Karima Ahdad

Karima Ahdad is a journalist and writer from El Hoceima, Morocco. Ahdad is the author of two published works – a collection of short stories entitled The Last Hemorrhage of the Dream (2014) and the novel Cactus Girls (2018), from which the story “Tattoos” is excerpted. Cactus Girls was awarded the 2019 Prix Mohamed Zefzaf for the Casablanca region by the Professional Union of Moroccan Editors. Ahdad worked as a digital content editor for TRT Arabic in Istanbul before moving to Paris in summer 2021. Her new novel Hulm turki (Turkish Dream) will be published by al-Markaz al-Thaqafi al-Arabi in the autumn of 2021.

15 September, 2021 • Karima Ahdad

“Tattoos,” an excerpt from Karima Ahdad’s Amazigh-Moroccan novel “Cactus Girls”

In this excerpt from the Amazigh-Moroccan novel "Cactus Girls" by Karima Ahdad, a fierce small-town girl from the Rif named Sonya remembers what it was like growing up under the spell of heroic women. Like the cactus of the title, Ahdad’s women are survivors in a barren landscape, one filled…