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

"Now he is dead, and I still have the feeling of having been deprived of a
man's presence." It was four in the morning. Neither Moulay Ali nor Lalla Kenza
wanted to sleep. They sent for blankets to cover their knees and settled down in
the living room, sitting on mattresses on the floor. The coals in a brazier crackled
and warmed the small room. Moulay Ali opened the Koran to the Yassine chapter
and began to read.
"Is man not aware that We created him from a little germ? Yet he is
flagrantly contentious. He answers back with arguments, and forgets his own
creation. He asks: 'Who will give life to rotten bones?'"
"'Say: "He who first brought them into being will give them life again: He
has knowledge of every creature."'"
The two maids came and went, attending to small tasks and holding vigil
for the absent deceased. Their silent tears marked the rhythm of the readings of
the holy scriptures.
Lalla Kenza seemed absorbed in the meaning of the Koranic verses, but in
truth her soul was following the spiraling whorls of her thoughts, one moment
held in meditation, and then off again, free of constraint, leaping on the peaks of
the cosmos in a universe she had created for herself where she had taken refuge
each time the social order threatened to capture her in its tentacles.
Nature awoke peacefully, as it did each morning, indifferent and superb,
blooming with new births, turning its back on the dead. The sun did not delay its
appearance. It rose this day on a grieving city that was prepared for further
sacrifices.
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