President or Pharaoh?

每日一看(上)---President or Pharaoh? (part 1)

今天來看看TIME總編寫的專題吧，是關於埃及新總統的貼身描寫唷(請原諒我因太晚還沒睡而造成的枯竭文思)

President or Pharaoh?

是總統還是法老？

By Richard Stengel 

Monday, Dec. 10, 2012

Some things don't change. Cairo's Tahrir Square, the cradle of the Arab Spring, still mingles the smells of tear gas and roasting corn; it still feels both dangerous and festive. A year after I was here working on the 2011 Person of the Year, the Protester, there are still rival groups passionately chanting both for and against the regime. But this year the country is led by the first democratically elected leader in Egyptian history and the first elected Islamist leader in the Arab world, Mohamed Morsi.

有些事情並不改變。這裡是孕育阿拉伯之春的，開羅解放廣場(Tahrir Square)；催淚瓦斯的氣味仍與一旁的烤玉米香混在一起，讓人同時感到危險和歡樂。我曾在這裡執行「2011年度風雲人物：抗議者」的採訪計畫，一年後此地仍有反對團體，不斷激進地遊說新政權擁護者和慫恿反對者作亂。但今年，這個國家是由首位經民主方式選出的總統來領導，這可是埃及史上頭一遭；同時，他也是阿拉伯世界首位獲選的伊斯蘭領袖，默罕莫德‧摩爾西(Mohamed Morsi)。

Egypt is an ancient nation but a new democracy, and when TIME sat down with Morsi at the sumptuous presidential palace (an old hotel annexed by now imprisoned former President Hosni Mubarak), he was at pains to say, "We are still learning how to be free." Morsi, who in many ways is an accidental President, is walking a precarious line between the hardcore Islamists who reject the West entirely and the West-friendly secularists who know that Egypt is inextricably tied to the rest of the world.

埃及是個古老的國度，但也是新興的民主政體。當時代雜誌採訪人員與摩爾西並坐於富麗堂皇的總統官邸(在如今被監禁的前總統莫巴拉克(Hosni Mubarak)任內建成，合併一棟舊旅館)時，他憂愁地說：「我們仍在學習如何實現自由」。摩爾西，這位可以算是意外當選的總統，正遊走於埃及兩大勢力的邊緣，不敢向任一方靠攏：一是強硬的保守伊斯蘭教派，徹底抗拒西方文化；另一則是親西、強調宗教與政權分離的世俗主義派，深知埃及與世界脫不了軌、密不可分。