小练习 8.27

It started out a routine Tuesday morning. Car mechanic Gulfaraz had planned to accompany his nephew to school and then go home.

这是一个寻常的周二早晨。汽车工程师Gulfaraz打算陪他的外甥去上学然后就返家。

They made the journey as they had done for years - on a makeshift cable car that would take them across the steep Allai valley in the northwest of Pakistan. But minutes into their ride, two cables supporting their car snapped. They were trapped in the car with six other passengers, dangling hundreds of metres above the ground, buffeted by gusty winds.

他们一如既往搭上一个临时搭建的缆车，穿过巴基斯坦东北部幽深险峻的Allai谷。但几分钟后，两条固定他们缆车的缆线断了。他们和六名其他旅客一同被困在缆车中，吊在几百米高空，被风吹得摇摇欲坠。

"It felt like we were standing right at the edge of our own graves," Gulfaraz, 20, told BBC Urdu the next day. "We had little to no hope that we could be saved."

“我们仿佛已经站在鬼门关门口了。”第二天，20岁的Gulfaraz对BBC Urdu（印地语）的采访人员说，“我们越来越绝望，感觉自己几乎不可能得救。”

The cable wires snapped at about 07:30 local time (02:30 GMT), but it was not until 14 hours later that all eight people - six teenagers among them - were pulled to safety in a complex operation involving at least four helicopters and a team of zip wire experts. Many of the trapped passengers did not think they would survive.

"I thought it was my last day and I will be no more," one of the rescued boys, Attaullah Shah, told AFP.

"God has granted me a second life," the 15-year-old said.

缆线在当地时间大约07：30的时候绷断，而直到14小时之后，八名乘客——其中有六名青少年——才被全体解救出来。共有至少四驾直升机和一整队溜索专家参与这个复杂的解救行动。大部分被困乘客都以为自己出不来了。

“我以为这是我人生的最后一天，我看不到明天的太阳了。”被救男孩之一，Attaullah Shah告诉AFP。

“神赐予了我第二次生命。”这个15岁孩子说道。

Cable chair lifts are often used for commuting in this area, deep in the mountains of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. For students, the cable cars cut a two-hour road journey through mountainous terrain - from their village homes in Jhangra to school in Batangi - to just five minutes.

It was Gulfaraz who raised the alarm on Tuesday morning. Suspended in the air, he used his mobile phone to inform his family and friends about what had happened. Residents used loudspeakers to alert officials, but it took at least four hours for the first rescue helicopter to arrive.

在Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa省这个深居群山的地区，缆车作为交通手段十分常用。对学生来说，这些缆车能将他们从位居Jhangra村庄里的家到地处Batangi的学校之间长达2小时的颠簸山路缩减到5分钟。

周二早晨，是Gulfaraz发出的警报让他们得了救。尽管被困在空中，但他用手机将自己当前的处境告知了家人和朋友们，而得知此事的居民们则用喇叭引起了政府官方的注意。不过，第一趟前来营救的直升机仍然花了四个小时才抵达现场。

——节选自BBC·Asia