迷失在哥伦比亚丛林的叛军少女战士

Melida was only 9 when guerrilla fighters lured her away with the promise of food as she played on the floor. For the next seven years she was held hostage by the rebels, forced to become a child soldier.

梅里达(Melida)在外面玩耍的时候，被游击队员用吃的诱拐走了。那年她才9岁。接下来的七年里，她被叛军扣押，被迫成了儿童兵。

Her family thought she had died in battle. Then Melida suddenly returned to her village at 16, carrying a pistol and a grenade. Only her grandfather recognized her — from a birthmark on her cheek.

家人觉得她已经在战场上死了。然而16岁的梅里达突然带着手枪和手榴弹回到了家乡的村庄。只有祖父凭着她脖子上的胎记认出了她。

The very next day, the military surrounded her house, called by an informant seeking the bounty on her head.

第二天，军队就包围了她的房子。她被悬赏捉拿，有人为了赏金，叫来了军队。

“I found out my own father had turned me in,” she recalled.

“我发现举报我的就是我的亲生父亲，”她回忆。

Colombia is nearing a peace agreement with the rebels to end a half-century of fighting, one of the longest conflicts in the world.

哥伦比亚的叛军已经同政府战斗了半个世纪，这是世界上持续时间最长的冲突之一。如今，双方正向着一份和平协议靠近。

More than 220,000 people have been killed, leaving a country bitterly divided over what role, if any, former rebels should play in society once they drop their weapons for a new, unarmed life outside the jungle.

战争中有超过22万人遭到杀害，给这个国家带来痛苦的分歧：一旦这些前叛军放下武器，走出丛林，开始新的、非武装的生活，他们能否融入社会？如果能，他们又该扮演怎样的角色？

That includes thousands of rebel fighters who were raised since childhood to carry out armed struggle. Many of them know little else but war.

这涉及成千上万的叛军战士，他们从小就被训练拿起武器战斗，大多数人除了战争之外，其他事情所知甚少。

“There are times when I think about returning to the guerrillas because this life is hard here,” said Melida, now 20, who like other former child soldiers, asked that her last name not be used because she fears reprisals over her links to the rebels.

“有时候，我想过要回游击队去，因为这里的生活太艰难了，”如今已经20岁的梅里达说。和其他儿童兵一样，因为担心与叛军的关系招来报复，她要求不公开自己的姓氏。

She is now caught between two worlds, she says, belonging to neither. “True, we were children waiting for our deaths. But I’m always thinking about returning.”

她说，如今她被卡在两个世界之间，却不属于其中任何一个世界。“没错，我们在那边是随时等待死亡的孩子，但我现在常想回去。”

The rebels, known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, say they don’t recruit children. Yet during a recent visit to a FARC camp by The New York Times, a half-dozen soldiers as young as 15 said they had been recruited by the rebels only months earlier.

叛军名为哥伦比亚革命武装力量(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)，简称FARC，他们说并不招募儿童。然而《纽约时报》最近探访FARC营地时，发现其中有六七个士兵大约在15岁左右，他们说自己是几个月之前才被叛军招募进来的。

In government rehabilitation centers throughout Colombia, minors told similar stories of being spirited away to camps by rebels. Now they face a future for which they are thoroughly unprepared.

在哥伦比亚各地的政府康复中心里，孩子们讲述的经历大同小异，都是被叛军诱拐到军营的。如今他们面临着一个自己全无准备的未来。

Melida said that when her captors came to her house along the river, they drew her attention by saying they had soup in their canoe.

梅里达说，诱拐她的人来到她在河边的家，说他们的独木舟上有汤喝，就这样吸引了她。

The guerrillas brought her up the river until they reached a distant camp. She woke up alongside several other children, each around 10 or 11. Their first lesson was hiding in trenches during bombings by the military.

游击队带着她逆流而上，来到一处偏远的营地。醒来时，她发现身边还有其他几个孩子，大都是10岁到11岁。他们的第一课就是在军方轰炸时躲进壕沟。

Melida’s father, Moises, a traditional healer of the Amazon’s Cubeo group, was away at the time and did not return to their village for another month. He quickly left again to find the girl.

梅里达的父亲莫伊塞斯(Moises)是亚马逊库贝欧(Cubeo)部落的行医者，当时他不在家，接下来的一个月里也没有回村庄。回来后，他很快再次离家去寻找女儿。

Moises went to the guerrilla camp near the village and asked to meet the commander, a tall FARC fighter in fatigues.

莫伊塞斯来到村子附近的游击队营地，要求见指挥官，一个身穿迷彩服的高个子FARC战士。

“I said, ‘I came for my daughter,’ ” Moises recalled. “He said she wasn’t there.”

“我说，‘我来找我女儿，’”莫伊塞斯回忆。“他说她不在那里。”

In the camp, Melida had been renamed Marisol and began her schooling. A Dutch woman who had joined the fighters and spoke broken Spanish taught lessons on the history of communism, the FARC and Darwin’s theory of evolution, something Melida had never learned in her indigenous village.

在营地里，梅里达被重新起名为玛丽索尔(Marisol)，开始了她的学习。一个加入叛军的荷兰女人操着结结巴巴的西班牙语，给他们讲授共产主义与FARC的历史，以及达尔文的进化论，这些都是梅里达从没在家乡的村庄里学过的。

Melida was also learning to make land mines. One “looked like a fish” and was triggered with a tripwire made of string, she said. Another was called the “quiebrapatas,” or the “leg-breaker,” because it maimed rather than killed its victim.

梅里达还学习做地雷。她说，有一种“看上去很像鱼”，由一根线绳做的绊索触发。还有一种地雷名叫“断腿雷”，因为它的目的是导致触雷者肢残，而不是杀死他们。

“I said, ‘I want to go home,’ ” she remembered saying. “But they told me, ‘Once you enter a camp, you cannot leave.’ ”

“我说，‘我想回家’，”她回忆。“但是他们告诉我，‘一进营地，你就别想离开。’”

Years after she was kidnapped, FARC rebels passed through her village and mentioned Melida to her family.

她被诱拐数年后，FARC叛军经过她的村庄，向她的家人提起她。

“They said she had died in an attack,” her father recalled. “After that, I just forgot about her. I thought it was best to forget.”

“他们说她在一场袭击中死了，”她父亲回忆。“后来我就把她忘记了。我觉得最好还是忘记。”

In reality, a commander in his 40s had taken an interest in her. At first, he followed her around the camp. Then one day, when she was 15, he asked her to wash his clothes in his tent.

事实上，一个40多岁的指挥官开始对她感兴趣。起先，他在营地里到处跟着她。后来，她15岁的时候，有一天，他让她到他的帐篷里给他洗衣服。

“Give me a kiss,” she recalled him saying.

“吻我一下，”她记得他这么说。

“I don’t know how,” she said.

“我不知道怎么做，”她说。

“Then I’ll teach you,” the commander said.

“那我来教你，”指挥官说。

She was later given a birth control implant in her arm and the commander forced her into a relationship, she said.

她说，后来她做了皮下埋植避孕，指挥官逼她和他发生了关系。

“Imagine waking up next to someone who was that old when you are that young,” she said.

“想想看，你还那么年轻，每天早晨却要在那么老的人身边醒来，”她说。

At 16, she asked the commander if she could visit her family. She was surprised when he agreed. Carrying the pistol and the grenade, she made her way back home for what was meant to be a short reunion.

16岁那年，她问指挥官能不能回去看看家人。让她吃惊的是，他竟然同意了。于是她带着手枪和手榴弹踏上了回家的路，本来只是想短暂地与家人重聚。

The village was unrecognizable. A warship was now stationed near the dock. The home from which she had been abducted was abandoned.

村庄已经变得认不出来。一艘军舰停靠在码头。她当年遭到诱拐时住的那栋房子如今已被废弃。

“I told the first person I saw that I was Mr. Moises’ daughter, and they said I couldn’t be because that daughter was dead,” she said.

“我告诉见到的第一个人，我是莫伊塞斯先生的女儿。他们说不可能，因为那个女儿已经死了，”她说。

Melida says she does not know why her father turned her in to the military the next day.

梅里达说，她不知道父亲第二天为何向军方告发了她。

“He wanted me not to go back perhaps,” she said. “He wanted the best for me.”

“可能是他希望我不要再回去，”她说。“他觉得这样对我最好。”

But Moises, sitting in his daughter’s living room on a recent afternoon, offered another explanation.

但是前不久，坐在女儿的起居室里接受访谈的莫伊塞斯给出了另一个解释。

“I wanted to buy a motorcycle,” he said. After a moment he added, “They never gave me the reward I was promised.”

“我想买辆摩托车，”他说。过了一会儿他又补了一句，“他们根本没把承诺的报酬付给我。”

The soldiers interrogated Melida at one base after another, she said. What was her real name, they asked? Who were her commanders? Where were the FARC bases?

梅里达被送到一个又一个基地接受审问，她说。他们问，她的真名是什么，她的指挥官都有谁，FARC的营地都在哪里？

After two weeks, Melida was taken to a government rehabilitation center for indigenous youth who had left the FARC. It was on a mountainside in an alien part of the country for Melida, who had never seen the Andes before she was captured.

两个星期后，梅里达被送进政府为离开FARC的土著青年开设的康复中心。它坐落在山坡上，国家的这个部分对于梅里达来说是完全陌生的，她被捕之前从来没有见过安第斯山脉。

The center was home to about 20 other former child soldiers. Daily classes and chores, meant to adjust them to civilian life, were new to her. Other requirements, like another birth control implant, reminded her of the FARC.

中心住着20来个曾经的儿童兵。每天的课程和杂活对她来说是崭新的，这些都是为了让他们适应平民生活。还有些要求让她想起FARC，比如她又做了一次皮下埋植避孕。

War was constantly on Melida’s mind. “When I would get up, I would reach beside me to take my rifle and realize there wasn’t one there,” she said.

战争在梅里达的心头总是萦绕不去。“起床时，我总是在身边摸索自己的来复枪，然后才意识到已经没有枪了，”她说。

Víctor Hugo Ochoa, the center’s director, said Melida arrived angry and often threatened to run away. “It was hard to intervene,” he said. “She formed her own constellation of kids who turned on us.”

中心主管维克多·雨果·奥乔亚(Víctor Hugo Ochoa)说，梅里达刚来时怒气冲冲，经常威胁要逃跑。“要进行干预是很困难的，”他说，“她在孩子们中间建立起一个自己的小团体，和我们对着干。”

At night, Melida began sneaking out of the center with a man named Javier, whose mother was a cook there. He was nine years older than Melida, but the two would go out drinking and partying in a nearby town.

到晚上，梅里达开始和一个名叫哈维尔(Javier)的男人溜出去，他的母亲是中心的厨师。他比梅里达大九岁，两人经常溜出去喝酒，到临近镇上参加派对。

Javier had a bad history with the rebels. In 2004, his brother, a soldier, was killed by a FARC sniper. His family never forgave the guerrillas, a tension at the heart of any peace deal.

哈维尔和叛军有一段仇怨。2004年，他的哥哥，一个军人，被FARC的狙击手打死了。他的家人始终不原谅游击队，这种矛盾成为任何和平协议的核心难题。

Despite this, Melida and Javier realized they were falling in love.

尽管如此，梅里达和哈维尔发现他们相爱了。

“Why did it have to be her?” he said. “From the people who killed my brother?”

“为什么偏偏是她，”他说。“来自那群杀害了我哥哥的人。”

Melida was forming another relationship — with her father, who began visiting to get to know her again.

梅里达还建立起了另一层关系——和她的父亲。他开始经常来探望她，重新了解她。

After turning Melida in, Moises now wanted a role in his daughter’s life. But even communicating was a challenge: Melida had lost some of her fluency in Cubeo, the indigenous language they had spoken when she was a child.

举报了梅里达之后，莫伊塞斯希望能够在女儿的生活中拥有一席之地。但沟通起来非常困难：梅里达已经不能流利地说小时候的当地语言库贝欧语。

“She was just some young lady I didn’t know,” he said.

“她就是一个我完全不认识的姑娘，”他说。

The new ties were changing her, Mr. Ochoa said. She was getting to know her two cousins, María and Leila, themselves former FARC members who had left the center. Javier’s mother, Dora, was teaching Melida to cook and clean, taking on a mother’s role.

新的关系慢慢改变着她，奥乔亚说。她认识了自己两个表姊，玛丽亚(María)和蕾拉(Leila)，她们都是已经离开中心的前FARC成员。哈维尔的妈妈朵拉(Dora)承担起母亲的角色，教梅里达烹饪和清洁。

Dora took Melida’s FARC history in stride. “My daughter is married to a policeman; another is with a soldier,” she said. “Javier is with a ex-guerrilla. The only thing we’re missing in this family is a paramilitary.”

朵拉对梅里达在FARC的那段历史泰然处之。“我女儿嫁给一个警察；另外一个女儿和一个士兵在一起，”她说。“哈维尔和一个前游击队员在一起。现在我们家就缺一个准军事部队成员了。”

One day Melida’s birth control implant failed and she became pregnant.

一天，梅里达的避孕植体失效了。她怀孕了。

Dora pulled Melida aside. “I told her, ‘Now you have something to fight for that’s not the revolution.’ ”

朵拉把梅里达拉到一边。“我告诉她，‘现在你有了可以为之奋斗的东西，不过不是革命。’”

Her daughter, Celeste, was born last year.

她的女儿塞莱斯特(Celeste)去年降生。

The daily tasks of motherhood consumed Melida for weeks. But the anger remained.

几个星期以来，身为人母的每日劳作让梅里达精疲力尽。但她仍旧愤怒。

“She told me she was raised for war, not to care, not to be a lover,” Javier said. “She would tell me, ‘I love you, but understand my life hasn’t been easy.’ ”

“她告诉我，她从小学的是怎么打仗，不是怎么照顾人，也不是怎么做一个爱人，”哈维尔说。“她总说，‘我爱你，但是你要理解我的生活并不容易。’”

Melida’s relationship with her father remains strained. They rarely talk about her life in rebel hands.

梅里达和父亲的关系也一直紧张。他们很少谈起她在叛军手中的生活。

On a recent day, Melida was recovering from a blow to her face. “She started to argue with me and I hit her,” said Moises, looking at the ground.

前不久，梅里达脸上受了伤。“她和我吵，我就打了她，”莫伊塞斯两眼盯着地板说。

Recently, Melida’s cousin Leila, the former FARC member, committed suicide. Melida sometimes travels to visit the unmarked grave.

前段时间，梅里达的表姐，前FARC成员蕾拉自杀身亡。梅里达有时会去探望那座没有墓碑的坟茔。

Dora says Melida is too strong to take her own life. But she worries Melida might return to the guerrillas.

朵拉说，梅里达很坚强，不至于寻短见。但是她担心梅里达会回到游击队去。

“She is a good mother and puts her daughter first,” Dora said. “But she also tells me she is bored and doesn’t like this life. And I tell her: ‘If you want to leave, then leave. But think of the girl. Leave Celeste with me.’ ”

“她是个好母亲，总会把女儿放在第一位，”朵拉说。“但她也告诉我，她觉得无聊，不喜欢这种生活。我告诉她：‘如果你想走那就走吧。但是为你女儿想想。把塞莱斯特留给我。’”