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

face is leathery, like a dried fruit. My voice is broken with repeating your name.
You have finally come back and I am ashamed, having forgotten how to love. I no
longer know the language of the senses or lovers' words. We have both had a
precious part of our being amputated. The time for love ran through our fingers,
but love's fire burned our living flesh to the bone. Now we are only ghosts in a
morbid scene, acting out the character of our vanished ego. She smiled, 'Our
vanished ego!'"
With this reminder of the transcendent nature of the soul, her face relaxed,
her eyes drifted in a world of happiness, and the spell wrapped her soul.
Indeed, they had been unimaginably happy. They lived in the perpetual
enchantment of two children amazed by the miracle of love. They had taken
refuge in a room on the terrace to hide their joy from a disapproving household.
"How lewd!" they said about her. "She 'comes' like a whore or a slave!"
Dada, their accomplice, brought them a tray of tea she had decorated with
jasmine flowers. People loved openly in Guinea, her native land.
He rocked her in his arms and in the heat of passion. He promised to be
hers forever, beyond death. She promised with faith and fire. As if, masters of this
world, they would be masters of the next as well.
They gazed at the sky and divided up the stars: "This one is mine. I offer
you that one as proof of my love. I can't stand a sky without stars. It's like a heart
without passion. My heart twinkles like a gold-flecked sky."
"What message do you read in that constellation? What code? What
prediction? What do you see there that I can't see?"
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