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

narrow stairway and did not stop until she reached the door of the family living
room where her aunt was perched on a ladder in the mezzanine, packing
belongings into one of her trunks. She nearly fell when she saw the young woman
appear looking haggard and disheveled as though she were a vision that had just
jumped out of her own nightmares.
"Kenza! Where did you come from like that, unveiled like a slave or an
infidel? What a scandal! Dear God, help us all."
As she quickly came down the ladder, she nervously glanced at her
husband who was lounging on a mattress on the floor, looking the young woman
up and down with lascivious eyes. He had not seen her without a veil since she
was ten or eleven years old when she had come to stay with them for a few days,
accompanied by her slave. He might not have recognized her if his wife had not
said her name.
Face to face with her niece, she slapped her own thighs and screamed,
"Wretched girl, what are you doing here? You came all the way here over the
rooftops, at the risk of being seen by some perverted neighbor? You exposed
yourself to disgrace and us to criticism in this way? And your mother, can't she
teach her daughter to behave properly? I have always said she was an apathetic,
spineless woman, and she hasn't improved with age . . . and the others, the old
fools, they should have locked you up, a girl like you, shameless and brazen!"
a while?"
Kenza kept her temper and simply said, "Can you let me stay with you for
The uncle sat up on his mattress, in his hurry spilling half the contents of
his tobacco box on the black and white striped blanket covering his heavy legs.
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