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

They were children, and they remained so after their marriage, their parents
assuming all the expenses of the young couple.
They abandoned themselves to games of love with the innocence of their
age and managed to give these games a wild frenzy. They wove between
themselves seemingly unbreakable ties and grew very close, deliciously
complementary, like the flower and its scent, the fruit and its nectar. But their
happiness was short-lived, flaming and ephemeral like the fire of woody vines.
A few years after his marriage, having finished his studies, Moulay Ali
was appointed to work with the caliphate of the king in Tetuan, another age-old
city that had much in common with the city of Idris 50 . In Fez, as in Tetuan,
religion conferred nobility and acted as the axis and motor of daily life. However,
their conservatism, their unwillingness to compromise on traditional notions and
their intense regionalism pitted the populations of the two cities one against the
other in a perpetual joust.
Also, Tetuan was on the other side of the Rif Mountains, hundreds of
kilometers from Fez. Especially in the mountains, thieves frequently ambushed
caravans on the hazardous roads that separated the two cities. Terrible stories
were told of men beheaded, women raped and killed, and children sold into
slavery.
"Kenza is not going with you. It is out of the question. She cannot be
exposed to such risks." Thus fell the verdict of Moulay Larbi, Kenza's father, a
50 “Mulay Idris b. 'Abdallah, a descendent of the Prophet, founded the city of Fez
in 789 CE,” according to Richard C. Martin’s Encyclopedia of Islam and the
Muslim World V.2 (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004).
102