在這里，年輕女性因經(jīng)期禁忌而死去

TURMAKHAND, Nepal — Not long ago, in rural western Nepal, Gauri Kumari Bayak was the spark of her village. Her strong voice echoed across the fields as she husked corn. When she walked down the road at a brisk clip, off to lead classes on birth control, many admired her self-confidence.

尼泊爾特馬坎德——就在不久前，高里·庫馬里·巴亞克(Gauri Kumari Bayak)還在給這個(gè)尼泊爾西部鄉(xiāng)村帶去活力。剝玉米時(shí)，她那嘹亮的聲音在田野上回蕩。她邁著輕快的步伐去主持節(jié)育課程，很多人都欣賞她的自信。

But last January, Bayak’s lifeless body was carried up the hill, a stream of mourners bawling behind her. Her remains were burned, her dresses given away. The little hut where she was pressured to sequester herself during her menstrual period — and where she died — was smashed apart, erasing the last mark of another young life lost to a deadly superstition.

但是去年1月，她的尸體被抬到山上，一群哀悼者在她身后放聲痛哭。她的遺體被火化，衣服也送了人。她死在月經(jīng)期間被迫隔離自己的小屋里，那座小屋現(xiàn)在已被拆除，又一個(gè)年輕生命死于致命的迷信，她人生最后的痕跡也被抹去。

“I still can’t believe she’s not alive,” said Dambar Budha, her father-in-law, full of regret, sitting on a rock, staring off into the hills.

“我仍然無法相信她已經(jīng)不在人世了，”她的公公丹巴爾·巴哈(Dambar Budha)說，他滿心懊惱地坐在一塊石頭上，眼望著群山。

In this corner of Nepal, deep in the Himalayas, women are banished from their homes every month when they get their period. They are considered polluted, even toxic, and an oppressive regime has evolved around this taboo, including the construction of a separate hut for menstruating women to sleep in. Some of the spaces are as tiny as a closet, walls made of mud or rock, basically menstruation foxholes. Bayak died from smoke inhalation in hers as she tried to keep warm by a small fire in the bitter Himalayan winter.

在尼泊爾這個(gè)深處喜馬拉雅山脈中的偏僻地區(qū)，女人每個(gè)月經(jīng)期時(shí)都會被趕出家園。月經(jīng)被認(rèn)為是不潔的，甚至是有毒的，圍繞這個(gè)禁忌發(fā)展出一整套壓迫體制，包括建造一個(gè)單獨(dú)的小屋，讓正值經(jīng)期女人在那里睡覺。有些屋子像壁櫥一樣小，墻壁由泥土或巖石制成，基本上就是經(jīng)期女性的散兵坑。在喜馬拉雅山寒冷的冬季，巴亞克試圖生一點(diǎn)火來取暖，結(jié)果被濃煙嗆死。

Each year, at least one woman or girl — often more — dies in these huts, from exposure to the cold, smoke inhalation or attacks by animals. Just this June, another young woman was found dead in a menstruation hut, bitten by a snake. Her family tried to cover up the death, the police said, by destroying the hut and quickly burying her body, but the authorities exhumed it and are investigating what happened.

每年至少有一個(gè)女人或女孩——通常不止一個(gè)——在這些小屋中因寒冷、嗆煙或遭動物攻擊死亡。就在今年6月，另一名年輕女子被發(fā)現(xiàn)死于經(jīng)期小屋，死因是蛇咬。警方說，她的家人試圖掩蓋她的死亡，拆毀了小屋并迅速掩埋尸體，但當(dāng)局發(fā)掘出尸體，并對此事展開調(diào)查。

Many women keep doing it, out of intense social pressure or even guilt, and every evening, across these rippled green hills where little wisps of smoke melt into the darkening sky, hundreds of menstruating women and girls trudge out of their houses into chhaupadi huts.

由于受到強(qiáng)烈的社會壓力，甚至是出于內(nèi)疚，很多女人會一直這樣做，每天晚上，在那些起伏綠色山丘之間，一縷縷細(xì)細(xì)的煙上升到黑暗的天空之中，幾百個(gè)經(jīng)期女人和女孩邁著沉重的步履離開家，來到這些名叫朝泊蒂(chhaupadi)的小屋。

One woman, Mansara Nepali, sheepishly showed me hers. Made of stone, it was no more than 3 feet tall. As Nepali bent herself nearly in half to get in, she thunked her head on the tiny door frame.

曼薩拉·尼帕利羞怯地給我看她的小屋。它由石頭建成，高度頂多3英尺(約合0.9米)。她彎著腰走進(jìn)去，身體簡直快要對折起來，頭撞在小小的門框上。

“We built this ourselves,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “That’s why it’s not so good.”

“我們自己蓋了這個(gè)，”她揉著額頭說。“所以蓋得不太好。”

Like many other women I met, Nepali, who thought she was around 35, was illiterate. She had never gone to school and seemed embarrassed about her poverty. Her face was deeply grooved, cheeks reddened from laboring outside every day on a windy mountainside.

尼帕利認(rèn)為自己的年齡大概是35歲，和我遇到的許多其他女人一樣，她也是文盲。她從沒上過學(xué)，似乎對自己的貧窮感到難堪。她的臉上布滿深深的皺紋，面頰因?yàn)槊刻煸诙囡L(fēng)的山坡上勞作而發(fā)紅。

“It’s all part of the suffering and humiliation women have to endure because of harsh traditions,” said Pashupati Kunwar, who runs a small aid group to help women. “Domestic violence is still bad. Child marriage is still high. We are trying to convince people that times are changing, but superstition is still strong.”

“惡劣的傳統(tǒng)令女人必須忍受痛苦與羞辱，這也是其中一部分，”帕舒帕蒂·孔瓦爾(Pashupati Kunwar)說，她領(lǐng)導(dǎo)著一個(gè)幫助女性的小型援助組織。“家庭暴力依然猖獗。童婚率仍然很高。我們試圖說服人們時(shí)代在變，但迷信力量依然強(qiáng)大。”

The chhaupadi tradition seems especially hard to break. From the earliest age, people here are taught that any contact with a menstruating woman will bring bad luck. Most do not question it.

朝泊蒂傳統(tǒng)似乎特別難以打破。這里的人從小被教育說，與經(jīng)期女性接觸會帶來不幸。大多數(shù)人不會質(zhì)疑它。

“If a woman goes inside the family’s home during her period, three things will happen,” explained a farmer named Runcho. “A tiger will come; the house will catch on fire; and the head of the house will get sick.”

“如果女人經(jīng)期留在自家的房子里，就會發(fā)生三件事情。一個(gè)名叫倫喬(Runcho)的農(nóng)民解釋說。“老虎會來;房子會著火;一家之主會生病。”

Runcho spoke without any doubt or flourish. When asked if he had ever seen a tiger in his village, he smiled and didn’t answer yes or no, but then told a long story about how, maybe 10 years ago, he accidentally brushed up against his daughter when she was menstruating and lost his sight for several days.

倫喬的的語氣中沒有絲毫懷疑或是夸張。當(dāng)被問及是否見過老虎出現(xiàn)在自己的村子里時(shí)，他笑了笑，不置可否，但他后來講了一個(gè)很長的故事，說是大約10年前，他意外碰到了正值經(jīng)期的女兒，結(jié)果失明了好幾天。

“It was a nightmare,” he said.

“真是一場噩夢，”他說。

As he spoke, his teenage niece, who was having her period, was getting ready to crawl into a storage space beneath his house. The sun was setting behind the mountains, a cool wind sweeping in. The storage space was dark, cold, cramped and smelled like wet fur — and it was filled with itchy straw.

當(dāng)他說話時(shí)，他的一個(gè)十來歲、正值經(jīng)期的侄女正準(zhǔn)備爬進(jìn)他房子地下的儲藏室。太陽落山時(shí)，寒風(fēng)撲面而來。儲藏室黑暗、寒冷、狹窄，聞起來有濕漉漉的皮毛味道 ——里面裝滿了刺人的稻草。

“I’m happy to go down there,” said his niece, Devika. “I don’t want my parents to get sick.”

“我很樂意去那里，”他的侄女德維卡(Devika)說。“我可不想讓父母生病。”

Her uncle watched her closely.

叔叔仔細(xì)打量著她。

“The only problem,” she added, “is that our mobiles don’t work down there. We need to go outside to check our Facebook updates.”

“唯一的問題是，”她補(bǔ)充說，“那兒沒有手機(jī)信號。我們得出去刷Facebook。”

When I asked Runcho if he would like to sleep in the crawl space, he laughed. “Why should I?” he said. “It’s for women!”

我問倫喬是否愿意去那個(gè)只能爬行的空間里睡覺，他笑了。“為什么我要在那兒睡覺?”他說。“那是給女人預(yù)備的!”

In some villages, menstruating women are sent to cow sheds. Women who just gave birth are also considered polluted, and many remain isolated with their newborns for several days. Two years ago, said Kunwar, the women’s aid worker, a mother left her newborn alone in a shed for just a few minutes to wash her clothes. A jackal skulked in and snatched the baby.

在一些村莊，經(jīng)期婦女被送進(jìn)牛棚。剛分娩的婦女也被認(rèn)為受到了污染，許多婦女現(xiàn)在依然在分娩后和新生兒一起被隔離幾天。婦女救援人員孔瓦爾稱，兩年前，一位母親把新生兒獨(dú)自留在小屋里幾分鐘，去洗衣服。結(jié)果一只豺狼溜進(jìn)來，把嬰兒叼走了。

Many religions observe rules around menstruation, and Hinduism places a special emphasis on purity and pollution. Still, scholars are not sure why the menstruation taboo is so strong in western Nepal, where countless villages, across an area comprising hundreds of miles, still practice it.

許多宗教都遵守跟月經(jīng)有關(guān)的規(guī)矩，印度教特別強(qiáng)調(diào)純潔和污染。但學(xué)者們?nèi)圆淮_定，為什么尼泊爾西部的月經(jīng)禁忌如此強(qiáng)烈，橫跨數(shù)百英里的區(qū)域里的無數(shù)村莊依然奉行這種禁忌。

It may be because this region of Nepal is poor, relatively homogeneous, overwhelmingly Hindu and remote, and the houses tend to be small. (In other Hindu subcultures, menstruating women can be secluded to some degree within their homes.)

這可能是因?yàn)槟岵礌柕倪@個(gè)地區(qū)很窮，比較同質(zhì)化，絕大多數(shù)是印度教教徒，地處偏遠(yuǎn)，房屋往往都很小(在印度教的其他亞文化中，經(jīng)期女性可以在自己家里進(jìn)行一定程度的隔離)。

It was the death of Tulasi Shahi, an 18-year-old woman bitten by a snake last year while staying in a cow shed, that pushed lawmakers to write the new anti-chhaupadi law, several lawmakers said.

幾位議員表示，18歲的圖拉西·沙希(Tulasi Shahi)去年住牛棚時(shí)被蛇咬死的事情促使議員們起草了新的反朝泊蒂法。

Though menstruating women of all ages sleep in the huts, chhaupadi seems to disproportionately kill the young. Activists said this may be because young women aren’t as savvy about protecting themselves; for example, they might not know which type of snakes are poisonous or how important it is to keep the hut’s door slightly open if there’s a fire burning.

盡管各個(gè)年齡段的經(jīng)期女性都睡在小屋里，但朝泊蒂傳統(tǒng)似乎大多導(dǎo)致年輕女性死亡?；顒尤耸勘硎?，這可能是因?yàn)槟贻p女性不太懂得保護(hù)自己，例如，她們可能不知道哪種蛇有毒，或者不知道，點(diǎn)火取暖時(shí)把小屋的門打開一點(diǎn)是多么重要。

“Our conclusion,” said Rewati Raman Bhandari, a former member of parliament, “was that if we left this up to society to change, it would take hundreds of years.”

“我們的結(jié)論是，”前國會議員莉瓦蒂·拉曼·班達(dá)里(Rewati Raman Bhandari)說，“如果我們讓社會自己去改變這個(gè)傳統(tǒng)，那將需要幾百年的時(shí)間。”

Budha, the father-in-law of the woman who died in January, Bayak, now tells as many people who will listen about the chhaupadi dangers.

今年1月去世的巴亞克的公公巴哈現(xiàn)在逢人就講述朝泊蒂傳統(tǒng)的危險(xiǎn)。

“But people don’t care,” he said. “I say, ‘My daughter died, yours could, too.’ But then they say, ‘We are sorry but that is our culture.'”

“但人們不在乎，”他說。“我說，‘我的兒媳死了，你們的也有這種危險(xiǎn)。’但他們說，‘我們很遺憾，但這是我們的文化。’”

It wasn’t lost on him that Bayak, who the family said was around 20 when she died, was something of a feminist, leading birth control classes and encouraging women to stand up for themselves.

巴亞克的家人說，她去世時(shí)20歲左右。巴哈還記得，她在某種程度上是女權(quán)主義者，主持節(jié)育課程，鼓勵女性維護(hù)自己的權(quán)益。

“But even she still followed this tradition,” he said. “The pressure’s too strong. If she hadn’t gone to the hut during her period, she would have felt embarrassed.”

“但即使是她，也遵守了這個(gè)傳統(tǒng)，”他說。“壓力太大了。如果經(jīng)期不去小屋，她會覺得尷尬。”

He misses everything about her, he said: the way she read books, her enthusiasm for life, her voice. Bayak moved in with her husband’s family after she married and grew especially close to her in-laws. After she died, it was her guilt-ridden father-in-law who smashed apart the menstruation hut with his own hands.

他懷念她的一切，他說：她看書的樣子、她對生活的熱情和她的聲音。巴亞克婚后搬去和丈夫的家人同住，與姻親的關(guān)系特別親近。她死后，正是她充滿負(fù)罪感的公公親手將經(jīng)期隔離小屋拆毀。

Since then, he has insisted that his wife sleep in the main house during her period.

從那時(shí)起，他堅(jiān)決要求妻子經(jīng)期在正房里睡。

“And you know what?” he said. “Nothing bad has happened. All these years, we’ve been fooled into believing a false superstition.”

“你知道嗎?”他說。“什么不好的事情也沒發(fā)生。這些年來，我們被騙了，相信了一種錯誤的迷信。”