Translating Nouzha Fassi Fihri's La Baroudeuse: A Case Study in ...

"I will have him sleep in 'our' room. There, poetry reaches its climax.
Memories of laugher, kisses, and wild play lay dormant there. There our love has
languished for...for nearly half a century." She tossed her head, laughing at
herself, at her old-fashioned romanticism, at her tragic destiny.
She heard the first cockcrow, then a second. Dogs barked in the distance;
birds awoke in agitated twittering; light filtered into the pastel finery of the
bedroom.
The man beside her was tangled in his sleep, alien to this resurrection of
the world. Straightening her back quickly, ignoring the sharp pain the movement
caused her, Lalla Kenza got up, walked straight to the window, and opened the
two leaves of the shutters. She took hold of a bell hanging on a long silk cord,
threw it over the windowsill and shook it violently. A door opened instantly on
the ground floor, and a black woman with kinky hair came out, followed by a
mulatto girl with indistinct features. They simultaneously lifted their heads toward
their mistress whom they greeted with a grumpy "good morning," and walked
toward the washroom. In addition to Mimoun the porter, they were the only
servants remaining in the household that had once been swarming with male and
female slaves.
Sitting cross-legged on the divan, crowned with the traditional hantuze
headdress, Lalla Kenza reminded Moulay Ali of the young woman he had left,
forty years before. She had done everything in her power to hide her age.
In the morning, she had given directions to the servants, inspected the
bedrooms and salons, and ordered the servants to sweep and wash down the
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