(1) Near us on our street there was a family with a girl my age called Safin

游客2023-10-21  19

问题     (1) Near us on our street there was a family with a girl my age called Safina and two boys similar in age to my brothers, Babar and Basit. We all played cricket on the street or rooftops together, but I knew as we got older the girls would be expected to stay inside. We’d be expected to cook and serve our brothers and fathers.
    (2) While boys and men could roam freely about town, my mother and I could not go out without a male relative to accompany us, even if it was a five-year-old boy! This was the tradition.
    (3) I had decided very early I would not be like that. My father always said, "Malala will be free as a bird." I dreamed of going to the top of Mount Elum like Alexander the Great to touch Jupiter and even beyond the valley. But, as I watched my brothers running across the roof, flying their kites and skilfully flicking the strings back and forth to cut each other’s down, I wondered how free a daughter could ever be.
    (4) I ALWAYS KNEW my father had trouble with words. Sometimes they would get stuck and he would repeat the same syllable over and over like a record caught in a groove as we all waited for the next syllable to suddenly pop out. He said it felt like a wall came down in his throat. M’s, p’s and k’s were all enemies lying in wait. I teased him that one of the reasons he called me Jani was because he found it easier to say than Malala. A stutter was a terrible thing for a man who so loved words and poetry. On each side of the family he had an uncle with the same affliction. But it was almost certainly made worse by his father, whose own voice was a soaring instrument that could make words thunder and dance.
    (5) "Spit it out, son!" he’d roar (咆哮) whenever my father got stuck in the middle of a sentence. My grandfather’s name was Rohul Amin, which means "honest spirit" and is the holy name of the Angel Gabriel. He was so proud of the name that he would introduce himself to people with a famous verse in which his name appears. He was an impatient man at the best of times and would fly into a rage over the smallest thing—like a hen going astray or a cup getting broken. His face would redden and he would throw kettles and pots around. I never knew my grandmother, but my father says she used to joke with my grandfather, "By God, just as you greet us only with a frown, when I die may God give you a wife who never smiles."
    (6) My grandmother was so worried about my father’s stutter that when he was still a young boy she took him to see a holy man. It was a long journey by bus, then an hour’s walk up the hill to where he lived. Her nephew Fazli Hakim had to carry my father on his shoulders. The holy man was called Lewano Pir, Saint of the Mad, because he was said to be able to calm lunatics. When they were taken in to see the Pir, he instructed my father to open his mouth and then spat into it. Then he took some gur, dark molasses (糖浆) made from sugar cane, and rolled it around his mouth to moisten it with spit. He then took out the lump and presented it to my grandmother to give to my father, a little each day. The treatment did not cure the stutter. Actually some people thought it got worse. So when my father was thirteen and told my grandfather he was entering a public speaking competition he was stunned. "How can you? " Rohul Amin asked, laughing. "You take one or two minutes to utter just one sentence."
    (7) "Don’t worry, " replied my father. "You write the speech and I will learn it."
    (8) My grandfather was famous for his speeches. He taught theology in the government high school in the village of Shahpur. He was also an imam at the local mosque. He was a mesmerising speaker. His sermons at Friday prayers were so popular that people would come down from the mountains by donkey or on foot to hear him. (本文选自 I Am Malala) [br] The word "mesmerising" in the last paragraph probably means________.

选项 A、fascinating
B、appalling
C、cunning
D、strict

答案 A

解析 语义题。原文最后一段第四句提到,他是一位mesmerising演讲者。紧接着第五句进一步解释了他是一位什么样的演讲者,指出他每周五祷告会上的布道非常受欢迎,人们会骑驴或徒步下山来聆听。由此可知,mesmerising的意思应与第五句中的popular接近,为褒义词,表示他极富魅力,演讲吸引人。选项A“吸引人的”与原文语义相符,故A为答案。选项B“令人震惊的,可怕的”、C“狡猾的”都是贬义词,与原文不符,故排除;文中没有体现祖父是D“严厉的”,故排除。
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