他們踏上騎行世界之旅，卻被ISIS奪去生命與夢(mèng)想

Asked why they had quit their office jobs and set off on a biking journey around the world, the young American couple offered a simple explanation: They had grown tired of the meetings and teleconferences, of the time sheets and password changes.

當(dāng)被問(wèn)到他們?yōu)槭裁崔o掉了白領(lǐng)工作，踏上自行車周游世界之旅時(shí)，這對(duì)年輕的美國(guó)情侶給出了一個(gè)簡(jiǎn)單的解釋：他們厭倦了開(kāi)會(huì)、電話會(huì)議、時(shí)間表和密碼更改。

“There’s magic out there, in this great big beautiful world,” wrote Jay Austin who, along with his partner, Lauren Geoghegan, gave his two weeks’ notice last year before shipping his bicycle to Africa.

“在這個(gè)巨大的、美麗的世界里，有一種魔力，”杰伊·奧斯汀(Jay Austin)寫(xiě)道，他和伴侶勞倫·蓋根(Lauren Geoghegan)去年提前兩周申請(qǐng)了離職，然后把他的自行車寄去了非洲。

They were often proved right.

事實(shí)時(shí)常證明他們是正確的。

On Day 319 of their journey, a Kazakh man stopped his truck, said hello and handed them ice cream bars. In a meadow where they had pitched their tent on Day 342, a family showed up with stringed instruments and treated them to an open-air concert. And on Day 359, two pigtailed girls met them at the top of a pass in Kyrgyzstan with a bouquet of flowers.

在他們旅程的第319天，一名哈薩克男子停下卡車，打了個(gè)招呼，遞給了他們雪糕。第342天在他們搭帳篷的草地上，一家人拿著弦樂(lè)器出現(xiàn)，為他們表演了一場(chǎng)露天音樂(lè)會(huì)。第359天，兩個(gè)扎辮子的女孩在吉爾吉斯斯坦一個(gè)山口頂上帶著一束花和他們相遇。

There were hardships, too, including punctured tires, snarling dogs, freezing hail and illness. But for Austin and Geoghegan, both 29, these were far outweighed by moments of human connection.

當(dāng)然也有艱苦，包括輪胎被刺破、狂吠的狗、寒冷冰雹以及疾病。但是對(duì)于同為29歲的奧斯汀和蓋根來(lái)說(shuō)，人與人之間產(chǎn)生聯(lián)系的時(shí)刻遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)蓋過(guò)了這些。

Then, just over a week ago, came Day 369, when the couple was biking in formation with a group of other tourists on a panoramic stretch of road in southwestern Tajikistan. It was there, on July 29, that a carload of men who are believed to have recorded a video pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group spotted them.

然后，就在一周多前的第369天，這對(duì)情侶和其他一群游客一起，在塔吉克斯坦西南部一段風(fēng)景壯美的公路上騎著自行車。7月29日，就在那里，一車被認(rèn)為錄制了宣誓效忠伊斯蘭國(guó)視頻的男人看到了他們。

A grainy cellphone clip recorded by a driver shows what happened next: The men’s Daewoo sedan passes the cyclists and then makes a sharp U-turn. It doubles back and aims directly for the bikers, ramming into them and lurching over their fallen forms. In all, four people were killed: Austin, Geoghegan and cyclists from Switzerland and the Netherlands.

司機(jī)錄制的模糊手機(jī)視頻顯示了接下來(lái)發(fā)生的事情：這群男人的大宇轎車經(jīng)過(guò)了騎自行車的人，然后急轉(zhuǎn)彎。它轉(zhuǎn)了回來(lái)，直接瞄準(zhǔn)自行車手，撞向他們，從他們倒下的身體上碾過(guò)?？偣灿兴娜吮粴ⅲ簥W斯汀、蓋根以及來(lái)自瑞士和荷蘭的自行車手。

Two days later, the Islamic State released a video showing five men it identified as the attackers, sitting before the ISIS flag. They face the camera and make a vow: to kill “disbelievers.”

兩天后，伊斯蘭國(guó)發(fā)布了一段視頻，顯示了坐在ISIS旗幟前的五名被其確認(rèn)為襲擊者的男子。他們面對(duì)鏡頭發(fā)誓：殺死“不信者”。

It was a worldview as diametrically opposed as imaginable to the one Austin and Geoghegan were trying to live by. Throughout their travels, the couple wrote a blog together and shared Instagram posts about the openheartedness they wanted to embody and the acts of kindness reciprocated by strangers.

這是一種與奧斯汀和蓋根試圖履行的信念截然相反的世界觀。在旅程中，這對(duì)情侶一起寫(xiě)了一個(gè)博客，并在Instagram上發(fā)帖分享了他們希望體現(xiàn)的真誠(chéng)，以及陌生人對(duì)他們的善意回報(bào)。

Back in Washington, where the pair met, Austin lived in a tiny house, an experiment in the principles that eventually led him to his journey around the world.

在華盛頓，兩人相識(shí)的地方，奧斯汀住在一棟小房子里，這是一項(xiàng)對(duì)原則的測(cè)驗(yàn)，那些原則最終促使他踏上了環(huán)游世界的旅程。

After earning a master’s degree from Georgetown University, he began working at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Convinced that many of the belongings people accrue are unnecessary, he began adopting a minimalist lifestyle, said his childhood friend Ashley Ozery.

在喬治城大學(xué)(Georgetown University)獲得碩士學(xué)位后，他開(kāi)始在美國(guó)住房和城市發(fā)展部(Department of Housing and Urban Development)工作。他兒時(shí)的朋友阿什莉·奧澤里(Ashley Ozery)說(shuō)，他確信人們積攢的許多財(cái)產(chǎn)都是不必要的，于是開(kāi)始采用極簡(jiǎn)主義的生活方式。

With his own hands, he built a house, nicknamed “The Matchbox,” that was so small — just 140 square feet — that it was profiled on numerous TV shows. To free up space, the walls were constructed with built-in magnets, so that he could store metal objects by sticking them to the paneling, like his spice collection.

他親手建造了一棟房子，綽號(hào)“火柴盒”，它很小——只有140平方英尺——以至于被許多電視節(jié)目介紹過(guò)。為了挪出空間，墻壁里嵌入了磁鐵，這樣他就可以把金屬物品粘在鑲板上，比如他收集的香料。

If one of his goals was to pare down his life to the bare essentials, another was to enlarge his world. Because he had no mortgage weighing him down, his miniature house meant that he could take unpaid leave from his government job and travel the globe.

如果他的目標(biāo)之一是把生活縮減到最基本的程度，另一個(gè)目標(biāo)就是擴(kuò)大他的世界。因?yàn)樗麤](méi)有抵押貸款，所以他的迷你房子意味著他可以從這份政府工作中休無(wú)薪假期，環(huán)游世界。

“At HUD at the end of each year, you could ask for a higher salary or more vacation,” said Ozery. “He always chose more vacation.”

“在住房和城市發(fā)展部，每年年底你可以要求更高的工資或更多的假期，”奧澤里說(shuō)。“他總是選擇更多的假期。”

First, he took a scooter trip around the United States. That was followed by a rail voyage in Europe. Next came a stint in Namibia. Then it was a weekslong trip across India, said Ozery, who became friends with Austin in 1999 at their elementary school in Manalapan, New Jersey.

奧澤里說(shuō)他一開(kāi)始在美國(guó)騎踏板摩托車旅行。隨后在歐洲進(jìn)行了一次鐵路旅行。接下來(lái)是在納米比亞待了一段時(shí)間。接著是一次為期一周的印度之旅。她是1999年在新澤西州麥納拉潘的小學(xué)與奧斯汀成為朋友的。

In 2012, he met Lauren Anne Geoghegan, a native of Southern California, who like him had graduated from Georgetown and was now working in the college’s admissions office.

2012年，奧斯汀遇見(jiàn)了勞倫·安·蓋根，一名南加州本地人，她和他一樣畢業(yè)于喬治城大學(xué)，現(xiàn)在學(xué)校的招生辦公室工作。

“Outside-the-box.” “Challenges me to grow.” “Adventurous.” That was how Geoghegan described Austin to her closest friends, said Kristen Bautz Robinson, who had known her since their first year at Georgetown.

“打破常規(guī)。”“挑戰(zhàn)我，讓我成長(zhǎng)。”“有冒險(xiǎn)精神。”蓋根是這樣向她最親密的朋友描述奧斯汀的，從在喬治城大學(xué)的第一年就認(rèn)識(shí)蓋根的克里斯汀·鮑茲·羅賓遜(Kristen Bautz Robinson)說(shuō)。

Although Geoghegan, too, was a seasoned traveler — she had spent a summer in Beirut learning Arabic and a semester in Madrid becoming fluent in Spanish — the rugged, do-it-yourself journeys that had become Austin’s hallmark were new to her.

雖然蓋根也是一位經(jīng)驗(yàn)豐富的旅行者——她在貝魯特度待了一個(gè)夏天學(xué)習(xí)阿拉伯語(yǔ)，在馬德里度過(guò)的一個(gè)學(xué)期讓她學(xué)會(huì)了一口流利的西班牙語(yǔ)——但奧斯汀特有的粗糙、自己動(dòng)手式的旅行對(duì)她來(lái)說(shuō)很新鮮。

His values began to rub off on her, say her friends. She bought a bike-share day-pass, which turned into an annual membership. Soon she purchased her own bike.

蓋根的朋友說(shuō)，奧斯汀的價(jià)值觀開(kāi)始影響她。她買了一張自行車共享日間通票，然后成了年費(fèi)會(huì)員。又過(guò)了一陣她已經(jīng)買了自己的自行車。

Austin was a vegan. Geoghegan became a vegetarian, said her close friend Amanda Kerrigan. 奧斯汀是個(gè)純素食者。蓋根成為了素食主義者，她的密友阿曼達(dá)·凱利甘(Amanda Kerrigan)說(shuō)。

It was in 2016 that Geoghegan told Kerrigan that she was planning to quit her job and bike around the world. Kerrigan could not suppress a little concern. “I said, ‘This is not the Lauren I know,'” she said, adding: “Jay changed the trajectory of Lauren’s life.”

正是在2016年，蓋根告訴凱利甘，她計(jì)劃辭去工作，騎自行車環(huán)游世界。凱利甘抑制不住一絲擔(dān)憂。“我說(shuō)，‘這不是我認(rèn)識(shí)的勞倫，’”她補(bǔ)充道：“杰伊改變了勞倫的生活軌道。”

The day Geoghegan and Kerrigan said goodbye, the two friends hugged outside Geoghegan’s apartment.

蓋根和凱利甘告別的那天，兩個(gè)朋友在蓋根的公寓外擁抱。

“The minute your instinct tells you something is wrong — leave,” Kerrigan told her. She was concerned for her friend, in part because of how big-hearted she was and in part because she feared that Austin had a higher tolerance for danger than Geoghegan did.

“一旦直覺(jué)告訴你什么地方不對(duì)勁，那就趕緊離開(kāi)，”凱利甘告訴她。她關(guān)心自己的朋友，一是因?yàn)樯w根的慷慨善良，二是因?yàn)?，她?dān)心奧斯汀對(duì)危險(xiǎn)比蓋根更不敏感。

Their journey was a series of tedious, and occasionally grueling, physical tests, punctuated by human kindness.

他們的旅行是一系列對(duì)身體的繁重考驗(yàn)，偶爾也很艱苦，不時(shí)穿插著人性的善意。

But in the course of their travels, their blog posts also noted flashes of cruelty.

但在旅行過(guò)程中，他們的博客文章也偶爾提到了一些殘酷行為。

On one mountain pass, a group of men blocked their path and tried to shove the couple off their bikes.

在一個(gè)山口，一群人擋住他們的路，試圖將這對(duì)戀人從車上推下來(lái)。

And just 50 yards from the Spanish border in bumper-to-bumper traffic, Austin signaled to a driver that he wanted to cut into his lane. The driver let him enter and then — slowly and deliberately — began to run him over, trapping Austin’s bike between the advancing car and the vehicle ahead of them.

在距離西班牙邊境僅有50碼的一處擁堵路段，奧斯汀向一個(gè)司機(jī)打手勢(shì)，表示想并入他的車道。司機(jī)讓他進(jìn)來(lái)了，然后故意在后面慢慢逼近，把奧斯汀的車?yán)г谒能嚭颓懊娴能囕v之間。

Still, by the time they reached that bend in the road in Tajikistan just over a week ago, they had embraced the notion that the world was overwhelmingly good, the dozens of annotated photographs and the thousands of words they left behind show.

不過(guò)，當(dāng)他們?cè)谝粋€(gè)多星期前到達(dá)塔吉克斯坦公路的那個(gè)彎道時(shí)，他們已經(jīng)有了這樣一個(gè)觀念：世界是非常美好的，幾十張帶圖說(shuō)的照片和他們留下的幾千字的文章表明了這一點(diǎn)。

“You read the papers and you’re led to believe that the world is a big, scary place,” Austin wrote. “People, the narrative goes, are not to be trusted. People are bad. People are evil.

“從報(bào)紙上看你會(huì)相信這個(gè)世界是個(gè)又大又可怕的地方，”奧斯汀寫(xiě)道。“那些文章說(shuō)，人們不值得信任。人們很糟糕。人們是邪惡的。”

“I don’t buy it. Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own … By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind.”

“我不相信。邪惡是我們發(fā)明出來(lái)的一種虛構(gòu)的概念，用來(lái)應(yīng)付那些持與我們不同的價(jià)值觀、信仰和觀點(diǎn)的人類的復(fù)雜性……總的來(lái)說(shuō)，人類是善良的。有時(shí)自私，有時(shí)短視，但他們是善良的。他們慷慨、美好而且善良。”

“No greater revelation has come from our journey than this,” he wrote.

“這是我們?cè)诼贸讨蝎@得的最大啟示，”他寫(xiě)道。

In the video released by the Islamic State group after the couple’s death, the men pledging allegiance to the group can be seen sitting on a stone slab, an aquamarine lake partially visible over their left shoulders. It is the kind of panorama that the young couple might have stopped to capture and post on their blog.

這對(duì)情侶去世后，在伊斯蘭國(guó)發(fā)布的視頻中，可以看到那些宣誓效忠該組織的人們坐在一塊石板上，越過(guò)他們的左肩可以遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)地看見(jiàn)一片湛藍(lán)的湖泊。這對(duì)年輕情侶本可能會(huì)停下來(lái)給它拍照，并且發(fā)布在他們的博客上。

But in the clip, when these men point to the scenery around them, they vow to slaughter the “disbelievers” who have overrun their land.

但這段視頻中，這些人指點(diǎn)著周圍的風(fēng)景，發(fā)誓要?dú)⑺滥切┨ど纤麄兊耐恋氐?ldquo;不信者”。