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

"I'll do that as soon as I get home." She raised her eyes to the attic hidden
in partial shade and said, "Mother is impossible. We don't see her all day. Why
did we even come? She doesn't seem to notice we are here!"
"I wonder, too! She is so taken with her decrepit old cousin. And to think
we left our husbands in houses crawling with slaves, to keep her company in her
grief!"
worrying!"
"Ha ha ha! Dear sister, you are going to make me stay up all night
Suddenly, they saw Atika, the little girl who had moments before been
playing peaceably, grab her cousin Youssef by the hair. The boy began to yell and
fight to get loose from her furious grip.
The two mothers ran to them, and each pulled her child away without
trying to discover the cause of the dispute. Lalla R'kia, ashamed of her daughter's
impetuous character, pinched her at the top of the thigh, calling on those present
to witness her displeasure at having a tomboy for a daughter. Atika was enraged
and took her anger out on the bitter orange, trampling it furiously, splattering her
pretty dress with its juice. Her mother lifted her arms to the heavens, helpless in
the face of this explosion of anger.
Tickled by the scene, amused and proud of her granddaughter's vivacity,
the grandmother returned to her occupations, praying that the child would remain
what she was and not be affected by her mother's dulling influence.
The little girl was like her, independent and free thinking, and she wished
for her to have a great destiny, better than her own.
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