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

Fassi Fihri's narrative attempts to re-write history and subvert dominant
discourses both of the metropolitan 'center' and the post-colonial 'margin'.
Presenting the history of this colonial period and place from a feminine, insider
perspective, the narrative depicts mothers who help in the insurrection because
they need to break the distorting mirror of the colonizers (131) and a woman
begging the soldiers to spare her son (142). Lalla Kenza is a Muslim woman well
respected in her community, but she disagrees with the traditional, patriarchal
notion of Islamic womanhood and disapproves of her own daughters' submission
to it.
Kenza considérait ses filles auxquelles elle portait un amour nuancé où se
mêlaient tendresse et condescendance. Elle ne pouvait supporter leurs
minauderies, l'affichage qu'elles faisaient de leur pudeur, leurs regards
qu'elles ne levaient jamais sur un homme, leur soumission systématique à
l'ordre établi. "Dans cinq ans, dix ans peut être, se dit-elle, elles ne seront
plus qu'une ombre de leurs époux, des suicidées de la société." Elle ne
concevait pas ainsi le couple, quant à elle. Dieu a dit dans Son Livre
fondateur de la Religion, Code de notre vie sociale: "Elles (les femmes)
sont un vêtement pour vous et vous êtes un vêtement pour elles." Selon
elle, la complémentarité existait dans les deux sens, chacun de l'homme et
de la femme étant une personne à part entière. Il n'était pas dit que l'une
des parties doive chevaucher l'autre et la noyer dans l'anonymat et
l'insignifiance pour atteindre elle-même l'accomplissement. (65-66)
Kenza contemplated her girls for whom she felt a mixture of reserved
tenderness and condescension. She could not stand their simpering display
of modesty, the gaze they never lifted to look at a man, or their systematic
submission to the established order. "In five years, maybe ten," she mused,
"they will be nothing more than the shadow of their husbands, suicidal
sacrifices to society." This was not her idea of a couple. In His Book, the
foundation of Islam and the code of social life, God said, "They (women)
are a garment for you, and you are a garment for them." As she understood
it, this was a two-way relationship, each man and woman being a whole
individual. It was not said that one person should drown another in
anonymity and insignificance in order to attain selfhood. 4
4 Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.
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