未见过这样的情景。”
In mid-May, at the end of a routine meeting with the sponsors and the Mohammads, McLorg shared news of her own: She had breast cancer. Now that she was facing surgery, she was the one who was vulnerable, and the Syrians were the ones who were checking on her.
5月中旬，在赞助者与穆罕默德一家的例会上，麦克朗格说了一件自己的事：她患了乳腺癌。她要做手术了，现在她成了脆弱的一方，那家叙利亚人变成了关照她的人。
They brought flowers and chocolates; the other sponsors, now practiced in the logistics of caring, offered meal deliveries and other assistance. “I had no intention of building my own support group, but I have one now,” McLorg said.
他们为她带来鲜花和巧克力；其他的赞助人现在负责照顾她，为她送餐，提供其他帮助。“我从来没想过建立自己的支援小组，但是现在我有了一个，”麦克朗格说。
Bayan and Batoul, the two oldest Mohammad children, made get-well cards using the same set of watercolors the sponsors had used to make greeting signs that first day at the airport hotel. The morning after McLorg’s operation, when she made her way down to her living room, the cards were the first things she saw.
穆罕默德家的老大和老二——巴扬(Bayan)和巴图尔(Batoul)用各位赞助人第一天在机场绘制欢迎标识的那套水彩颜料制作了慰问卡。麦克朗格手术翌日早上，当她回到自家客厅，那些卡片是她看到的第一样东西。
