2008年2月15日 星期五

The Med's 'forgotten' island

The Med's 'forgotten' island
By John Pickford
BBC, Gavdos

It is hard to imagine a more spectacular edge of a continent.

真難以想像陸地的邊陲一帶還有這麼壯闊的景色。

On the crest of a 1,000ft (304m) ridge, stupendous cliffs dip to the Libyan Sea. Africa lies 180 miles (289km) to the south, closer than Athens. To the north loom the Cretan mountains.

在千呎山脊的頂峰,巨大的峭壁朝著利比亞海險降。非洲就在南邊180英哩處,比起跟雅典的距離更近。北邊隱隱約約勾勒出的是克里特島的群山。

Sperm whales are sometimes sighted off Gavdos, in what is one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean, and from its southern cliffs you see an endless traffic of container ships and tankers, plying the sea lanes between Suez and Europe.

抹香鯨有時會出現在Gavdos外海,那是地中海最深的部份,從南邊的懸崖望去,川流不息的船隻、油輪往返於蘇伊士運河與歐洲間的航道上。

But Gavdos feels by-passed by this global trade. Homer described it as "a world apart" and 27 centuries on that still seems right.

但Gavdos感到自己被全球貿易所忽視了。荷馬形容Gavdos是個隔離的世界,在兩千七百年後看來依然是對的。

It was the scene, he tells us, of the shipwreck of Odysseus on his way home from Troy.
He was rescued by the alluring goddess of the island, Calypso. She warmed him beside a fire of cedar wood and held him in pampered imprisonment for seven years.

他在奧德賽由特洛伊返鄉途中發生船難的那一幕中告訴我們。奧德賽被島上迷人的女神Calypso救起。女神將他放在燒著香柏木的火堆旁取暖,並且軟禁了他整整七年的時間。

Population decline

And Gavdos, as the myth suggests, does have charm.

Gavdos,如同神話裡所示,的確是那樣的千嬌百媚。

It is a small island about 10 square miles and looks surprisingly green given the harshness of the climate. Summer temperatures of 40C (104F) are a regular occurrence.

她是一座約十哩見方的小島,即使在這樣嚴苛的氣候之下,她看來格外地蓊鬱蒼翠。夏季攝氏40度的高溫是經常的事。

The greenness comes from a carpeting of pine trees and scrub, but beneath it lies a lost world, as abandoned terraces built up by peasant families through centuries of toil revert to wilderness.

覆蓋在上頭的松樹林與灌木叢使得她無比鮮綠,但底下卻靜靜的有著一個失落的世界,那原本由農家世世代代辛勤開墾建築的臺地,被棄置後又再度一片荒蕪。

Gavdos for decades has been haemorrhaging people. The 500 or more on the island at the beginning of the last century has fallen to fewer than 100 today.

Gavdos幾十年來已經有大量的居民出走。上個世紀之初,島上約有五百多位居民,到今天更縮減到不滿100個人。

At the last census in 2001, the biggest village - Kastri - had just 23 residents.

2001年最後一次人口統計,最大的村子Kastri才只有23位居民。

Numbers do swell with an influx of young visitors in July and August, drawn by free camping, nude bathing and unstructured hedonism on the island's beaches. But the kind of organised tourism that has transformed - and in some cases wrecked - other Greek islands has so far passed Gavdos by.

七、八月裡因為湧入的年輕觀光客而使得人數增加,全是衝著宿營免費、裸泳,並且可以恣意在沙灘上享樂而來的。但是成功改善–當中也有蒙受其害其他希臘小島的那些有組織的旅遊業,至今仍就漠視Gravdos.

Vivid procession

What is more remarkable, perhaps, is not the people who have left but the ones who have stayed, and who have kept some kind of economy going that has traces still of the old island life.

或許,更值得去注意的並不是那些已經離去的,而是留在島上的這些人,還有那些繼續維持收入的人,仍舊保有些許島上傳統的生活。

You see this vividly when the ferry turns up. In winter, there is only one a week and it is often delayed by bad weather.

這在渡輪一出現時,就可以很鮮明的領會到。在冬季,每周只有一個航班而且還常常因為天候不佳的關係延期。

The first sign of its approach is an amazing procession of battered, wheezing vehicles assembling on the harbour front. By the time the ferry's docked in the little harbour of Karabe, half the island, it seems, has arrived.

一長排老舊、引擎聲很大的車輛聚集在港口前即是渡輪即將抵達的前兆。當渡輪駛進Karabe的小港口時,就好像已親臨了半座以上的島嶼。

There is the grey-bearded Greek Orthodox priest playfully poking a farmer in the back as he swings a fertiliser bag onto his shoulders. That is the tousle-haired island baker collecting his flour.

正當一位農夫將一袋肥料扛上肩頭時,有個灰白鬍子的希臘東正教教士好玩似地戳了戳他的背。那個頭髮蓬亂的島上麵包師傅正在點收他的麵粉。

There is the young doctor in his white van. Fresh graduates from medical school can do a six-month stint on Gavdos in place of military service.

有個年輕的醫生坐在他白色的小貨車裡。醫學院的畢業生可以在Gavdos有六個月工作期的替代役。

There is the Earth Mother of the island, Evangelina Tsigonakis, whose solitary taverna in Karabe is the one place out of season where you can be sure of finding food, drink and other people.

Evangelina Tsigonakis在島上Karabe開設的唯一一間小酒館Earth Mother是不分時令的,在這裡你一定可以找到食物、酒還有其他的同好。

And that man wheeling a lorry tyre onto the boat is surely the one who passed me the other day on his moped with a shotgun over his shoulder.

還有那個把一只卡車輪胎推上船的,一定是前幾天騎著機車、肩上倚著枝獵槍從我面前經過的男人。

They are a resilient and, on the whole, a cheerful bunch.

大致上,他們是有適應力而且快樂的一群人。

Bombshell

And, in fact, these stalwarts of the island have more reason now to be optimistic than for many a year.

事實上,相較於多年以前,島上這些頑強的人更有理由樂觀的去面對一切。

Two extraordinary developments in the wider political world have combined to put Gavdos on the map in a way that no-one could have predicted.


在更為廣大的政治世界裡,有兩個重要的發展卻先後以沒有人能料想得到的方式讓Gavdos大大的出了名。

First in 1996 during the planning of a Nato exercise south of Crete, Turkey suddenly announced that Gavdos should be kept out of the exercise because it fell into a "grey area" so far as its sovereignty was concerned.

首先是在1996年,在規劃北約組織準備在希臘南部進行軍事演習的過程中,土耳其突然宣布應將Gavdos排除在軍事演習之外,因為就主權而言,她屬於一個灰色地帶。

This bombshell rocked the whole of Greece, but so far the outcome for Gavdos has been benign.

這起突發事件震撼了整個希臘,但至目前為止的結果,對Gavdos一直都是有利的。

The Greek prime minister actually paid a visit, and over the past seven years funds from both the Greek government and the European Union have poured in.

不但希臘的首相竟真的來此地參訪,在這過去的七年之間,來自希臘政府與歐盟的資金也相繼注入。

New arrivals

Gavdos at last has a few metalled roads. It has a reliable electricity supply, an impressive new harbour, a heliport and even an open-air theatre.

Gavdos終於有了幾條碎石鋪路。也有了可靠的供電系統、能給人留下深刻印象的新港口、直升機停機坪,還有一個露天的電影院。

Then in 2002, it was discovered that a leading member of the November 17 terror network - based in Greece - who had just been arrested, had been living on Gavdos more or less openly for years.

接著在2002年,發現一名隸屬於"11月17日"這個恐怖組織最重要的成員,這名以希臘為根據地被逮補的嫌犯已在Gavdos公開地住了差不多有一年的時間。

The islanders were astonished. They had known him as an amiable beekeeper.

島上的居民都感到吃驚。他們只知道他是個和藹可親的養蜂人。

This second bombshell brought more publicity and a new kind of tourist: fashionable Athenians who come in the searing heat of August to sample an exotic curiosity, the forgotten island on their doorstep.

這第二次的突發事件不但讓Gavdos知名度大增,也帶來了不一樣的觀光客: 時尚的雅典人在酷熱的八月來到這裡體驗充滿異國風情的驚奇,那個彷彿在他們門階上,一個被遺忘的島嶼。

The most positive consequence of all this attention must surely be the re-opening of the primary school.

所有這些關注所產生最具建設性的成果無疑是當地一所小學的重新開設。

It now has nine pupils and a new school building in a breathtaking location. There it sits on top of the ridge in the centre of the island, Africa to the south, Europe to the north, sea views all round, on the edge of a continent.

這個現在已經有九名學童的新學校建在一個令人屏息的地方。她座落在島中央山脊的至高處,朝南是非洲,向北則是歐洲,被美麗的海景所環繞,就在陸地的邊上。

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7205519.stm

Published: 2008/01/24 14:41:50 GMT

© BBC MMVIII

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