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

guard seemed frozen in their uniforms, motionless, bolt upright or squatting.
Moulay Ali and his companion slipped by and crossed the tannery to reach the
river. They followed the wall that hid the river from view but could not eliminate
the putrid odors of this running sore that carried away the sewage of the city.
They went staunchly, stepping over obstacles, running low when the
terrain allowed, inconspicuous in the haunted shadows.
Moulay Ali had recovered a long-forgotten agility. In the excitement of
action, he became again the adolescent with a shaved head who lifted his robe to
his thighs and wrapped his turban around his waist before climbing trees or walls
to pursue a run-away rooster or tease a cat.
However, the effort made his heart miss a beat; he felt a fluttering tug,
which he ignored.
At a bridge, avoiding the large rats that ran from under their feet and
holding their noses against the nauseating odors, they walked through the water to
reach a secret stable door that had been left unlocked for them. They left the
stable through another door leading to the Rsif Mosque.
They had hardly left the stable where a mule lying on the cement floor had
stirred in its sleep, barely disturbed by their passage, when they came face to face
with the brutally tragic reality of heart-rending loss. The dead were lined up side
by side all the way to the entrance of the mosque, up the stairway leading to the
prayer the room, and in the large central hall. Ordinary faces, without particular
marks, distinction, or saintly halo. Simply men who had lived the ups and downs
of life and been blessed with a fine death. Men who had been good and bad,
gentle or brutal, honest or deceitful whose lives had ended on a harmonious note.
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