From "Mimouna"

Mimouna is a very beautiful young woman who lives in a very small hamlet in southern Morocco.
        Her breasts are firm and her eyes are black. She is always smiling and pays no attention to the gabbing of the older women who are beginning to find her too old not to be married.
        This morning she is going to the hammam to join her friends; the bath is far from her house, so she gets up with the cock's crow.
        She lives with Old Rahma, who has taken care of her since she was a little girl.
        Mimouna loves the old woman very much, even if she thinks she has too much of a gift for the gab. Every day the old woman tells her stories . . . She, too, had been very beautiful. She reflects back on a soldier with eyes a bit too light with whom she has spent marvelous nights . . .         "Yes, I know," says Mimouna, "but that was a long time ago."
        "Ya benti, in those days things seemed much simpler. I always did whatever I wanted . . . The women pointed their fingers at me . . . I chose pleasure and I paid for that with a thousand years of loneliness and humiliation, but I didn't care at all . . . I was in love . . . He was handsome . . . He caressed my body with words like honey. . . ."
        Even if Mimouna found the old woman's banter more or less driveling, she often thought of the tales she had told her, and certain nights she, too, had dreams.
        "Well, I am off to the hammam. Do you need anything?"
        "No, I don't need anything; I'm old now . . . Just peace! And I hope Allah will be willing to take in an old woman like me."
        "Of course! Don't worry about it Mouima, My Little Mother, and I hope you have a good day."
        "Yes, but go on, Little One . . . And don't be too late."
        Mimouna is happy to live with this old woman with her rather unusual past. Moreover, the people in the village considered Old Rahma a bad influence on the young woman. Just imagine, a woman who had spent the night in the arms of soldiers . . . Frenchmen to boot.
        But Mimouna paid no attention. She was quite sure that one day a handsome young man would come to elope with her and take her far from the village . . . Near the sea. Mimouna loves water and therefore the sea; she often dreams of it in this dry land. For the time being, the only water awaiting her is that of the bath. She hopes there will be lots of it. Last time, two women had grappled till they drew blood just over who'd get a bit of hot water.
        To arrive at the village, Mimouna had to cover a large tract where olive trees and fig trees happily coexisted.
        There was a place where Mimouna liked to pass. It was when her path took her near the railroad tracks. She knew that it was a place where a gang of boys usually gathered. When she approached the area she pulled her djallaba tighter around her hips to kindle their stares; she was not afraid because the virgins of the village are sacred . . .
        She acted proud as she walked past them. They put their hands on their flies and hurled insults at her for being so beautiful and not a whore . . . She did not look back but continued away from them followed by peals of mocking laughter.
        Boys and girls are thrown together without being allowed to touch each other . . . So at night they dream . . . In the morning, the sheets have wept.
        She thinks of Hayat, Rachida, Zohra, and Zineb, who are no doubt already teasing each other in the warmth of the hammam. Mimouna is happy. She takes a deep breath; she is brimming with youth . . . Silence holds her by the hand . . . Larks fly by . . . It is spring.
        The bath is next to a little mosque painted light green. There are two baths, one for men and one for women. Before entering the women's bath, Mimouna pauses a moment to listen to the laughter of the men. She smiles. She pictures them naked, single sex, in the dark rooms.
        She sighs and cheerfully enters amid cries of infants and the laughs and palavers of effervescent women. Aisha the Masseuse is at the front desk; she is close to fifty. She is always poking fun at the girls.
        "Well then, my pretty one, so you have come to show off your little part? Take good care of it," she says with the smirk of a nasty old woman, "for someday somebody will rub it, and with something besides a scrub glove . . ."
        Mimouna bursts out laughing, but Zineb doesn't care for the remark and replies: "May God curse you, Old Woman, yours is worn out from overuse."
        "Well," quips Aisha, "I wish you all the pleasures of Heaven, for it is better to wear it out than to watch it dry up."
        All of the women laugh together. Aisha cannot be bested when it comes to repartee.
        "Come on," says Zineb to Mimouna, "the others have been inside for a long time."
        Mimouna quickly undresses and makes a bundle of the clothing she has been wearing. Later, she will put on her new white blouse that Old Rahma bought her at the Tuesday market.
        "Stop dawdling! Come!" says Zineb, fed up with Mimouna's slowness. "It seems that Hayat has something to tell us." [. . .]

Translated from the French
by Eric Sellin