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

them, the indescribable joy of finally being able to kill and die to wash away the
shame that stuck in the throat like a lead ball.
The wounded were taken inside houses whose door opened for them
where doctors, nurses and volunteers took care of them, and to Rsif Mosque when
they died. The fissured walls echoed and intensified screams of women and
children and the exultant clamor of the fighters when they managed to deliver a
mortal blow to the enemy. In the alleys, hand-to-hand fighting always ended in
the death of one of the adversaries because there was no way to escape or hide.
Blood and mud mixed in nauseating puddles. The bare rock darkened by the wood
smoke of public ovens and baths was marked with stars of dripping blood and
pieces of human flesh.
The knife gleams as the time-honored weapon of brave warriors. The
barber's blade becomes a noble weapon, and the axe is light in expert hands. The
blade flashes above turbaned heads and brown bodies. Blood shoots from
throbbing necks. Anger drowns bitter hearts, killing the enemy before the bullet or
blade can reach him. People of the land and native soldiers kill each other, for or
against the same hidden master, equally pitiful in their vulnerability as colonized
peoples.
The fighting lasted until nightfall. When the regional Commander General
called a cease-fire, the nationalists lost no time. They barely stopped to catch their
breath before wrapping the martyrs' bodies in blankets that had previously been
stashed in the house of the muezzin, and whisking them away to the cemetery.
Tanners had been ordered to carry the dead through a maze of streets to the
tanneries where they infiltrated toward the cemetery. Their rugged trade had made
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