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

athes and warms new chicks. So I beg of you, spare him. Pity a poor mother.
Save my dear little one . . . "
In response, the agents pushed the two boys roughly into the Jeep and it
took off, splattering mud.
As for the Benshakrouns, they watched as the head of their family was
taken away, an older man with an emaciated face wreathed in a salt-and-pepper
beard. This was not his first encounter with the agents of the occupier and their
reprisals. Already, at the publication of the famous Berber Decree–the colonial
government wanted to establish a separate judicial law for Berbers, thus creating a
split between the two ethnic groups of the Moroccan population–he had been
deported to the Sahara where he was kept for three long years in such poor
conditions that he returned looking like a skeleton, suffering lifelong amoebic
dysentery. He went without a struggle, wearing the thick wool cloak he had
quickly put on over his long cotton shirt, and did not turn even once for a last look
at his wife and children who swallowed their tears to let him leave in dignity.
The Iraqis, the Tazis, the Benjellouns, all had to witness the departure of a
father, a brother, or a son, pale with anxiety. Choking on their anger, the women
restrained themselves from cursing the tormentors for fear that their loved ones
would suffer the consequences. They trembled with hatred, especially when they
saw Hajj Abdelkader. The soldiers were pushing him in front of them, beating
him with their rifle butts. Stumbling and distraught, he threw teary glances at his
wife who ran after him (a manner of speaking since the poor woman had never
run in her life: a well-born woman does not run) with his medicine bag and some
warm clothing, screaming that he was diabetic and that depriving him of his
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