It was thegraduation day at Etihad Training Academy, where the national airline of the United Arab Emirates holds a seven-week training course for new flight attendants. Downstairs are the cavernous classrooms where Ms. Marwa Abdel Aziz Fathi and other trainees rehearsed meal service plans in life-size mockups of planes and trained in the swimming pool, where they learned how to evacuate passengers in the event of an emergency landing over water.

阿拉伯聯合大公國國營的阿提哈德航空公司新空服員，在培訓學院接受7周訓練後正在舉行結訓典禮。樓下如洞穴般寬敞的教室，就是法緹等受訓學員在如飛機原型大小的空間排練餐點服務，和在泳池接受逃生訓練的地方，她們在這裡演練萬一緊急降落在水面上如何協助撤走乘客。

"I never in my life thought I'd work abroad,"said Fathi, a 22-year-old from Egypt, who was a university stu-dent in Cairo when she began noticing newspaper advertisements recruiting young Egyptians to work at airlines based in the Persian Gulf. "My family thought I was crazy. But then some families don't let you leave at all.”

「我這輩子從沒想過會到國外工作，家人也以為我八成瘋了；有些家庭根本不讓妳出國，」法緹說。她22歲，來自埃及，看到報上徵埃及年輕人到總部在波斯灣的航空公司工作時，她是開羅一所大學的畢業生。

A decade ago, unmarried Arab women like Fathi, working outside their home countries, were rare. But just as young men from poor Arab na-tions flocked to the oil-rich Persian Gulf states for jobs, more young women are doing so, sociologists say, though no official statistics are kept on how many.

10年前，像法緹這種未婚女性到國外工作的有如鳳毛麟角。社會學家指出，隨著來自窮國的年輕男子紛紛湧入盛產石油的波斯灣國家找頭路，更多年輕女性也跟進，雖然目前還沒有相關的官方統計數字。

Flight attendants have become the public face of the new mobility for some young Arab women, just as they were the face of new freedoms for women in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. They have become a subject of social anxiety and fascina-tion in much the same way.

空服員變成某些阿拉伯年輕婦女新機動性的公眾門面，一如1950和60年代，她們也是美國婦女新自由的門面。在很多方面，她們同樣成為社會焦慮和夢想著迷的話題。

The dormitory here where the Eti-had flight attendants live after training looks much like Abu Dhabi's many 1970s-style office blocks, its windows iridescent like gasoline on a puddle. But there are three security guards on the ground floor, a logbook for sign-ins and strict rules. Anyone who tries to sneak a man back to one of the simply furnished two-bedroom suites that the women share may be dismissed, even deported.

阿提哈德航空公司空服員訓練後在這裡的宿舍，看來和阿布達比1970年代很多辦公大樓神似，窗子上閃閃發光，像水坑裡汽油反光。但底樓有三名警衛，還有簽到簿，門禁森嚴。任何人如想偷偷帶男人回去陳設簡單的兩臥女性套房，可能會被開除，甚至遣送出境。

In the midst of an Islamic revival across the Arab world that is largely being led by young people, gulf states like Abu Dhabi — which offer free-doms and opportunities nearly un-imaginable elsewhere in the Middle East — have become an unlikely place of refuge for some young Arab women. And many say that the ex-perience of living independently and working hard for high salaries has forever changed their ambitions and their beliefs about themselves, though it can also lead to a painful sense of alienation from their home countries and their families.

泰半在年輕人主導下，全阿拉伯世界正面臨伊斯蘭教復興，像阿布達比這些波灣國家所享有的自由和機會，幾乎是中東其他地區所難以想像的，這裡也成為一些年輕阿拉伯婦女不可能的避風港。很多婦女說，獨立生活和辛苦工作賺高薪的經驗，已經永遠改變她們對自己的信念，雖然這也可能導致她們和故國家園產生痛苦的疏離感。

At almost any hour of the day or night, there are a dozen or more young women with identical rolling suitcases waiting in the lobby of their dormitory to be picked up for work on Etihad flights. They wear jaunty little caps with attached gauzy scarves that hint at hijab, the head coverings worn by Muslim women.

任何時刻，不分晝夜，總有十來個甚至更多女性拖著同款拉桿旅行箱，在宿舍大廳等車來接他們到阿提哈德航空公司。

There are exclamations of congrat-ulation and commiseration as the women learn friends' assignments. Most coveted are long-haul routes to places like Toronto and Sydney, Aus-tralia, where layovers may last many days, hotels are comfortable and per diem allowances from the airline to cover food and incidentals are gener-ous. Short-haul flights to places like Khartoum, Sudan, are dreaded: more than four hours of work, followed by refueling, a new load of passengers, an exhausting late-night return flight to Abu Dhabi and the shuttle bus back to the dormitory tower with its vigi-lant guards.

當這些女人知道朋友的飛行路線時，總會發出道賀和同情的呼聲。大家最想飛往多倫多和澳洲雪梨等地的長途路線，通常可以在這裡短暫停留幾天，旅館很舒適，航空公司發給伙食和臨時支出的每天差旅津貼也很大方。但到蘇丹喀土木等地的短程航線就很恐怖了，在工作4個多小時後，等飛機加滿油，上一批新乘客，筋疲力竭地在三更半夜飛回阿布達比，再搭接駁巴士回宿舍大樓，面對隨時提高戒備的警衛。

They watch bootlegged DVDs —"Desperate Housewives," "Sex and the City"—bought on layovers in Bangladesh and Indonesia. It is a hushed, lonely and fluorescent-lighted existence, and it is leavened mostly by nights out dancing. Despite the in-creasing numbers of women moving to the gulf countries, the labor migration patterns of the last 20 years have left the Emirates with a male-female ratio that is more skewed than anywhere else in the world; in the 15-to-64 age group, there are more than 2.7 men for every woman.

她們看盜版DVD，像「慾望師奶」和「慾望城市」，都是在過境孟加拉和印尼時買的。她們過著悄無聲息、孤寂和日光燈照亮的日子，大半要靠晚上外出跳舞放鬆心情。儘管有越來越多女人搬到波斯灣國家，過去20年來勞動人口移動的模式，已經使阿拉伯聯合大公國男女比例，比世界上任何地方都要失衡。在15至64歲年齡層，每2.7個以上男人才有1個女人。

Some young women cope with their new lives away from home by becoming almost nunlike, keeping to themselves and remaining very obser-vant Muslims, while others quickly find themselves in the arms of unsuit-able men. "With the Arabic girls who come to work here, you get two types," an Egyptian woman said. "They're either very closed up and scared and they don't do anything, or else they're not really thinking about flying—they're just here to get their freedom."

有些年輕女性為了因應背井離鄉的新生活，過著幾乎像尼姑般的日子，獨來獨往，仍是十分虔誠的穆斯林；但也有些人很快就遇人不淑。一名埃及婦女說：「到這裡工作的阿拉伯女孩大致分為兩種：她們要嘛很封閉害怕，什麼也不幹；又或者她們根本意不在當空服員，她們只想到這裡找尋自由。」

Many of the young Arab women working in the Persian Gulf take de-light in their status as pioneers, role models for their friends and younger female relatives. Young women brought up in a culture that highly values community, they have learned to see themselves as individuals.

很多到波灣工作的阿拉伯年輕婦女，很高興她們身為開路先鋒的地位，還成為年輕女性親友的角色典範。年輕女性在一個高度重視社會價值的文化中長大，她們學會正視自己是獨立的個體。

（取材自紐約時報）


【詞解】

cavernous 如洞穴般寬敞
mockups 原型
flight attendants 空服員
public face 公眾形象
new mobility 新機動性
rolling suitcases 拉桿旅行箱
hijab 長頭巾
layovers 短暫停留
per diem allowances 每天出差津貼
incidentals 臨時支出的雜費
boo-legged 盜版
fluorescent-lighted 日光燈照亮的
skewed 偏差、失衡
keeping to themselves 獨來獨往