迟到的吻 · 主播黄茜 NO.106

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本期主播： 黄茜
本期文章：A Kiss Deferred by Civil War
文章作者：Nikolina Kulidzan
录制地点： 西班牙 巴塞罗那

最近的欧洲，新闻大多是关于中东北非的难民潮。这些人因战争被迫背井离乡，颠沛流离，通过各种渠道涌入欧洲，只为抵达他们梦想中没有硝烟的净土。

今天的节目里，我们不论和平，不呼唤人道，只想和大家分享一段在乱离中萌芽的真实爱情故事，希望能带给你们一份纯真的感动。

故事的女主角叫Nikolina，塞尔维亚人（Serbian），男主角叫Marco, 克罗地亚人（Croatian）。初恋的美好在他们年仅12岁的青涩年华里蔓延。好景不长，两个种族间的内战爆发，他们随着各自的家人，被迫分离，失去联系。16年后，已经在美国定居的Nikolina收到了一份来自的邮件:“If you are Nikolina from Mostar then I have been your boyfriend since 5th grade. Please get back to me, so we can figure out what to do.”他们的感情是否会失而复得？

听黄茜为你讲Nikolina和Marco的故事。

A Kiss Deferred by Civil War
By Nikolina Kulidzan

Many saw it coming. Ethnically charged graffiti（涂鸦） began appearing on buildings around town. The local newspapers published the locations of bomb shelters.（防空洞）

In my 12-year-old mind, our town of Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina（波黑）, was too beautiful and the people too good to one another for there to be a civil war here. Besides, that spring was promising to be the greatest time of my life: I was happily in love for the first time.

I had noticed Marko at school and was attracted to his mischievous eyes and playful smile. One afternoon, I spotted him coming down the hill on his skateboard. He stopped just short of running into me. We just stood there and smiled. But that’s all it took to seal the deal of our mutual affection, and we became inseparable.

Marko was Croatian（克罗地亚人）and I was Serbian（塞尔维亚人）. Soon, our ethnic groups would find themselves on the opposing sides of a bloody civil war. But for the moment, none of that mattered.

What mattered was how good it felt to be acknowledged by him, to be let in on his secrets and jokes, to share friends and enemies, to take on the same adventures.

The day the war started, Marko and I walked home together. We had been released from school a few hours early without explanation. As we walked, he told me that if war broke out, his family would go to Split, Croatia（克罗地亚）. He asked what my family would do.

I had no idea. The possibility had never been discussed in my home; right then my plans extended only to 6 p.m., when I was supposed to meet him and the rest of our friends. With that agreement, we parted.

Less than a half-hour later, as I was walking upstairs to our apartment, an explosion（爆炸） shook the building. The blast threw me down the stairs, and the building went dark. All I knew then was that I had to find my family.

I got up and stumbled outside. People were rushing every which way. Some were crying, some bleeding. I ran to my aunt’s place, where my mother was. She took me into her arms and held me for a long time.

“Everything will be fine,” she kept saying.

I wasn’t convinced. My plans for the evening were obviously ruined and I suspected it would be a while before I would be free to plan anything else. I had to get in touch with Marko. I had to tell him I was O.K.

Maybe that whatever was happening outside had no bearing on us. No ethnic squabble or civil war could ruin what we had. At the very least, I thought he would ask if I was O.K.

He didn’t. He barely said a word. We exchanged a few awkward syllables, and then I hung up.

The next day we learned that my childhood home was gone, destroyed in the blast. Two weeks later, my brother, cousins and I were sent to another town.

We settled in Belgrade, Serbia（塞尔维亚）. Whenever I opened my mouth to speak at a store or on a bus, I saw people labeling me as a refugee.

The few times I traveled back to my hometown after the war, I didn’t dare look Marko up. Most of all, though, I feared that nothing would have remained of the bright-eyed boy who followed me home from school on a skateboard, chased me down the spiraling stairwells and poured baking soda into a bottle of Coke to impress me.

So I filed my Marko memories away.

Then one morning, 16 years after fleeing my hometown, I opened my email at home in San Jose, Calif.（圣何塞 加州）, to find Marko’s name in the inbox. His message read, “If you are Nikolina from Mostar then I have been your boyfriend since 5th grade. Please get back to me, so we can figure out what to do.”

Those two lines were all it took to dispel my fears. Marko was still the playful boy I had loved.

We spent the next few weeks emailing feverishly, telling each other everything we remembered of our childhood romance.

He also told me how much he had obsessed over wanting to kiss me. There was one entire event in his apartment he didn’t recall because, after having failed to kiss me, he probably repressed the memory altogether. He also told me that for years he had beaten himself up for not saying more when I called.

It was a couple of years before I could get back to Mostar. When I did, Marko and I met at the usual spot, at the bottom of the hill where he first approached me on his skateboard.

We were strangers. Yet we understood something about each other that no one else did or could. Like the first time, we stood for a long while just smiling.

He led the way from our schoolyard to the Old Town where the 400-year-old Ottoman bridge had been blown to smithereens during the war. From the rooftop terrace, we had the perfect view of the illuminated bridge in all its reassembled glory.

Like the bridge, our lives had been shattered and then put back together. We were still gathering pieces, only now we had one fewer piece to look for.

With a few sips of wine left in our glasses, Marko and I touched hands, leaned in and kissed. For that moment, it was as if nothing had been lost.

主播介绍：
为你读英语美文的主播-黄茜，本科的专业其实是西班牙语，她的母校是许多播音主持同学梦想的地方-中国传媒大学。毕业以后，黄茜和永清成为同事。一年以后，黄茜来到西班牙，继续深造，现在是一枚传媒学在读博士哟。如果说女博士是另一个星球的生物，那你可就错了，不信来看看颜值哦。如果你对西班牙语很感兴趣，欢迎你通过荔枝FM，喜马拉雅订阅黄茜的个人电台-“西国土豆频道”。点击下方的“阅读原文”，听“来自上帝的语言”-西班牙语。


垫乐：
1. 引言部分：The Piano [Life is a song] Yann Tiersen
2. 文章部分：出自韩国战争爱情电影《假如爱有天意》
수와 준하하
主播：黄茜; 制作，发行：永清
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