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

Another used a ladle to fill buckets with oil, clarified butter, or honey. A third
lifted baskets brimming with garlic, onions, potatoes, or flour.
Moulay Ali kept his cousin company. From time to time he went to hear
the news in the street and returned to tell Lalla Kenza of new developments and
neighbors' comments.
Sitting next to her on a straw-filled pouf while the men worked in the
freezing shadows, he told her about the debates among the besieged people, about
their sadness, revolt, and fatalism. He spoke to her about the other cities of
Morocco that were also besieged: Meknes, Rabat and Salé. He told her of the
extreme poverty of the Moroccan people, the misery of the lower classes, the
desolation of the countryside, the sickness, famine, and exploding population. He
grieved over the ships taking agricultural products away to Europe while the
people died of starvation. He compared conditions in Morocco to the
modernization and development of other countries he had visited in the West and
East. He spoke of an anemic Morocco, whose people were kept on a leash and
remained confined in their old theories while a new world was emerging thanks to
revolutionary technology. He described to her the Maghreb countries united in
misfortune. In Tunisia, the local French and Tunisian governments were at odds,
and the country had become a political arena and a battlefield. In Libya, the
Italian population had been evacuated for the same reason. The regions of
Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were ruled by Great Britain while the Fezzan region
was under French control. Algeria was the country the most marked by colonial
domination. It was divided into three French provinces and its economy was
oriented toward France to the detriment of impoverished Algerians who had been
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