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

"Let's not get upset," he intervened. "Let her stay with you for a while,
since she is asking for your hospitality!"
"Do you want my brother to slam his door in my face? Is that the advice of
an uncle? To rebel against her father's will, to make her loving father an object of
pity, or worse, the laughing stock of his peers?"
custom!"
"What's wrong with a young woman coming to visit her aunt? It's our
"Custom or not, she's going straight home!" The thought of this niece with
all her youth exposed like an insult to her own faded charms, living with her for
an indefinite time did not please her at all. She had little confidence in this third
husband, younger than herself, who had come to fill the absence of the first who
had died in the typhoid epidemic, and the second who had left for the Holy Lands
and had never come back, simply sending her divorce papers in the mail.
The uncle sat up straighter, rubbing the back of his hand over his tobacco
stained nose, adjusting his turban and adding, "Now, now, my child, come closer!
You must consider this home as your own and think of me as . . . your father! In
spite of what she says, your aunt is a good woman. She loves you dearly, believe
me. She will go right away to talk to Moulay Larbi. You stay here as long as you
wish, while everyone calms down. Why worry, after all! Such a pretty girl. One
husband lost, ten more to be found! They'll be standing in line in front of your
door. Moulay Ali was not the only man among us," he concluded, rubbing his
hairless belly with a shameless hand.
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