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

"Our cause is just and our demands are well founded. If it comes to that,
so be it. If hatred, violence, killing and bloodshed are the only language they
understand and the only path to liberty, then may God's will be done!"
Moulay Ali had only listened to the dialogue between the two other men.
He stood up painfully, said good-bye and, followed by Sharif, walked nervously
toward the sanctuary of Moulay Idris in hopes of regaining his peace of mind.
Several ragged beggars leaned and sat against the walls at sanctuary of the
city's patron saint, holding up hands that looked leprous with accumulated misery.
Their sad and worn clothing and the grime encrusted deep in their flesh were all
the more disturbing in contrast to the fine rosette carvings interwoven in the
plaster and wood behind them and over their heads in the narrow corridor leading
to the main door of the sanctuary. Women gathered around the Loufa spring
whose water, it was said, was a cure for sterility. They chattered noisily, all the
while passing around the yellow metal drinking cup, each one slipping it under
her water-marked veil to drink the beneficial water.
Reinvigorated, Moulay Ali winked knowingly at Sharif as he made his
way through these human masses that exhaled the scents of his youth. He
rediscovered the smell of henna, orange flower water, olive oil, and milk soured
on nipples. Also, through these layers of odors rose the sensuality of times long
ago, when he delighted in this feminine folk who ruled the kitchens that rang with
high-pitched voices and the women's bath that exuded troubling scents. He, like
all boys under the age of eleven, was taken to the women's bath. His nanny would
wrap him up in a towel, carry him in her arms, and put him down in the farthest
corner of a room. There, in the conspiring shadows, she would energetically scrub
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