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

earth was a docile animal lying at their feet, they learned of liberty unfettered by
discipline.
Then things changed. Tanks climbed the paths that only donkeys and
mules had used until then. Airplanes cut through the sky previously the territory
of only passerine and predatory birds. Frightened goats climbed trees. Children
hid in their mother's skirts.
The mountain people had never had any master but God and a faraway
sultan; they totally rejected the heretic power. Each one took his rifle and went to
battle. They resisted for years, experts in the art of guerrilla warfare. They sprang
up, out of a ditch, from behind a rock, from a riverbed, and took the enemy by
surprise. But other tanks came, puffing up the hillsides, and the struggle became
less and less equal. Each day they received news of the death of a father, and their
only response was to send an adolescent son, grown up in his absence, to replace
him! This was how Sharif learned of his own father's death. He had been crushed
under the treads of a tank. Sharif was a scrawny, fifteen-year-old who seemed to
have no inclination toward bravery. He crouched in his cowardice.
His bad-tempered mother became obstinate. She developed a habit of
taking out her daily frustrations on him. She had a brood of six children, and the
oldest was good for nothing, no help at all. He became her scapegoat. She beat
him every time she got into an argument with a neighbor, whenever one of the
children got sick, when the goat's udders hung like empty water skins, when her
rough dry body yearned for a man.
She followed him, shouting insults–"Son of a bitch, bastard of ill omen,
face of misery!"–and beating him.
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