三杯茶 Three Cups of Tea

《三杯茶》

作者：葛瑞格·摩顿森与大卫·奥利佛·瑞林 （Greg mortenson & David Oliver Relin ）

葛瑞格凭《三杯茶》与村上春树分获2007年 第11届桐山环太平洋图书奖。

他1958年出生在明尼苏达，3个月时随父母到坦桑尼亚，十几岁又回到美国。他原是登山家，1993 年，他因救援同伴，攀登乔戈里峰失败，后被巴尔蒂人救起，从此和当地人结下深厚情缘。为兑现给 巴基斯坦穷困的村庄建学校的承诺，他辛苦奔走，历时12年，在巴基斯坦和阿富汗地区建了60余所 学校。目前他是中亚协会负责人。

大卫·奥利佛·瑞林是个游历世界的专栏作家， 其作品获奖无数。

CHAPTER 1 FAILURE
一 失败

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
—Persian proverb
天空越暗的時候，你越能看到星辰。
——波斯俗谚

In Pakistan’s Karakoram, bristling across an area barely one hundred miles wide, more than sixty of the world’s tallest mountains lord their severe alpine beauty over a witnessless high-altitude wilderness. Other than snow leopard and ibex, so few living creatures have passed through this barren icescape that the presence of the world’s second-highest mountain, K2, was little more than a rumor to the outside world until the turn of the twentieth century.
巴基斯坦的喀喇昆仑山脉，绵延一百多公里的 区间，耸立着六十多座世界上最高的山峰。它们仗 恃无可企及的高度，恣意绽放着荒野的美丽。除了雪豹和羱羊，这片荒瘠的冰地少有生物穿越。因此，直到20世纪来临，世界第二高峰乔戈里峰对外界仍是个传说。

Flowing down from K2 toward the populated upper reaches of the Indus Valley, between the four fluted granite spires of the Gasherbrums and the lethal-looking daggers of the Great Trango Towers, the sixty-two-kilometer-long Baltoro Glacier barely disturbs this still cathedral of rock and ice. And even the motion of this frozen river, which drifts at a rate of four inches a day, is almost undetectable.
顺着乔戈里峰的山势向下，在加舒尔布鲁木峰群四座凹槽状的塔形花岗岩峰和大川哥岩塔群之间看似致命的石刀上，长达六十二公里的巴托罗冰川朝印度河谷上游的方向缓缓流动着。仿佛生怕惊扰了雄伟静立于天地间的岩峰冰层，这冰川仅以每天十厘米的速度移动，让人难以察觉它在前进。

On the afternoon of September 2, 1993, Greg Mortenson felt as if he were scarcely traveling any faster. Dressed in a much-patched set of mud-colored shalwar kamiz, like his Pakistani porters, he had the sensation that his heavy black leather mountaineering boots were independently steering him down the Baltoro at their own glacial speed, through an armada of icebergs arrayed like the sails of a thousand ice-bound ships.
时间是1993年9 月2日。葛瑞格·摩顿森觉得 自己走得比冰川也快不了多少。跟他的巴基斯坦高 山脚夫一样，摩顿森穿着处处是补丁的土黄色"夏瓦儿卡米兹"。脚上那双笨重的黑色登山靴似乎正自顾 自地把他往冰川下带。两旁是高耸的冰塔林，仿佛千万艘坚冰船队上罗列张扬的船帆。

At any moment, Mortenson expected to find Scott Darsney, a fellow member of his expedition, with whom he was hiking back toward civilization, sitting on a boulder, teasing him for walking so slowly. But the upper Baltoro is more maze than trail. Mortenson hadn’t yet realized that he was lost and alone. He’d strayed from the main body of the glacier to a side spur that led not westward, toward Askole, the village fifty miles farther on, where he hoped to find a jeep driver willing to transport him out of these mountains, but south, into an impenetrable maze of shattered icefall, and beyond that, the high-altitude killing zone where Pakistani and Indian soldiers lobbed artillery shells at one another through the thin air.
摩顿森以为，他随时都可能追上队友史考特·达斯尼，然后他们一起返回文明世界。他想象达斯尼正坐在前方的大卵石上，开着玩笑抱怨他走得太慢，而没意识到自己已经迷了路：他偏离了冰川的主道，而巴托罗冰川上游的小道宛若迷宫。他原打算向西走到艾斯科里村落，找辆吉普车带他下山，却不知道自己正一路向南，在错综复杂的冰塔林间越绕越远，而再往前就是巴基斯坦和印度士兵相互炮击的火线区域。

Ordinarily Mortenson would have paid more attention. He would have focused on life-and-death information like the fact that Mouzafer, the porter who had appeared like a blessing and volunteered to haul his heavy bag of climbing gear, was also carrying his tent and nearly all of his food and kept him in sight. And he would have paid more mind to the overawing physicality of his surroundings.
摩顿森原本不会这么漫不经心。他会格外关注 生死攸关的信息——比如，他的攀登装备、帐篷和所有食物都在脚夫穆札佛的背包里，尽管他也会留 意身边惊心动魄的景色，但不会让穆札佛离开自己 的视线。

In 1909, the duke of Abruzzi, one of the greatest climbers of his day, and perhaps his era’s most discerning connoisseur of precipitous landscapes, led an Italian expedition up the Baltoro for an unsuccessful attempt at K2. He was stunned by the stark beauty of the encircling peaks. “Nothing could compare to this in terms of alpine beauty,” he recorded in his journal. “It was a world of glaciers and crags, an incredible view which could satisfy an artist just as well as a mountaineer.”
1909年，当时最伟大的登山家，可能也是那个年代对巍峨山景最具鉴赏力的旅行家阿布鲁兹公爵，在带领意大利登山队攻顶乔戈里峰未果后，来到了 巴托罗冰川。阿布鲁兹被群峰环绕的天地大美所震慑。"走遍世界高山，要找到能与之媲美者难矣。" 他在日志中写道，"这是个冰川和峭岭的世界，难以置信的景色不仅让登山家为之震撼，也会让艺术家为之惊叹。"

But as the sun sank behind the great granite serrations of Muztagh Tower to the west, and shadows raked up the valley’s eastern walls, toward the bladed monoliths of Gasherbrum, Mortenson hardly noticed. He was looking inward that afternoon, stunned and absorbed by something unfamiliar in his life to that point—failure.
当太阳西沉，没入木孜塔格峰锯齿状的花岗岩 顶峰，山影也掠过河谷东侧，移向加舒尔布鲁木峰 刀刃般的巨大山壁。然而，摩顿森再无心观赏这震 慑人心的景色。他饱受惊吓的心被一种从未有过的 情绪俘获了——失败。

Reaching into the pocket of his shalwar, he fingered the necklace of amber beads that his little sister Christa had often worn.
摩顿森把手伸进"夏瓦儿"口袋，拨弄着小妹克 莉丝塔生前常戴的琥珀念珠项链。

As a three-year-old in Tanzania, where Mortenson’s Minnesota-born parents had been Lutheran missionaries and teachers, Christa had contracted acute meningitis and never fully recovered. Greg, twelve years her senior, had appointed himself her protector. Though Christa struggled to perform simple tasks—putting on her clothes each morning took upward of an hour—and suffered severe epileptic seizures, Greg pressured his mother, Jerene, to allow her some measure of independence. He helped Christa find work at manual labor, taught her the routes of the Twin Cities’ public buses, so she could move about freely, and, to their mother’s mortification, discussed the particulars of birth control when he learned she was dating.
老家虽在明尼苏达，但摩顿森生长在非洲坦桑尼亚，父母在那里担任路德教会的传教士及教师。 那时才三岁的克莉丝塔感染了急性脑膜炎，此后再 没康复。比妹妹年长十二岁的摩顿森自愿担任她 的保护者。虽然克莉丝塔连做简单活动都有困难， 每天早上穿衣得花一个小时，并且饱受严重癫痫之 苦，摩顿森却极力说服母亲洁琳，让妹妹在生活上 学着独立。摩顿森帮克莉丝塔找了份简单的工作、 教她认识双子城的公交车路线，好让她可以自由行 动。当他知道妹妹开始约会后，还跟她讨论如何避 孕的细节，这让他们的母亲很难为情。

Each year, whether he was serving as a U.S. Army medic and platoon leader in Germany, working on a nursing degree in South Dakota, studying the neurophysiology of epilepsy at graduate school in Indiana in hopes of discovering a cure for Christa, or living a climbing bum’s life out of his car in Berkeley, California, Mortenson insisted that his little sister visit him for a month. Together, they sought out the spectacles that brought Christa so much pleasure. They took in the Indy 500, the Kentucky Derby, road-tripped down to Disneyland, and he guided her through the architecture of his personal cathedral at that time, the storied granite walls of Yosemite.
后来，无论是在德国担任美军医护人员及排长， 在南达科他州攻读护理学位，在印第安纳州的研究所钻研癫痫神经生理，还是在加州柏克莱过着以车为家的登山迷生活，每一年，他都坚持与小妹共处一个月。两人一起游历，参加"印地 500 赛车"、"肯塔基马术大赛"，开车到迪斯尼乐园旅行，参观摩顿森的"私房景点"——优胜美地国家公园著名的花岗岩壁。这一切都给克莉丝塔带来了无穷无尽的欢乐。

For her twenty-third birthday, Christa and their mother planned to make a pilgrimage from Minnesota to the cornfield in Deyersville, Iowa, where the movie that Christa was drawn to watch again and again, Field of Dreams, had been filmed. But on her birthday, in the small hours before they were to set out, Christa died of a massive seizure.
为了庆祝克莉丝塔二十三岁的生日，母亲计划 带她开始"从明尼苏达到爱荷华州代尔斯维玉米田" 的朝圣之旅，那是她百看不厌的电影《梦幻成真》 的拍摄地。然而就在生日当天，在即将出发的时候， 克莉丝塔因癫痫发作而永远离去了。

After Christa’s death, Mortenson retrieved the necklace from among his sister’s few things. It still smelled of a campfire they had made during her last visit to stay with him in California. He brought it to Pakistan with him, bound in a Tibetan prayer flag, along with a plan to honor the memory of his little sister. Mortenson was a climber and he had decided on the most meaningful tribute he had within him. He would scale K2, the summit most climbers consider the toughest to reach on Earth, and leave Christa’s necklace there at 28,267 feet.
克莉丝塔去世后，摩顿森从她不多的遗物中拣 了这条念珠项链。项链上甚至还闻得出营火的气味， 那是她最后一次到加州看望他时，两人一起升起的 营火。他用藏族的经幡包起项链，随身带来巴基斯 坦——他决定用对登山者来说最有意义的方式纪念 克莉丝塔：攀登这座被许多登山者视为地球上最难 攀登的乔戈里山峰，把她的项链留在海拔8611 米的 峰顶上。

He had been raised in a family that had relished difficult tasks, like building a school and a hospital in Tanzania, on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. But despite the smooth su***ces of his parents’ unquestioned faith, Mortenson hadn’t yet made up his mind about the nature of divinity. He would leave an offering to whatever deity inhabited the upper atmosphere.
摩顿森从小生长在一个不畏挑战的家庭，这个 家庭曾在非洲最高的乞力马扎罗的山坡上建造学校、 建造医院。

Three months earlier, Mortenson had positively skipped up this glacier in a pair of Teva sandals with no socks, his ninety-pound pack beside the point of the adventure that beckoned him up the Baltoro. He had set off on the seventy-mile trek from Askole with a team of ten English, Irish, French, and American mountaineers, part of a poorly financed but pathologically bold attempt to climb the world’s second-highest peak.
Compared to Everest, a thousand miles southeast along the spine of the Himalaya, K2, they all knew, was a killer. To climbers, who call it “The Savage Peak,” it remains the ultimate test, a pyramid of razored granite so steep that snow can’t cling to its knife-edged ridges. And Mortenson, then a bullishly fit thirty-five-year-old, who had summited Kilimanjaro at age eleven, who’d been schooled on the sheer granite walls of Yosemite, then graduated to half a dozen successful Himalayan ascents, had no doubt when he arrived in May that he would soon stand on what he considered “the biggest and baddest summit on Earth.”
三个月前，只穿着一双运动凉鞋，连袜子都没 穿的摩顿森迈着轻快的步子踏上了冰川。他参加的 是一支财力匮乏但勇气十足的登山队，总共十名队员。他们从艾斯科里出发，长途跋涉进入大本营， 准备攀登世界第二高峰。在使命***的险途中，四 十多公斤重的背包对他来说，根本不是问题。现年 三十五岁、体能充沛的他，十一岁就登顶乞力马扎 罗峰，成功攀爬过五六座喜马拉雅山脉的高峰，现 在他信心满满地认为，自己很快就会登上这座被喻 为"地球上最大也最凶恶"的乔戈里峰。和喜马拉雅 山脊东南方一千多公里远处的珠峰相比，乔戈里峰 是座杀人峰——金字塔形的锐利岩峰，陡峭到连冰 雪都无法附着在它刀刃般的岩壁上。

He’d come shatteringly close, within six hundred meters of the summit. But K2 had receded into the mists behind him and the necklace was still in his pocket. How could this have happened? He wiped his eyes with his sleeve, disoriented by unfamiliar tears, and attributed them to the altitude. He certainly wasn’t himself. After seventy-eight days of primal struggle at altitude on K2, he felt like a faint, shriveled caricature of himself. He simply didn’t know if he had the reserves left to walk fifty more miles over dangerous terrain to Askole.
真的很接近了，他离顶峰只有六百米的垂直高 度。但此时乔戈里峰已隐入身后的薄雾中，项链却 还在他的口袋里。为什么会这样？自己不再是从前 的自己了？他用衣袖擦去眼泪，诧异自己竟然落泪。 在乔戈里峰辛苦攀登的七十八个日日夜夜，他觉得 自己越发的虚弱委靡，跟当初那个意气风发的摩顿 森简直判若两人。他不知道自己还有没有力气穿越 近八十公里的危险地带，回到艾斯科里。

The sharp, shotgun crack of a rockfall brought him back to his surroundings. He watched a boulder the size of a three-story house accelerate, bouncing and spinning down a slope of scree, then pulverize an iceberg on the trail ahead of him.
一阵尖锐如猎枪鸣响的乱石碎裂声，把他带回现实世界。眼看着一块三层楼高的巨石加速下落， 触地弹跳，摔落到碎石坡上，将他面前的冰岩击得粉碎。

Mortenson tried to shake himself into a state of alertness. He looked out of himself, saw how high the shadows had climbed up the eastern peaks, and tried to remember how long it had been since he’d seen a sign of other humans. It had been hours since Scott Darsney had disappeared down the trail ahead of him. An hour earlier, or maybe more, he’d heard the bells of an army mule caravan carrying ammunition toward the Siachen Glacier, the twenty-thousand-foot-high battlefield a dozen miles southeast where the Pakistani military was frozen into its perpetual deadly standoff with the Indian army.
摩顿森试着把惊呆的自己摇醒，回想从上次看见其他人到现在，究竟过了多久。史考特·达斯尼在他前面的山路上已经消失了好几个小时，一个小时或更久之前，他曾听到载着军火往锡亚琴冰川方向去的军骡车队的铃声。那里是巴基斯坦和印度军队长期对峙的高山战区。

He scoured the trail for signs. Anywhere on the trail back to Askole, there would be debris left behind by the military. But there were no mule droppings. No cigarette butts. No food tins. No blades of the hay the mule drivers carried to feed their animals. He realized it didn’t look much like a trail at all, simply a cleft in an unstable maze of boulders and ice, and he wondered how he had wandered to this spot. He tried to summon the clarity to concentrate. But the effects of prolonged exposure to high altitude had sapped Mortenson of the ability to act and think decisively.
他急忙找寻路上可能有的各种记号。但是，这里没有骡粪，没有烟蒂，没有空罐头，也没有赶骡人喂牲口的干草叶。摩顿森意识到自己所走的不是山路，而是冰岩迷宫中一道天然的裂隙。自己是怎么走到这儿的，他努力梳理着思绪，想集中起精神，但空气稀薄的高海拔环境已经让他无法清楚思考了。

He spent an hour scrambling up a slope of scree, hoping for a vantage point above the boulders and icebergs, a place where he might snare the landmark he was looking for, the great rocky promontory of Urdukas, which thrust out onto the Baltoro like a massive fist, and haul himself back toward the trail. But at the top he was rewarded with little more than a greater degree of exhaustion. He’d strayed eight miles up a deserted valley from the trail, and in the failing light, even the contours of peaks that he knew well looked unfamiliar from this new perspective.
摩顿森花了一个小时爬上一道碎石坡，希望从巨石和冰峰之上的制高点上，找到他熟悉的地标——乌尔杜斯的大岩岬。那是如筋肉虬结的巨拳一般的岩岬，横插进巴托罗冰川。但爬到坡顶，他发现自己除了筋疲力竭，一无所获。他还不知道，自己方才这一走，已经沿一条破碎的溪谷走出了十几公里，完全偏离了预定的路线。在渐渐昏暗的夕照中，连原本熟悉的远山轮廓，也开始变得模糊又陌生。

Feeling a finger of panic probing beneath his altitude-induced stupor, Mortenson sat to take stock. In his small sun-faded purple day?pack he had a lightweight wool Pakistani army blanket, an empty water bottle, and a single protein bar. His high-altitude down sleeping bag, all his warm clothes, his tent, his stove, food, even his flashlight and all his matches were in the pack the porter carried.
高海拔让他完全无法集中精神，惊恐的情绪悄悄滋生。摩顿森强迫自己坐下来评估现状。他那被太阳晒褪色的紫色小背包里，只有一条轻薄的巴基斯坦羊毛军毯，一个空水壶和一条高蛋白营养棒。 他的高山羽绒睡袋、所有的保暖衣物、帐篷、炉子、食物，甚至连手电筒和火柴，都在脚夫的背包里。但他们走散了。

He’d have to spend the night and search for the trail in daylight. Though it had already dropped well below zero, he wouldn’t die of exposure, he thought. Besides, he was coherent enough to realize that stumbling, at night, over a shifting glacier, where crevasses yawned hundreds of feet down through wastes of blue ice into subterranean pools, was far more dangerous. Picking his way down the mound of scree, Mortenson looked for a spot far enough from the mountain walls that he wouldn’t be crushed by rockfall as he slept and solid enough that it wouldn’t split and plunge him into the glacier’s depths.
他得在山上过夜，等天亮后再找路下山。虽然气温已经降到零度以下，他想自己还不至于冻死， 凭着仅存的神智，他知道在漂移的冰川上摸黑找路更危险，弄不好就会掉进上百米深的巨大裂缝。摩顿森小心翼翼地爬下碎石坡，想找个能休息的地方： 要离岩壁够远，他才不会在睡梦中被落石击碎；要够牢，才不至于在半夜裂开，让他掉进冰川深处。

He found a flat slab of rock that seemed stable enough, scooped icy snow into his water bottle with ungloved hands, and wrapped himself in his blanket, willing himself not to focus on how alone and exposed he was. His forearm was lashed with rope burns from the rescue, and he knew he should tear off the clotted gauze bandages and drain pus from the wounds that refused to heal at this altitude, but he couldn’t quite locate the motivation. As he lay shivering on uneven rock, Mortenson watched as the last light of the sun smoldered blood red on the daggered summits to the east, then flared out, leaving their afterimages burning in blue-black.
摩顿森找到一块看起来颇为稳固的扁平岩板， 赤手把冰雪装进水壶，然后用毯子把自己包起来，强迫自己不去多想孤单悲惨的处境。小臂在前段时间的救援行动中被绳索磨伤，在这种高度下伤口很难愈合，他知道应该撕开结痂的纱布和绷带，把伤口里的脓挤出来，不过这会儿实在没这个力气了。躺在凹凸不平的岩石上，冻得发抖。太阳最后一抹火红的余晖照在东边的山峰上，燃烧闪耀，最后留下黑蓝色的残像。

Nearly a century earlier, Filippo De Filippi, doctor for and chronicler of the duke of Abruzzi’s expedition to the Karakoram, recorded the desolation he felt among these mountains. Despite the fact that he was in the company of two dozen Europeans and 260 local porters, that they carried folding chairs and silver tea services and had European newspapers delivered to them regularly by a fleet of runners, he felt crushed into insignificance by the character of this landscape. “Profound silence would brood over the valley,”he wrote, “even weighing down our spirits with indefinable heaviness. There can be no other place in the world where man feels himself so alone, so isolated, so completely ignored by Nature, so incapable of entering into communion with her.”
将近一个世纪前，阿布鲁兹公爵的医生和登山队队记菲利波·迪·菲利皮，曾写下他置身山峰所感到的孤寂。尽管有超过二十位欧洲队友、两百六十位当地脚夫同行，尽管他们带着折叠椅、银制茶具，还有一队脚夫定期送上欧洲报纸，菲利皮仍然觉得自己被群山的静寂、疏离压得喘不过气来。" 深深的静寂在山谷中浮现，"他写道，"以无法言喻的沉重，压抑着我们的灵魂。世上再没有地方像此处一样，让人觉得如此孤寂、如此疏离、如此被大自然全然弃绝，如此无法与她对话。"

Perhaps it was his experience with solitude, being the lone American child among hundreds of Africans, or the nights he spent bivouacked three thousand feet up Yosemite’s Half Dome in the middle of a multiday climb, but Mortenson felt at ease. If you ask him why, he’ll credit altitude-induced dementia. But anyone who has spent time in Mortenson’s presence, who’s watched him wear down a congressman or a reluctant philanthropist or an Afghan warlord with his doggedness, until he pried loose overdue relief funds, or a donation, or the permission he was seeking to pass into tribal territories, would recognize this night as one more example of Mortenson’s steely-mindedness.
也许是因为摩顿森习惯孤独（小时候他是几百个非洲孩童中唯一的美国孩子），又或者是多次攀岩经验让他习以为常，毕竟在优胜美地公园的半穹顶峰，他曾多次在离地面一千多米的岩壁上扎营——此刻，他反而觉得十分自在。如果问他原因，他可能会归结为高原反应造成的迟钝。但是任何见过摩顿森的人，任何看过他后来如何锲而不舍地说服国会议员、原本犹豫的慈善家、阿富汗军阀，直到取得救援经费、捐款，直到取得进入部落领土的许可等等的人，都会了解，这一夜的经历，其实只是他钢铁意志的一个缩影。

The wind picked up and the night became bitterly crystalline. He tried to discern the peaks he felt hovering malevolently around him, but he couldn’t make them out among the general blackness. After an hour under his blanket he was able to thaw his frozen protein bar against his body and melt enough silty icewater to wash it down, which set him shivering violently. Sleep, in this cold, seemed out of the question. So Mortenson lay beneath the stars salting the sky and decided to examine the nature of his failure.
夜风吹起，刺骨难捱。他试着看清矗立在身旁不怀好意的群峰，但怎么也无法将它们从一片漆黑中分辨出来。在毯子里焐了一个小时，结冰的高蛋白营养棒终于靠着体温解冻了。混着足够的冰水，他把营养棒吞下去，瑟瑟发抖了半天。在这样的低温下睡着，看来是不可能了。放弃设法入睡的念头，摩顿森对着繁星点点的天空，决定分析一下自己失败的原因。

The leaders of his expedition, Dan Mazur and Jonathan Pratt, along with French climber Etienne Fine, were thoroughbreds. They were speedy and graceful, bequeathed the genetic wherewithal to sprint up technical pitches at high altitude. Mortenson was slow and bearishly strong. At six-foot-four and 210 pounds, Mortenson had attended Minnesota’s Concordia College on a football scholarship.
登山队的领队唐·马祖尔和强纳森·普瑞特，还有法国登山队员艾登·凡恩，都受过良好的登山 训练。他们速度快，动作优雅，天生具备在高海拔地区进行多段技术攀登的体型和能力。一米九二的身高、九十五公斤的体重，身材粗壮的摩顿森在速 度上要慢许多。

Though no one directed that it should be so, the slow, cumbersome work of mountain climbing fell naturally to him and to Darsney. Eight separate times Mortenson served as pack mule, hauling food, fuel, and oxygen bottles to several stashes on the way to the Japanese Couloir, a tenuous aerie the expedition carved out within six hundred meters of K2’s summit, stocking the expedition’s high camps so the lead climbers might have the supplies in place when they decided to dash to the top.
没有人指挥分配，在攀登过程中，一切缓慢笨重的工作自然落在他和达斯尼身上。一连八次，登山队朝日本峡谷攀登时，摩顿森都承担运输补给任务，背着食物、燃料、氧气瓶上爬到不同的高山营地。日本峡谷跟乔戈里顶峰只有六百米的高差，登山队在这里平整出一片狭小的营地，用来储存所有的高山营地装备，这样当领队决定攻顶时，营地就能保证补给品及时到位。

All of the other expeditions on the mountain that season had chosen to challenge the peak in the traditional way, working up the path pioneered nearly a century earlier, K2’s Southeastern Abruzzi Ridge. Only they had chosen the West Ridge, a circuitous, brutally difficult route, littered with land mine after land mine of steep, technical pitches, which had been successfully scaled only once, twelve years earlier, by Japanese climber Eiho Otani and his Pakistani partner Nazir Sabir.
那一季，在山上的其他登山队都选择了传统路线，也就是从乔戈里峰东南部的阿布鲁兹山脊路线往上爬，只有他们这一支决定从西壁攻顶——一条迂回艰难的路线，到处都需要高难度的技术攀登。沿这条路线攀登，先前只有一次成功纪录，那是十二年前由日本登山者大谷映芳和他的巴基斯坦协作纳兹尔·萨比尔创下的。

Mortenson relished the challenge and took pride in the rigorous route they’d chosen. And each time he reached one of the perches they’d clawed out high on the West Ridge, and unloaded fuel canisters and coils of rope, he noticed he was feeling stronger. He might be slow, but reaching the summit himself began to seem inevitable.
摩顿森不仅欣赏这个挑战，而且为自己的登山队选择这条路线而自豪。每一次抵达营地，卸下燃料罐和登山绳索，他都感觉自己更强壮了。他的速度或许有些慢，不过成功登顶已经指日可待。

Then one evening after more than seventy days on the mountain, Mortenson and Darsney were back at base camp, about to drop into well-earned sleep after ninety-six hours of climbing during another resupply mission. But while taking a last look at the peak through a telescope just after dark, Mortenson and Darsney noticed a flickering light high up on K2’s West Ridge. They realized it must be members of their expedition, signaling with their headlamps, and they guessed that their French teammate was in trouble.
然而，在山上待了七十多天后，刚攀爬九十六小时完成一趟补给任务，摩顿森和达斯尼回到大本营正准备好好睡一夜。临睡前，他们用望远镜瞄了 一眼刚刚暗下来的峰顶，忽然注意到乔戈里峰西侧山脊的高处有灯光闪动。摩顿森和达斯尼意识到这一定是队友在用头灯发信号，应该是他们的法国队友有麻烦了。

“Etienne was an Alpiniste,” Mortenson explains, underlining with an exaggerated French pronunciation the respect and arrogance the term can convey among climbers. “He’d travel fast and light with the absolute minimum amount of gear. And we had to bail him out before when he went up too fast without acclimatizing.”
"凡恩采用的是'阿尔卑斯式风格'。"摩顿森解释。他用法文重音强调"阿尔卑斯"一词，在登山者中间这个词代表的尊敬和荣耀不言而喻。"随身只带最少的装备，尽可能快速攀登。之前我们还曾帮他脱离困境，因为他走得太快，没有适当的高度来让身体适应和休息。"

Mortenson and Darsney, doubting whether they were strong enough to climb to Fine so soon after an exhausting descent, called for volunteers from the five other expeditions at base camp. None came forward. For two hours they lay in their tents resting and rehydrating, then they packed their gear and went back out.
刚完成疲累的补给旅程，摩顿森和达斯尼担心他们没办法迅速赶到凡恩的位置进行救援，所以向大本营的另外五支登山队求援，但是没有人愿意帮忙。他们在大本营只休息了两个小时，就背上装备出发。

Descending from their seventy-six-hundred-meter Camp IV, Pratt and Mazur found themselves in the fight of their lives. “Etienne had climbed up to join us for a summit bid,” Mazur says. “But when he got to us, he collapsed. As he tried to catch his breath, he told us he heard a rattling in his lungs.”
从海拔 7600 米的四号营地一路赶下山的普瑞特和马祖尔，则是在搏命救人。"凡恩爬上来跟我们会合，想一起攻顶，"马祖尔说，"但当他爬到我们这里的时候，整个人已经垮掉了。等他喘过气来，告诉我们，他听到肺里有咕噜咕噜的声音。"

Fine was suffering from pulmonary edema, an altitude-induced flooding of the lungs that can kill those it strikes if they aren’t imme?diately evacuated to lower ground. “It was terrifying,” Mazur says. “Pink froth was pouring out of Etienne’s mouth. We tried to call for help, but we’d dropped our radio in the snow and it wouldn’t work. So we started down.”
凡恩得了高山肺水肿——海拔太高引起的肺部积水，如果患者不能被立刻送下山，很快就会死亡。"真的很吓人，"马祖尔说，"粉红色的液体从他口中大量冒出来。我们试着呼救，但是无线电进雪不能用了，我们只好往下走。"

Pratt and Mazur took turns clipping themselves to Fine, and rapelling with him down the West Ridge’s steepest pitches. “It was like hanging from a rope strapped to a big sack of potatoes,” Mazur says. “And we had to take our time so we wouldn’t kill ourselves.”
普瑞特和马祖尔两个人轮流搀扶凡恩下山，然后在西侧山脊最陡的几段绳距，用坐式下降法将他 运下去。"好像是身上绑了一大袋马铃薯后吊在绳索 上。"马祖尔说，"我们还得慢慢来，才不会害死自己。"

With his typical understatement, Mortenson doesn’t say much about the twenty-four hours it took to haul himself up to reach Fine other than to comment that it was “fairly arduous.”
当他们问摩顿森是怎么在二十四小时之内日夜兼程，抵达凡恩的位置时，向来不爱张扬的他只是简单回答："相当辛苦。"

“Dan and Jon were the real heroes,” he says. “They gave up their summit bid to get Etienne down.”
"普瑞特和马祖尔是真正的英雄。"他说，"他们放弃了攻顶，只为了救凡恩下山。"

By the time Mortenson and Darsney met their teammates, on a rock face near Camp I, Fine was lapsing in and out of conciousness, suffering also from cerebral edema, the altitude-induced swelling of the brain. “He was unable to swallow and attempting to unlace his boots,” Mortenson says.
当摩顿森、达斯尼和队友们在靠近一号大本营 的岩壁会合时，凡恩数度陷入昏迷，出现高山脑水肿现象，大脑内产生积水。"他已经无法吞咽，而且一直想解开登山鞋的鞋带。"摩顿森说。

Mortenson, who’d worked as an emergency room trauma nurse for the freedom the irregular hours gave him to pursue his climbing career, gave Fine injections of Decadron to ease the edema and the four already exhausted climbers began a forty-eight-hour odyssey of dragging and lowering him down craggy rock faces.
平日不登山的时候，摩顿森的工作是在急诊室担任大夜班创伤护士。此刻专业医疗技能派上了用场，他立刻给凡恩注射了一剂降脑压药物，以缓解脑水肿现象。然后，四个早已筋疲力竭的队友开始长达四十八小时的艰苦营救旅程，拖着裹在睡袋里的凡恩从崎岖的岩壁区下撤。

Sometimes Fine, ordinarily fluent in English, would wake enough to babble in French, Mortenson says. At the most technical pitches, with a lifelong climber’s instinct for self-preservation, Fine would rouse himself to clip his protective devices onto the rope, before melting back into deadweight, Mortenson remembers.
"有时候，英文流利的凡恩会突然醒来吐出一串含糊不清的法文；在极度困难的路段，出于登山者的自我保护本能，凡恩会突然惊醒似的把保护装备扣进绳索，然后又瘫倒陷入昏迷状态。"摩顿森回忆道。

Seventy-two hours after Mortenson and Darsney set out, the group had succeeded in lowering Fine to flat ground at their advance base camp. Darsney radioed the Canadian expedition below, who relayed his request to the Pakistani military for a high-altitude Lama helicopter rescue. At the time, it would have been one of the highest helicopter rescues ever attempted. But the military HQ replied that the weather was too bad and the wind too strong and ordered Fine evacuated to lower ground.
摩顿森和达斯尼出发七十二个小时后，他们成功护送凡恩撤回了前进营地。达斯尼用无线电呼叫山下的加拿大登山队，再由他们把讯息转至巴基斯坦军中，请求派拉玛高山直升机进行救援。这在当时应该是史上最高的高山救援尝试，但由于天气恶劣，风力过强，军方要求他们将凡恩送到更低的地方。

It was one thing to issue an order. It was quite another for four men in the deepest animal stages of exhaustion to attempt to execute it. For six hours, after strapping Fine into a sleeping bag, they commu?nicated only in grunts and whimpers, dragging their friend down a dangerous technical route through the icefall of the Savoia Glacier.
下命令很简单，然而让四个已经筋疲力竭的队友把人送下山，却是要命的困难。把凡恩绑进睡袋后，队友们穿过艰难崎岖的沙维亚冰川护送他下山，整整六个小时，四个人只能用咕哝含混的语言沟通。

“We were so exhausted and so beyond our limits that, at times, we could only crawl ourselves as we tried to get down,” Darsney remembers.
"我们真的累坏了，这远远超出体能的极限，有时候我们甚至得爬。"达斯尼回忆道。

Finally, the group approached K2 base camp, towing Fine in the bag behind them. “All the other expeditions strolled about a quarter mile up the glacier to greet us and give us a hero’s welcome,” Darsney says. “After the Pakistani army helicopter came and evacuated Etienne, the Canadian expedition members cooked up a huge meal and everyone had a party. But Greg and I didn’t stop to eat, drink, or even piss, we just fell into our sleeping bags like we’d been shot.”
终于，一行人拖着凡恩撤回了大本营。"大本营的所有队员都走了几百米出来迎接我们，给我们英雄般的欢迎！"达斯尼说，"巴基斯坦军用直升机把凡恩送下山后，加拿大队做了一顿大餐，大家都在。但摩顿森和我来不及享用，甚至来不及上厕所，就一头栽进睡袋，像死人一样。"

For two days, Mortenson and Darsney drifted in and out of the facsimile of sleep that high altitude inflicts on even those most exhausted. As the wind probed at their tents, it was accompanied by the sound of metal cook kit plates, engraved with the names of the forty-eight mountaineers who’d lost their lives to the Savage Mountain, clanging eerily on the Art Gilkey Memorial, named for a climber who died during a 1953 American expedition.
整整两天，摩顿森和达斯尼的意识在睡梦和清醒间来回漂浮。风吹过他们的帐篷，带来金属炊具 板互相碰撞的叮当怪响。炊具板一共有四十八块，每块上都刻着一位在乔戈里峰不幸遇难的登山者的名字。穿成一串的炊具板挂在"亚特吉尔奇纪念碑" 上，而纪念碑是为了悼念1953年丧生的一位美国登山队员。

When they woke, they found a note from Pratt and Mazur, who’d headed back up to their high camp. They invited their teammates to join them for a summit attempt when they recovered. But recovery was beyond them. The rescue, coming so quickly on the heels of their resupply climb, had ripped away what reserves they had.
醒来后，两人看到普瑞特和马祖尔留下的字条，说他们决定返回前进营地，并邀请摩顿森和达斯尼在体力恢复后一起攻顶。但"恢复"对摩顿森和达斯尼来说根本是奢望，补给任务紧接着救援行动，早已将他们所有力气消耗殆尽。

When they finally emerged from their tent, both found it a struggle simply to walk. Fine had been saved at a great price. The ordeal would eventually cost him all his toes. And the rescue cost Mortenson and Darsney whatever attempt they could muster at the summit they had worked so hard to reach. Mazur and Pratt would announce to the world that they’d stood on the summit a week later and return home to glory in their achievement. But the number of metal plates chiming in the wind would multiply, as four of the sixteen climbers who summited that season died during their descent.
终于走出帐篷的时候，他们发现自己连走路都困难。凡恩活了下来，但是代价很高：这趟艰辛的旅程让他失去了所有的脚趾，救援行动也让摩顿森和达斯尼付出了无法登顶的代价，这本是他们千辛万苦渴望达成的目标。普瑞特和马祖尔在一个星期后向世界宣布他们登顶的消息，荣归祖国。但金属板上刻的名字却增加了——那一季十六位成功登顶的登山者当中，有四位在下撤过程中不幸丧生。

Mortenson was anxious that his name not be added to the memorial. So was Darsney. They decided to make the trek together back toward civilization, if they could. Lost, reliving the rescue, alone in his thin wool blanket in the hours before dawn, Greg Mortenson struggled to find a comfortable position. At his height, he couldn’t lie flat without his head poking out into the unforgiving air. He had lost thirty pounds during his days on K2, and no matter which way he turned, uncushioned bone seemed to press into the cold rock beneath him. Drifting in and out of consciousness to a groaning soundtrack of the glacier’s mysterious inner machinery, he made his peace with his failure to honor Christa. It was his body that had failed, he decided, not his spirit, and every body had its limits.
摩顿森很担心自己的名字也被刻在上面，达斯尼也一样，因此他们决定一起徒步跋涉重回文明世 界。在山中迷路，勾起了对之前救援过程种种艰辛的回忆，葛瑞格·摩顿森在日出前独自蜷缩在薄羊毛毯内，努力想换个舒服一点的姿势。碍于身长，他没办法平躺下来，否则就会被酷寒的冷风吹到头。在乔戈里峰的日子他掉了十几公斤体重。没有垫子，不管怎么躺，骨头都会压到身躯下的冰冷岩石。一夜辗转反侧。在半睡半醒和冰川深处发出的隆隆声中，他原谅了自己的失败——没能达成纪念克莉丝塔的目标。何况这只是肉体的失败，而不是精神的失败，毕竟每个人都有生理极限。

He, for the first time in his life, had found the absolute limit of his.
他，生平第一次，发现了自己的极限。

CHAPTER 2 THE WRONG SIDE OF THE RIVER
二 河岸迷途

Why ponder thus the future to foresee, and jade thy brain to vain perplexity? Cast off thy care, leave Allah’s plans to him— He formed them all without consulting thee.
—Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat
为何烦恼不可知的未来，
殚精竭虑，心神俱疲？
抛开你的担忧，
将关于未来的事留给安拉——
他在做计划时可从没请教过你。
——奥马尔·哈雅姆《鲁拜集》

Mortenson opened his eyes.
摩顿森睁开眼睛。

The dawn was so calm that he couldn’t make sense of the frantic desire he felt to breathe. He untangled his hands from the blanket’s tight cocoon with nightmarish inefficiency, then flung them toward his head, where it lay, exposed to the elements on a bare slab of rock. His mouth and nose were sculpted shut beneath a smooth mask of ice. Mortenson tore the ice free and took his first deep, satisfying breath. Then he sat up, laughing at himself.
清晨如此平静，他却感觉异常窒息。他艰难地 尝试着，终于把双手从紧裹的毛毯中解放出来，然 后奋力举过头顶——他的头躺在一块光滑的岩板上， 口鼻被一层冰封住了。摩顿森把冰层掰开，深深地、 舒服地吸了第一口气，坐起来，开始傻笑。

He had slept just enough to be thoroughly disoriented. As he stretched and tried to rub some feeling back into the numb spots the rocks had imprinted on him, he took in his surroundings. The peaks were painted in garish, sugary colors—all pinks and violets and baby blues—and the sky, just before sunrise, was windless and clear.
睡得太久，醒来后完全失去了方向感，他伸了个懒腰，驱赶着浑身的僵硬和麻木，一边环顾周围 的环境：群峰色彩纷呈，像是染了糖果的颜色，触 目所及皆是绯红、浓紫和嫩蓝。太阳还没有升起， 碧空如洗，云淡风轻。

The details of his predicament trickled back in along with the circulation in his limbs—still lost, still alone—but Mortenson wasn’t worried. Morning made all the difference.
随着血液开始正常循环，他慢慢回想起目前的 处境。虽然还不清楚方向，虽然还是一个人，但摩顿森不再担心。清晨，让一切变得不同。

High above the Baltoro, a gorak circled hopefully, its large black wings brushing the vista of candied peaks. With hands clawed from the cold, Mortenson jammed his blanket into his small purple pack and tried unsuccessfully to unscrew his half-full water bottle. He stowed it carefully and told himself he’d drink it as soon as his hands thawed. The gorak, seeing Mortenson stir, flapped away down the glacier, seeking another source of breakfast.
一只在巴托罗冰川上空觅食的大老鹰满怀期待 地盘旋着，黑色巨翅在糖果色的山峰上刷出一抹暗影。摩顿森努力用冻僵的手，把毯子塞进小背包， 又试着拧开水壶，却怎么都拧不动。他只好仔细收 好水壶，提醒自己等手一恢复过来就喝水。大老鹰 一见摩顿森还会动，便振翼顺冰川而下，去找其他 食物当早餐了。

Maybe it was however much sleep he’d managed, but Mortenson sensed he was thinking more clearly. Looking back up the valley the way he’d come, he realized if he retraced his steps for a few hours, he couldn’t help running into the trail.
或许是多少睡了一点的关系，摩顿森觉得自己 神清气爽了许多。回头望着一路走下来的河谷，他 想只要沿原路往回走几个小时，就能找到正确的下 山路线。

He set off north, stumbling a bit over boulders, straining just to jump the narrowest of crevasses with his still-numb legs, but he made what he considered acceptable progress. The song floated up out of his childhood as it so often did, keeping pace with his steps. “Yesu ni refiki Yangu, Ah kayee Mbinguni” (“What a friend we have in Jesus, He lives in Heaven”), he sang in Swahili, the language they had used in the plain church building, with its distant view of Kilimanjaro, at services every Sunday. The tune was too ingrained for Mortenson to consider the novelty of this moment—an American, lost in Pakistan, singing a German hymn in Swahili. Instead, among this moonscape of boulders and blue ice, where pebbles he kicked would disappear down crevasses for seconds, before splashing into subterranean rivers, it burned with a nostalgic warmth, a beacon from the country he had once called home.
摩顿森起身往北走，在砾石上蹒跚前行，遇到极窄的裂缝，才拖着依旧僵麻的双腿跳过去。对这样的进度，他已经很满意了。和着攀爬的节奏，一 首儿歌浮现于脑海，那是他小时候边走边哼唱的歌。 他用斯瓦希里语唱了起来："耶稣尼瑞非齐扬古，阿卡耶明宾古尼（耶稣是我们最好的朋友，他住在天 堂）。"斯瓦希里语是他在非洲时每个星期天做礼拜用的语言，那时从教堂里可以远远望见乞力马扎罗雪峰。这首连做梦时都会哼唱的老歌，让他忽略了此番情境的怪异：一个在巴基斯坦迷路的美国人， 用非洲的斯瓦希里语唱着德国的圣歌，而且是在砾石和蓝冰遍布，脚步带起的碎石会在冰缝里下落好几秒，才掉入冰下暗河的地方。这首歌带来了令人怀念的温暖，就像一座灯塔，屹立在记忆中曾被他称做"家"的地方，指引他前行。

An hour passed this way. And then another. Mortenson hauled himself up a steep trail out of the gulch he had been traveling in, dropped to his hands and knees to scramble over a cornice, and stood at the top of a crest just as the rising sun climbed free of the valley walls.
It was as if he’d been shot through the eyes.
The panorama of colossi blinded him.
两个小时之后，摩顿森费力地拖着身体，沿一条陡峭的坡道爬出了峡沟。当他手脚并用翻过雪檐， 站上山顶时，太阳也正好跃出了山谷东侧的岩壁， 眼睛几乎被阳光射盲。

Gasherbrum, Broad Peak, Mitre Peak, Muztagh Tower—these ice-sheathed giants, naked in the embrace of unfiltered sunlight, burned like bonfires.
加舒尔布鲁木峰、布洛阿特峰、米特雷峰、木孜塔格峰,,一重重高耸入云的冰峰，在炫目的朝阳逼射下，全被映成了熊熊燃烧的营火。

Mortenson sat on a boulder and drank from his water bottle until it was empty. But he couldn’t drink in enough of this setting. Wilderness photographer Galen Rowell spent years, before his 2002 death in a plane crash, trying to capture the transcendent beauty of these mountains that escort the Baltoro down to lower ground. His images startle, but Rowell always felt they failed compared to the experience of simply standing there, dwarfed by the spectacle of what he considered the most beautiful place on earth, a place he dubbed “the throne room of the mountain gods.”
摩顿森坐在大石头上，一口气喝光了壶里的水， 眼前壮观瑰丽的景色让他目眩神迷。野外摄影师盖 伦·罗威尔在2002 年因飞机坠毁丧生前，曾花了好几年的时间，捕捉巴托罗冰川周围群山的卓绝之美。虽然照片已美得惊人，罗威尔却总觉得跟亲眼所见相比，他的照片全都一无是处。他说这里是地球上最美的地方，堪称"山神的圣殿"。

Though Mortenson had already been there for months, he drank in the drama of these peaks like he’d never seen them before. “In a way, I never had,” he explains. “All summer, I’d looked at these mountains as goals, totally focused on the biggest one, K2. I’d thought about their elevation and the technical challenges they presented to me as a climber. But that morning,” he says, “for the first time, I simply saw them. It was overwhelming.”
尽管摩顿森已经在山上待了好几个月，阅过诸 多景色，此刻他却心醉于这卓绝美景，仿佛从未见 过它们。"从某种意义上来说，我的确是没看过。" 他解释道，"整个夏天，这些山对我来说都是攀登的目标，尤其是乔戈里峰——最大的目标。我只想到它们的高度，以及攀登会遇到的技术挑战，直到那天清晨，我第一次真正'看见'那些山峰。太震撼了。”

He walked on. Maybe it was the architectural perfection of the mountains—the broad set-backs and buttresses of maroon and ochre granite that built, with symphonic intensity, toward the lone soaring finale of their peaks—but despite his weakened state, his lack of food and warm clothing, his poor odds of surviving if he didn’t find some of both sometime soon, Mortenson felt strangely content. He filled his water bottle from a fast-running trickle of glacial meltwater and winced from the cold as he drank. Food won’t be a problem for days, he told himself, but you must remember to drink.
摩顿森继续往前走。也许是因为山峰太完美了——褐红和土黄的花岗岩绵延构成宽广的岩壁，宛如交响乐的旋律，随山势的攀升而渐渐收敛，最后终结于峰顶拔尖处——所以，尽管身体相当虚弱，再不快点找到食物和保暖衣物，存活几率就会越来越渺茫，他却异常满足。摩顿森将涓涓流下的雪水装进水壶，喝一口下去冰得龇牙咧嘴。他深知，几天不吃不成问题，但一定得喝水。

Toward late morning, he heard the faintest tinkling of bells and tacked toward them to the west. A donkey caravan. He searched for the stone cairns that marked the main route down the Baltoro, but found only rock strewn in its most random arrangements. Over a sharp lip of lateral moraine, the debris band that forms at the edge of a glacier, he was suddenly face to face with a five-thousand-foot wall blocking any hope of further progress. He realized he must have passed over the trail without noticing it, so returned the way he came, forcing himself to look down for signs, not up at the mesmerization of the peaks. After thirty minutes, he spotted a cigarette butt, then a cairn. He walked down the still indistinct trail toward bells that he could hear more clearly now.
时近中午，摩顿森隐约听见叮当的铃声，一路 西去。是运送物资的驴队！他急忙四处寻找标记道 路的石堆界标，可满眼只有散乱的石块。爬过冰川 侧碛锐利的边缘，面前赫然出现一道一千五百米高、完全不可能攀越的岩壁，他意识到自己错过了正确路线。摩顿森再度原路返回。这一次他强迫自己专心找路，不再抬头看那些摄人心魄的山峰。三十分钟后，他发现了一根烟蒂，然后是石堆界标。沿着依旧难以辨识的路往下走，铃声越来越清晰，却依然不见驴队的影子。

He couldn’t spot the caravan. But, finally, a mile or more distant, he made out a man’s form, standing on a boulder that overhung the glacier, silhouetted against the sky.
Mortenson shouted, but his voice wouldn’t carry that far. The man vanished for a few moments, then reappeared on a boulder a hundred yards closer. Mortenson bellowed with as much force as he had in him, and this time, the man turned sharply toward him, then climbed quickly down from his perch and dropped out of sight. Down in the center of the glacier, among a catacomb of boulders, in dusty, stone-colored clothes, Mortenson wasn’t visible, but he could make his voice echo off the rock.
最后，在两公里开外，冰川中突起的圆石上出现一个人影。摩顿森大声喊叫，但他的声音无法传那么远。不一会儿，人影消失了。接着又出现在距离更近些的圆石上。摩顿森使出吃奶的力气放声大吼，那人陡地回头转向他，然后立刻爬下圆石，消失在他的视野中。摩顿森站在冰川中央，置身于墓碑般林立的圆石间，灰色服装满是尘泥，这样的地点、这样的穿着实在难被发现。

He couldn’t manage to run, so trotted, panting, toward the last spot he’d seen the man and shouted every few minutes with a roar that surprised him every time he heard himself produce it. Then, there the man was, standing on the far side of a wide crevasse, with an even wider smile. Dwarfed by Mortenson’s overloaded North Face back?pack, Mouzafer, the porter he had hired to haul him and his gear back down to inhabited regions, searched for the narrowest section of the crevasse, then leaped over it effortlessly, with more than ninety pounds on his back.
摩顿森已经跑不动了，只能气喘吁吁、冲冲撞 撞地走向那人最后一次出现的位置。每隔几分钟他 就放声大喊，声音大得每次都把自己吓一跳。终于，那人出现了，站在一道巨大冰缝的对岸，脸上的笑容仿佛比裂缝还宽。那是穆札佛，他身上还背着摩顿森巨大的背包，衬得他身形越发瘦小。他找到冰缝最窄的地方，背着四十多公斤重的背包轻松跃过来。

“Mr. Gireg, Mr. Gireg,” he shouted, dropping the pack and wrapping Mortenson in a bear hug. “Allah Akbhar! Blessings to Allah you’re alive!”
"吉瑞克先生，吉瑞克先生！"穆札佛大叫着， 扔下背包抱住了摩顿森。像许多高山协作一样，他 发不准"葛瑞格"的音。"安拉乎艾克拜尔（神是伟大 的）！感谢安拉，你还活着！"

Mortenson crouched, awkwardly, crushed almost breathless by the strength and vigor of the man, a foot shorter and two decades older than himself.
摩顿森被他充沛的力气弄得弯腰踉跄，喘不过 气来——穆札佛可是比他足足矮一头，年纪却大上二十岁呢。

Then Mouzafer released him and began slapping Mortenson happily on the back. Whether from the cloud of dust coming off his soiled shalwar or from Mouzafer’s blows, Mortenson began coughing, then doubled over, unable to stop.
穆札佛放开摩顿森，开心地拍着他的背。不知 是被拍下来的尘土呛到，还是穆札佛的手劲儿太大，摩顿森开始咳嗽，咳到整个身子都弯了下去还是停不下来。

“Cha, Mr. Gireg,” Mouzafer prescribed, worriedly assessing Mortenson’s weakened condition. “Cha will give you strength!” Mouzafer led Mortenson to a small cave out of the wind. He tore two handfuls of sagebrush from the bunch he’d strapped to his pack, rummaged through the pockets of the sun-faded, oversized purple Gore-Tex jacket he wore, a castoff from one of the countless expeditions he’d guided through the Baltoro, found a flint and a metal pot, and sat down to prepare tea.
"茶，吉瑞克先生。"穆札佛打量着摩顿森孱弱 的身体，想出了办法。"茶能给你力气！"穆札佛把 摩顿森带到一个风吹不到的小洞穴，扯下两把绑在 背包上的山艾草，又从褪色的、肥大的冲锋衣口袋 里，翻出打火机、小锅和盐，准备煮茶。他在巴托 罗冰川做过几百次向导，连这件冲锋衣也是其中一 次在路上捡到的，他知道这时候该做什么。

Mortenson had first met Mouzafer Ali four hours after leaving K2 with Darsney. The three-mile walk to the base camp of Broad Peak, which had taken only forty-five minutes when they had strolled over earlier in the summer to visit a female member of a Mexican expedition whom Darsney had been trying, all summer, to seduce, had become a four-hour ordeal of stumbling on altitude-spindled legs under weight they couldn’t imagine carrying for more than sixty miles.
摩顿森第一次见到穆札佛·阿里，是跟达斯尼 一起离开乔戈里峰的四个小时后。为了去看达斯尼 追求了整个夏天的墨西哥女登山队员，他们徒步去 了五公里外的布洛阿特峰大本营。原本只要四十五 分钟的路程，他们艰难跋涉了四个小时——他们无 法想象，接下来该怎么背着全副装备徒步一百多公 里出山。

Mouzafer and his friend Yakub had completed their assignment for the Mexican team and were headed home down the Baltoro unladen. They offered to carry Mortenson and Darsney’s heavy packs all the way to Askole for four dollars a day. The Americans had happily agreed and though they were down to their last handful of rupees, planned to present the men with more when they’d made it out of the mountains.
当时，穆札佛和他的朋友雅古刚为墨西哥登山队做完协作，正准备离开巴托罗冰川回家，两人都 没有负重。他们愿意帮摩顿森和达斯尼背包回艾斯 科里村，一天只要四美金。两个美国人高兴地同意 了，虽然手边剩下的卢比不多，两人仍计划着下山 后多给他们一些酬劳。

Mouzafer was a Balti, the mountain people who populated the least hospitable high-altitude valleys in northern Pakistan. The Balti had originally migrated southwest from Tibet, via Ladakh, more than six hundred years ago, and their Buddhism had been scoured away as they traveled over the rocky passes and replaced by a religion more attuned to the severity of their new landscape—Shiite Islam. But they retained their language, an antique form of Tibetan. With their diminutive size, toughness, and supreme ability to thrive at altitudes where few humans choose even to visit, they have physically reminded many mountaineers climbing in Baltistan of their distant cousins to the east, the Sherpa of Nepal. But other qualities of the Balti, a taciturn suspicion of outsiders, along with their unyielding faith, have prevented Westerners from celebrating them in the same fashion as they fetishize the Buddhist Sherpa.
穆札佛是巴尔蒂族人，他们世代居住在巴尔蒂 斯坦——巴基斯坦北部最贫瘠的山区。他们体型瘦 小，却耐力惊人，在人烟稀少的高海拔地区具有卓越的生存能力。