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

the disinherited, the home of the abandoned. People said that kind souls depleted
their fortunes feeding the poor. Wasn't he, too, worthy of their generosity, as a
direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, may his soul rest in eternal peace?
His father had declared that only twenty-five generations separated him from the
prophet. He also said that Moulay Idris, their first ancestor to come to Morocco,
fleeing from the persecution of the Abbassids in the East, had been received like
royalty. He later became the prince of the faithful and founded the first Muslim
state in Morocco. When all was said and done, Idris had been just another
immigrant running away to a friendlier place.
It took him several months to reach the city of Idris. During these months,
he worked as a day laborer, a farm hand, a porter, and a night watchman. When he
couldn't find work, he stole, begged and prostituted himself in the inns where men
and animals slept in the same mud and where merchants fond of tender flesh
practiced their shameful dealings under the pretense of paternal charity.
There were kind people who gave him a place to stay for the night and
others who gave him food and clothes in exchange for small jobs. When a hand
gently stoked his scarred head, he would imagine it was his mother's hand, not the
bitter mother he had left behind in his native village, but a different mother, born
of his painful need for tenderness.
He discovered cities. Seeing the white buildings, hotels hidden in leafy
gardens, opulent villas, squares teeming with a mixed crowd, he thought he had
been projected several centuries into the future, into an imaginary world, so great
was the difference between his rustic village and these large, modern cities.
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