Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood

Children like Fatima witness the harems’ older residents engaging in “illegal activity” (175) on the terrace: smoking cigarettes, chewing gum, and in the case of the harem youth, “exchang[ing] love glances” (176) with the neighbors. A love glance, Fatima explains, is looking at a male with “eyelids half closed” (176), as though you were nearly asleep. Chama’s skill with love glances has already earned her proposals of marriage, and Malika, who is only two years older than Fatima but already attracting male attention, offers to teach Fatima the love glance in exchange for Fatima’s cookies and other treats. From Malika and the harems’ other women, Fatima learns there are two steps to finding love: one is performing “magic” by burning a candle and chanting, and another is the “complicated process” or “mak[ing] [one’s] self beautiful” (178). For Fatima, this includes oiling her hair and applying henna, then washing at the hammam, or communal bath.

Fatima returns to the subject of the forbidden chewing gum, saying that Cousin Chama gives her gum in return for retrieving letters from her friend, Wassila Bennis. These letters are truly written by Wassila’s brother, Chadli, who has fallen for Chama. Father disapproves of the Bennises because Mrs. Bennis is “a Tunisian of Turkish descent,” and with her Western habits, is “extremely dangerous” (179-180). What most worries Father and the other men is the fact that Mrs. Bennis shifts between two cultures, wearing traditional clothing in the old city but going unveiled in the Ville Nouvelle, and thus has no respect for “the sacred boundary” (180). The women, on the other hand, consider “the thought of switching codes and languages,” as Mrs. Bennis does, to be “spellbinding” (180).

In fact, the author explains, Father’s concern about the infiltration of Western culture goes beyond Mrs. Bennis: he considers gum and cigarettes “worse than the French and Spanish bullets” (181), since these Western indulgences will lead Muslims to neglect their own culture and traditions. Since only adult men can officially buy goods and handle money, cigarettes and gum are rare, valuable contraband for the rest of the harem.

The chapter ends with Fatima’s Mother’s theory on why cigarettes and gum are forbidden: allowing these items would also enable women to make their own choices, “unregulated by either tradition or authority” (187). Chewing gum, Mother says, is a “revolutionary gesture” (187) that threatens men’s power over women, and thus men do their best to suppress it.

The author begins by stating men aren’t “officially” permitted on the harem’s terrace—because people can easily jump and climb from house to house via the terraces, and a male presence would lead to dangerous “contact between the sexes” (189). Unofficially, this contact does occur. Unmarried adolescents both male and female spend evenings on the terrace, and particularly between the neighboring Mernissi and Bennis families, “sinful lust float[s] all around” (190).

At school, Lalla Tam teaches the students about puberty and women’s “haq ach-har” (190), or period. When Fatima asks her mother about the subject, Mother is dismayed to realize “time [is] flying by” and “her first daughter [is] growing fast” (191). Fatima does not tell her mother that she wants to become a “ghazala”—a “gazelle-like femme fatale” through the use of magical rituals called “shour” (191), which she’s adopted from Chama’s spell books. Fatima has been assisting the older women in their shour magic for years, and she’s begun to pay attention to astronomy and wonders at the fact “a little nothing like [her]self could weave spells around those wonderful astral bodies” (193). Fatima particularly hopes the moon can make her breasts grow, as Cousin Malika’s have begun to.

Fatima also wants to “enchant Samir,” although her rituals actually have the opposite effect, as Samir thinks shour is “utter nonsense” (194). The harem’s men agree with Samir, and even some women think the spells are sinful—yet these rituals don’t “endanger the harem” (196) like the nationalists’ support for women’s education does.

The chapter’s focus shifts to education as Fatima describes how religious leaders, along with King Mohammed V, urge the foundation of schools for young women. Mother wants Fatima to stop attending her Koran school in favor of a “real one” (196), a significant change that requires a family council meeting. In a nationalist school, Fatima will learn mathematics and languages, and even do “gymnastics in shorts” (197)—quite a break with Islamic tradition. Uncle Tazi, Fatima’s mother’s brother, attends the meeting even though he’s not a part of the harem, so Mother has enough support to convince the others that Fatima should switch schools.

The next Monday, Fatima and her ten cousins all begin classes at their new school, called Moulay Brahim Kettani, which provides exciting new freedoms for Fatima. In contrast to the strict Koran school with its focus on memorization, Fatima’s new school teaches her many different subjects and provides ample play breaks as well. Fatima loves her new school so much that she excels and “soon be[comes] intelligent” (199). Yet while Fatima thrives, things are “going badly for Mother” (200). She sees other women, including her own daughter, experience new freedoms she cannot share—and thus harem life becomes “more unbearable for her than ever” (200). Mother hopes to attend literacy classes, but the family council denies this request. In the end, all Mother can do is encourage Fatima to grow up and “transform this world” (201) that has caused her so much suffering.

Fatima begins the chapter by describing how her female mentors have taught her the importance of having a strong focus. Her mother, Chama, and Habiba even believe they can make the harem’s residents grow invisible wings—it’s “only a matter of concentration” (204), they claim. On one particular afternoon, Fatima has the odd feeling that “someone [is] manipulating the growth of wings” (205) in the harem courtyard. She examines her surroundings and sees the women split into two groups working on separate embroidery projects, while also engaging in “a wordless war” (205) between tradition and innovation: Chama and Mother are embroidering the modern subject of a bird spreading its wings, while the grandmothers are completing a traditional pattern. Aunt Habiba is with the older woman only because as a divorced woman, she can’t “openly declare herself a revolutionary” (206).

Chama and Mother are not only depicting a scandalous subject, but also wearing “ostentatious” (206), Western-style hats modeled on Princess Asmahan’s fashions. Lalla Mani goes “on and on” about the importance of “taqlid, tradition,” but Mother replies that she “sacrifice[es] [her]self” for tradition daily, and creative embroidery is one of the few things “which allow [her] to breathe” (207)—and she refuses to sacrifice that as well.

Chama reminds the grandmothers that her embroidery represents Scheherazade’s “The Tale of the Birds and Beasts,” a story about peacocks searching for a better home. Really, Chama says, this tale isn’t “about birds,” but about having the freedom “to move around, to search for better places” (209). During the embroidery sessions, Mother and Chama ask Aunt Habiba to tell the story of the peacocks, and in so doing, they sympathize with her position caught between the modern and traditional camps.

Not only the ideology between the younger and older women’s embroidery, but the technical aspects of it as well, illustrate an “unbridgeable” (209)divide. The grandmothers’ taglidi, or traditional, embroidery, is incredibly complex and time-consuming, with many small stitches, while modern ‘asri techniques are simpler, freer and “meant for personal enjoyment” (209).

On this particular day of embroidery, Fatima focuses not on the conflict between the women, but a sensation of being “content and secure” (215), even though she can’t articulate her feeling. When she describes her thoughts to Chama, Chama announces that Fatima is “becoming mature” (215-216). Chama then begins to make a speech before the other women, bemoaning the confining nature of taqlid and asking: “Can anyone explain why the present is less important than the past?” (217). Mother, sensing that Chama is about to drift into depression, takes over the impromptu performance, joking but ending with a more serious statement: whether a woman chooses tradition or innovation, Mother says, “Your opinion will be counted not” (217).

As Fatima approaches the age of 9 and Chama “declare[s]” her “to be officially mature” (219), Fatima and Samir start to drift apart. Finally, Samir becomes so annoyed by Fatima’s interest in beauty treatments that he demands she “choose between play and beauty” (220). Fatima responds “skin first” (220)—she is determined to be beautiful—and Samir, panicking when it seems he really will lose his closest companion, tries to convince her beauty comes from inside. Fatima feels some “triumph” (221) to realize how much Samir needs her, but still, at the age of 8, she declares: “I will behave like a woman […] [and] my skin and hair have priority over games” (221).

Fatima goes on to describe the complex beauty rituals taking place in the harem courtyard, with three separate “teams” (222) focusing on hair treatments, henna, and skin masks and perfumes. Herbs, plants, and “precious oils” (222) make up these treatments, and the women look “frightful” (223) after applying these strange concoctions. They all believe that the uglier they become before the hammam baths, the “more stunningly beautiful” (223) they will come out. After washing off their treatments in the hammam, the women relax and eat special treats in the hammam courtyard, and then return to the harem to perfume their hair and put on makeup. The entire process, Fatima says, is magical not only because it leaves one “reborn,” but because the women themselves are “the agent[s] of that rebirth” (226), performing rituals that bring out their inner beauty. Aunt Habiba even tells Fatima that “skin is political”—the Muslim religion requires that women cover their skin—and women can “fight back” (226) mby taking care of their bodies.

Fatima is so taken by Aunt Habiba’s viewpoint that she becomes an expert in beauty treatments, learning all she can from the harem’s women. From Chama she learns the recipe for a face mask to lighten freckles; from Aunt Habiba a treatment for dry skin; and from Grandmother Yasmina and Lalla Mani, powerful nourishing masks. In fact, Lalla Mani’s date mask, like so many of the women’s recipes, is a carefully guarded secret, and Mani is “quite disturbed” (229) when Fatima uncovers it. As the chapter ends, Fatima and her mother finally know, like Lalla Mani, how to achieve skin that “glow[s]” (229).

Fatima’s father hates the messy, smelly pre-hammam stage of the women’s beauty rituals, and often urges Fatima’s mother to abstain. However, Mother always responds that she needs this transformation “for psychological reasons”—it makes her “feel reborn” (232). Father even buys Mother expensive French cosmetics with the goal of turning her away from the traditional treatments, but when Mother realizes men have made these modern products in laboratories, she throws them out. She declares she’ll never allow men “to rob [her] of the only things [she] still control[s]—[her] own cosmetics” (233). She will give no one “power over [her] beauty” (233). Still, Mother’s insistence on using her own beauty recipes causes tension with her mother-in-law, as Lalla Mani believes Mother should do what her husband wishes and should stop “terroriz[ing]” (232) him with her elaborate treatments. Father even stays with Lalla Mani on the nights Mother has henna in her hair—but he returns to his wife as soon as the henna is gone.

Fatima goes on to describe the ritual of the hammam itself, the public bath that seems like “a steamy-hot, exotic island” (234). The women wash off their treatments with ghassoul, a clay substance that actually takes entire seasons to make: flowers and herbs must be dried, then kneaded together with clay and dried again, then broken into pieces that can be reconstituted with water. The elaborate process becomes another way for the women to come together in the harem courtyard, taking ownership of their bodies and the rituals they use to beautify themselves. After the ghassoul, in the third chamber of the hammam, the women perform a “purification” (238) cleansing, washing their body parts in the same order and readying themselves for prayer—and at the same time, they try to ensure the children are clean by dumping them with hot and cold water. This unpleasant ending often turns the mostly magical hammam into a “nightmare” (237) for young Fatima.

One day, Samir is no longer allowed in the hammam because he has “a man’s stare” (239). Fatima realizes that both she and Samir are beginning to grow up, and though she already drifted away from him by joining the women’s beauty rituals, she still mourns their separation. She again tries to “defend” her choice, repeating Aunt Habiba’s assertion that “skin is important,” but Samir responds that “men have a different skin” (241). Fatima realizes that she is once again “crossing a threshold” (241)—though she is only 9 years old, she is stepping nearer to adulthood, where the gulf between men and women can no longer be overlooked.

After the discussion with Samir, Fatima seeks comfort with Mina, who tells her she’s entered the age when the “difference” between men and women will begin to dominate her life, and the world will “turn ruthless” (242). Fatima wonders why men and women can’t bridge this gap, and Mina doesn’t answer directly, but responds that this divide keeps men and women from “understand[ing]” each other and leaves both sides “miserable” (242). The separation also splits the two groups into those with power and those without, and Fatima asks how she can tell which side she’s on. In the final sentence of the autobiography, Mina responds: “If you can’t get out, you are on the powerless side” (242). The book ends not with hope for a new, progressive Morocco, but a reminder that as long as women are imprisoned in harems, they will remain “powerless.”