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

would get excited about these stories--and I was not excited. This makes it pretty
clear that my "agenda" really was to turn on an English speaking audience (one
that would be as broad and unprofessional as possible) to contemporary Arabic
literature and to what women were writing and saying. I think this needs also to
be put in a "nonliterary" context. That is, I was already sick at the time of people
asking me: (1), oh, is there an Arabic literature? and (2) you mean, Arab women
are allowed to write? yuck. Most upsetting was when white American feminists
would ask these questions. So I felt somewhat militant about it all. At the same
time, I have also always felt strongly about not reducing literary works to
sociological panoramas. I wanted readers first and foremost to feel transported
(and not geographically!) by these works; to feel the literary excellence, to love
the stories. But--back to my story--I wasn't loving the stories. The moment when I
felt I had something--and knew I had to do that collection--was when I read
Radwa Ashur's "Ra'aytu al-nakhl" (the story, in Adab wa-naqd I believe--not her
collection by that name which came out much later). I loved it. This is also why I
was delighted that the title I finally came up with referred to her story. That story
(still my favorite, one of my most favorite short stories in the world) gave me the
shape of a collection. But what would go with it? I gradually found other stories
by relatively new writers. Remember, this wasn't now, when there is wonderful
stuff coming out at Dar Mirit and elsewhere--it was really hard to find these
things. But I also went through a process of worrying about and doubting my own
literary judgement. Was I being fair to these authors I was rejecting? What was
wrong with my reading? A crucial day was when I went, in despair, to Idwar al-
Kharrat, such a wonderfully supportive and fantastic and humorous individual of
whom I am very fond--and I said to him, I recall, Ustadh Idwar, ana khayfa... and
went on to say that I was finding almost nothing and was really starting to doubt
my own soundness as a reader and as presumably a literary scholar. He asked me,
who have you found? I told him, he laughed and said you are totally on the right
track, you have found the right people. That day, as I said, was crucial to the
collection and to my sense of myself as a reader! (and audience).
How strong was your awareness of this audience?
I hope I have answered this, though perhaps not so directly. I can say that if I had
had in mind an audience of students, I might have chosen (and it would have been
a mistake) stories with more obvious closure. I have taught this collection, once,
and students are frustrated with it because it doesn't give them answers--but that is
a good thing.
How would you characterize your attitude toward the original Egyptian and
Arabic audience and cultural context?
This is a tough question because I can never know--I don't think anyone can-exactly
who that audience is or was. But what I do recall is finding out gradually,
through my own digging for stories and then their authors, that the writers I
finally chose felt somewhat alienated from their supposed, "natural" audiences--as
I felt alienated from mine, in the sense of a broadly conceived English-speaking
non-scholarly "intended audience" most of whom, I know, couldn't care less about
Arabic literature. So, there was a sort of bond there. I want to say at this point that
267