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

conjures images, brings them alive and puts them up to screen off a loathsome
present.
She saw him again as a young man, and she was holding his arm. Together
they were crossing a light-filled garden. Expert in the art of mixing perfumes,
nature combined the essence of orange flower, jasmine, carnation and rosemary in
the air, bathing the lovers in waves of sublime scents, intoxicating them to
delirium. Voluptuous sensuality rose in them then like a fire fanned by the breeze.
She remembered when she returned from the bath, her skin still warm and
imbued with scented salves. His hands so beautiful, noble, so divinely alive and
knowing, caressed her in the half-light, sending thousands of shivers through her.
And now his hands seemed as passionate as then, holding the prayer beads
and joined in prayer.
And on his face, she found traces of their long ago joy.
It was like a posthumous message: he had been happy to die in her house,
with his beloved, and to the very end she should be worthy of his confidence in
her. This was no time for tears. She had remained his wife in his soul and
conscience, his only wife, and she should behave like it.
her family.
The other woman, the husband thief, should be excluded forever, she and
Certainly, she would have someone send a telegraph to the North--that
was the right thing to do--but she would do it as late as possible so as not to give
that substitute family time to act.
"You will have the grandest funeral this city has seen in twenty years.
Sandalwood will burn day and night in the house. Orange blossom water will flow
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