我听见“人民”这个词在广播里重复，沙哑、铿锵，像一枚旧铜币在空碗里翻滚。它有时像父亲的鞋印，踩在泥地上，有力却模糊；有时像广场上的喊声，被扩音器拉长，空洞而嘹亮。
每一个说出它的人都像是在投掷一块布，想盖住些什么。可风太大，布被吹走，露出下面沉睡的词语——权利、排斥、代表、遗忘。语言是张桌布，展开时是宴席，折起时是暗语。
I hear the word “people” repeated on the radio—hoarse and sonorous—like an old copper coin spinning in an empty bowl. Sometimes, it’s like my father’s footprints in the mud—firm, yet blurred. Sometimes, it’s like the cries in the square—stretched thin and loud through loudspeakers, hollow but resonant.
Everyone who speaks it seems to be casting a piece of cloth, trying to cover something. But the wind is too strong. The cloth gets blown away, revealing the slumbering words underneath—rights, exclusion, representation, forgetting. Language is a tablecloth: when spread out, it’s a banquet; when folded, it’s a code.