Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood

Unlike Yasmina’s farm harem, where the women seemingly live in freedom around nature, Fatima’s harem in Fez is a place where “nature [does] not exist” (57). Rather, as Fatima says in the opening of the chapter, it has been “replaced” by “floral designs” (57)on wood and tiles, brocades and drapes—all part of the harem’s sense of confinement. The women of the harem are thus particularly eager to attend the yearly picnic at their uncle’s farm, where they hang swings from the trees and roam the woods and fields to gather plants for “beauty treatments” (59). After that day spent in nature, Fatima’s mother always says that “waking up with walls as horizons becomes unbearable” (59).

Fatima explains that there are two ways to escape the harem prison: through the front gate with its guard, or by jumping from the terrace into the neighbors’ property, and then exiting from their door to the street. While Fatima has used this “clandestine” (60) escape route, grown women of the harem like her mother don’t see this as a “viable alternative” (60) to exiting by the gate. Challenging the gatekeeper, Mother believes, ignites the “subversive flame of liberation” (60) and is part of the women’s fight for greater freedom.

The next time Fatima visits Yasmina, she tells her Chama’s story of how harems began and asks Yasmina whether it’s true. Yasmina tells her granddaughter to “relax about this right-and-wrong business,” as most questions don’t have black-or-white answers and instead contain “multiplicities of meanings” (61). Yasmina goes on to uncover another meaning of “harem”: It comes from the word “haram,” meaning “forbidden,” and is the opposite of the “halal,” or “permissible” (61). A harem is not defined by walls, Yasmina says, but can be “carried […] within” (61); it is both a place and a state of mind governed by the rules of its owner. This “law tattooed in the mind,” an “invisible harem” (62), troubles Fatima, and she asks for further explanation.

Yasmina gives the example of a male peasant who happens to see one of the unveiled women at her farm and covers his head to make it clear he’s not looking. The harem, Yasmina explains, is “in the peasant’s head” (62), as the peasant knows of and follows the rule against seeing unveiled women. Yasmina goes on to tell Fatima all spaces have a “qa’ida, or invisible rule” (62). Furthermore, many of these rules are unfair, even “ruthless” (63) toward women. Once women “get smart and start asking” why they don’t make the rules themselves, Yasmina says that they will change the rules and “turn the whole planet upside down” (63).

As the chapter ends, Yasmina advises Fatima not to worry too much about barriers both visible and invisible, and rather focus on “laughter and happiness” (64). Both grandmother and granddaughter look forward to Fatima’s future in a more progressive Morocco, where Fatima will be able to read, learn foreign languages, and live with a new freedom.

Chapter 8 again emphasizes the freer, less conventional atmosphere on Yasmina’s farm harem compared to the harem in Fez. Yasmina and her co-wives, except for city-born Lalla Thor, all do their best to make daily housework exciting. One wife proposes that they wash dishes in the river so that they can swim as well, and Thor is furious that “these peasant women,” with their rural mountain heritage, will “destroy” the house’s “reputation” (68). She even calls on the words of the historian Ibn Khaldun, who wrote six centuries ago that peasants were a “threat” (69) to the refined Islamic culture of city dwellers. When Thor complains to Grandfather, however, the other wives successfully argue that Khaldun is “just a historian” (69), and there is no religious decree, or fatwa, against washing dishes in a river.

Since washing dishes is one of the only chores all women on the farm participate in together, the move to the river is a particularly grand affair. They stand in two rows, some in water up to their waists and only “half-clad” (70), and form an efficient assembly line. Mabrouka, a “swimming star” (70), catches any dishes that manage to float off. Then Krisha, the women’s driver and friend and the “key man” of the dishwashing “operation” (71), carries the very heavy pots and pans back to the horse-drawn cart he’s provided. Krisha also takes the women to the hammam—public baths—twice a month, and the women make a game of jumping out of his cart. As Fatima summarizes in the final sentence of the chapter: “Oh, they were wild on Yasmina’s farm” (72).

In contrast to Yasmina’s farm, where mealtime is unpredictable, at the harem in Fez meals always occur at specific times and places. These inflexible mealtimes are “what Mother hate[s] most about communal life” (75), and she often asks her husband if they can live apart from the harem, saying it’s “not natural to live in a large group” and that the lack of individual choice and freedoms leaves one “miserable” (76). Father commiserates with his wife, but also feels a “duty” (76)to uphold tradition and not abandon his parents, like most of his brothers have already done. In fact, only Father and one brother, Uncle ‘Ali, are left in the harem. Still, Father loves his wife and does whatever he can to make her happy, such as filling a cupboard with her favorite foods so that she can eat separately, as well as joining her in magical “nighttime picnic[s]” (79) on the harem’s terrace.

However, Mother is still discontented, feeling “chok[ed]” (78) by tradition, and she tells Fatima she must “take her revenge” (79) by living “with one hundred percent happiness” (79-80). Mother herself often experiences only five percent happiness, but on rare moments like those night picnics, she reaches 100 percent. Fatima isn’t sure how she can reach such a high goal for an entire life, but “if Mother th[inks] it [is] possible” (81), she’s determined to try.

The author begins the chapter by stating that the women’s entertainments, such as plays and stories told aloud, are often interrupted by the men’s “emotionally charged” (84) discussion of politics—and the bulk of this chapter concerns these political discussions held in the men’s salon. Fatima and Samir are allowed to witness these meetings, Fatima sitting on her father’s lap and Samir on his, while the younger, unmarried men of the harem gather around them. These young men include Samir’s three brothers, Jawad, Chakib, and Zin, who is “considered to be by far the most gifted” (86). Zin is handsome as well as intelligent, and Fatima looks up to him, particularly for his mastery of the French language.

As one of a new generation of Moroccans who will “save the country” (88), Zin leads the Friday procession to the Qaraouiyine Mosque, where important political matters are dealt with under the guise of religious ceremony. At these Friday meetings, members of the city’s five groups of influential men come together. These include the “fellah”—“landowners” (89)—such as Fatima’s father and her uncle, who take great pride in the land they own outside of the city. The other groups are the “ulema”—intellectuals—“sharifs” (88)—“descendants of the Prophet” (88), “tujjar, or merchants” (89), and the largest group, the “craftsmen” (90).

When Father and Uncle ride mules rather than walking to the mosque, they allow Samir and Fatima to come too, even though Father worries about taking a female child to the mosque. Fatima remembers that the younger men, who wear Western clothes, only make one “concession to tradition” by covering their heads, but they do so in a rather “subversive” (91) manner, wearing the felt caps favored by Egyptian nationalists. In this case, however, the hats don’t provoke any conflict, and Fatima ends the chapter by concluding that “tradition and modernity existed harmoniously side by side” (91), both in the men’s outfits and in the salon discussions. While Fatima is too young to understand much of the content, she does grasp the fact that the East and the West, the Arabic and the French, are discussed by multiple generations of men—a meeting of young and old, new and traditional, that takes place without conflict.