Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood

Fatima’s mother is a woman who believes in equality and freedom for both men and women, and who spends her life chafing against the restrictions of the harem. Mother’s fight to secure new opportunities for Fatima profoundly influences her daughter’s growth, while at the same time, Fatima witnesses and responds to her mother’s own deep unhappiness.

Mother’s belief that “Allah made us all equal,” and inequality of the sexes is thus “anti-Muslim” (9), impacts Fatima from the very day of her birth. Mother does not allow Fatima’s male cousin, born on the same day as Fatima, to receive preferential treatment; thus, Mother emphasizes from Fatima’s earliest years that she must demand equality. A few years later, when the nationalists allow women to go to school, Mother does everything she can to ensure Fatima is allowed to attend. However, Mother’s requests to attend literacy classes for adult women are denied—she is not able to enter a changing, freer world along with her daughter.

Clearly, Mother herself does not have the same opportunities as Fatima, and seeing Mother’s struggles allows young Fatima to understand just how much suffering a lack of freedom can cause. Mother despises the fact that she can’t walk the streets on her own or eat meals by herself at a time of her choosing. She says it’s “not natural” (76) to live with so many other people, and she feels that the many restrictions of the harem and of Islamic tradition are “chok[ing]” (78) her. Mother can only find relief and happiness in brief moments, like secret moonlight picnics with her husband and the beauty rituals that leave her “reborn” (232), and she encourages her daughter to seek much greater fulfillment in her life. She tells Fatima she can find “one hundred percent happiness” (80) if she fights for freedom and equality—and then takes advantage of it by becoming educated and “discover[ing] the world’ (81). Mother’s own lack of opportunities become an impetus for Fatima to lead a full, liberated life, both for herself, and for a mother who was unable to do so.

Fatima’s father, a landowner and a progressive who sides with the Moroccan nationalists, is torn between his modern beliefs and his need to uphold tradition. Father clearly loves his wife and children and makes “peace offering[s]” (79) to please Fatima’s mother, such as smuggling in treats for her outside of harem meals and joining her in nighttime picnics; however, when it comes to larger questions such as moving out of the harem itself, Father is ultimately unwilling to break with the past. In fact, the struggle between Father and Mother—which Fatima witnesses and absorbs—becomes a reflection of the larger theme of tradition versus modernization in 1940s Morocco.

Father “sympathize[es]” (78) with Fatima’s mother’s desire for greater freedom, and he sides with the nationalists who believe in equal rights for women. In his relationship with young Fatima, he seems mostly willing to provide these greater rights: he allows Fatima to sit on his lap during family council meetings, takes her to the mosque, and agrees that she should attend the nationalist school. However, when it comes to his wife, Father refuses to offer her greater freedom. Father bemoans the fact that so many men, both in his family and in Morocco as a whole, are abandoning harem life, and he vows that as long as his mother is alive, he won’t “betray the tradition” (77). Father also disapproves of women who adopt Western culture, like his neighbor Mrs. Bennis, and he won’t allow chewing gum and cigarettes in the harem. While he states that these “poisonous” items will “eras[e] centuries of Arab culture” (181), he is also asserting male control, since only men can choose what to buy and allow into the harem.

Ultimately, while Father may believe in equal rights for men and women on an abstract basis, he does not act on these beliefs in his own harem. Father’s character serves as a microcosm of mid-20th century Morocco, caught between new ideas and old traditions—and this is the world Fatima must navigate throughout the autobiography.

Fatima’s paternal grandmother, Lalla Mani, is a strong voice in favor of tradition and against progressive beliefs throughout Dreams of Trespass. When the harem’s women argue about whether harems are necessary, Lalla Mani claims that if women were set free in the streets, men would be too distracted to work; she insists that a woman’s “place” is “at home” (40). Mani says Fatima’s mother should not attend literacy classes because “it is not in [their] tradition” (200), and she disapproves of anything new or different, such as Mother and Cousin Chama’s innovative embroidery techniques.

Throughout her childhood, Fatima witnesses Mother and Chama arguing and railing against Lalla Mani’s opinions, and Fatima herself regards Mani as a woman to stay away from, one who hates children’s “water splashing” (7) and the noise they make. Lalla Mani symbolizes not just tradition, but tradition that is stifling and oppressive, and that Fatima—like the generation of women before her—will fight to break away from.

Fatima’s aunt Habiba was “cast off” (3) and abandoned for no reason by a husband she loved, and she’s taken refuge in the upper level of the harem, where divorced and widowed women live. These “troubled women” (16), as Fatima’s father calls them, have the least power of any women in the harem: unlike married women such as Mother, Aunt Habiba can’t voice her opinions directly or speak against Lalla Mani. However, Aunt Habiba is such a gifted storyteller that the entire harem turns out to hear her tales, which often involve winged women who “fly away” (22) from the harem, or apparently powerless heroines who always manage to “triumph […] over [their] enemies” (18). Aunt Habiba teaches Fatima an essential lesson: that the intelligent use of words, and particularly storytelling, can give power to those who have none.

Early in the autobiography, Aunt Habiba advises Fatima that if she appears uninterested in whoever is speaking, she can gain an upper hand in the situation. Habiba points out that “if the powerful speaker loses his audience” he is no longer so powerful—rather, the “seemingly subservient, silent listener” (41) is in control. Fatima takes this lesson to heart to learn more about her world, to ask questions and only accept others’ viewpoints when she chooses to do so. At the same time, Habiba herself uses this method to appear “subservient,” while she actually forms her own opinions and tells subversive stories about women finding freedom. Aunt Habiba’s method becomes a clear illustration of the power of words and language—leading to Fatima’s own quest to become a skillful wielder of words.

Aunt Habiba’s stories, Fatima says, allow the harem residents to travel all over the world, to “dream of escape” and “make the frontiers,” or borders, “vanish” (114). Because of Aunt Habiba, Fatima begins to imagine a world outside her harem from a young age, and Habiba teaches Fatima that a woman can be “totally powerless, and still give meaning to her life by dreaming about flight” (154). While storytelling is Habiba’s forte, she also “dreams” of flying through her embroidery of birds with wings outstretched, and through the beauty rituals that allow her, by taking care of her skin, to find a sort of “liberation” (226). All these elements influence Fatima as she comes closer to adulthood, but most of all, Aunt Habiba’s stories make her “long to become […] an expert storyteller” (19) herself. Clearly, Fatima will carry this desire throughout her life, eventually becoming a writer and sharing stories of dreams and transformations with the world.

While Fatima’s aunt Habiba expresses her dreams of liberation through storytelling, Cousin Chama does so through her acting prowess—and like Habiba, Chama also inspires young Fatima to become a teller of tales. Chama, Fatima’s teenage cousin, provides an example of a young woman influenced by feminists from other Islamic countries, who yearns to break through the limitations still placed on Moroccan women.

Cousin Chama is a dramatic woman not only when she’s performing plays for the harem residents, in which she portrays women who seek freedom and independence, like the real-life Princess Asmahan, but also in her everyday life. Chama’s “wildly unpredictable mood swings” (125-126) veer from a passionate desire to communicate, to a deep depression over her own lack of freedom, but one thread is constant: her hope for women’s liberation. For instance, she concocts an elaborate, fanciful story to explain the existence of harems, while conveying the true lesson that in most parts of the modern world, “men’s power is no longer measured by the number of women they can imprison” (45). Chama is inspired by Egyptian and Lebanese feminists who speak out against men’s imprisonment of women, and she stages plays that re-enact feminists’ ability to achieve rights for women “by sheer stubborn will” (130). By bringing these stories to life, Chama inspires Fatima to fight for power and equality as well, and she demonstrates the power of theater to make “the impossible” (110) real.

Fatima dreams that, just like “Chama before me,” she will “enchant” her “audience” and “help them walk in a world where the difference needed no veil” (111). While Fatima ultimately becomes a writer rather than an actress, she is clearly impacted by Chama’s ability to envision and speak out in favor of equality and freedom. In addition to Chama’s acting, Fatima is also inspired by Chama’s beauty rituals, as her initial interest in Chama’s shour, or “charm books” (191), leads her to join the other women in both beautifying their skin, and renewing their inner selves. As a result, Chama helps usher Fatima away from childhood, into a more adult world—as Chama herself says, Fatima is “becoming mature” (215-216).

Fatima’s maternal grandmother Yasmina lives on a farm harem without walls, a place Fatima visits yearly, and where Yasmina and her co-wives seem “wild” (72) to young Fatima. Coming from a rural background in the Atlas Mountains, Yasmina is a rebel and “‘troublemaker’” (31), according to one co-wife. Fatima’s grandmother demonstrates that it’s possible for a woman to question authority and make her own happiness, however limited it might be.

Like Fatima’s mother, Yasmina is adamant in her belief that all Muslims, male and female, rich and poor, are equal—“Allah said so,” she tells Fatima, and she urges her granddaughter “never” to “accept inequality” (26). Yasmina herself fights inequality through subtle rebellions, like naming a duck after her one co-wife who, because she’s from a wealthy background, doesn’t have to participate in chores. Yasmina also finds as many freedoms as she can in her life on the farm harem, particularly taking advantage of the natural world around her. “Nature is woman’s best friend” (55), she states, and the women on the farm ride horses, go swimming, and even turn dishwashing into an adventure in the river. In addition, Yasmina’s childhood in the Atlas Mountains mean she’s not concerned with being proper or following tradition—she convinces the other co-wives to climb trees and have tea in the branches, and she creates an unusual outfit of pants and a shorter caftan to allow her “freedom of movement” (31). Fatima is inspired by Yasmina’s determination to live a free life, and the young girl becomes even more eager to grow up in “a wonderful kingdom where women had rights” (37), as Yasmina promises she will.

While Grandmother Yasmina represents women’s bond with nature and ability to break with convention, Fatima also discovers that Yasmina’s life is not as unrestricted as it first appears. In fact, Yasmina’s situation allows Fatima to understand that harems are not just about physical boundaries, but intangible ones as well. Yasmina suffers because she has to share her husband with eight co-wives, and she misses out on the “wonderful” opportunity to “hug and snuggle” (34) with her husband every night. In addition, despite the lack of walls, Yasmina and her co-wives are still confined to the farm, unable to go where they wish, and Yasmina has never had the opportunity to learn to read. A harem, Yasmina explains, is defined not by walls but by rules and traditions, and it can be “carried […] within” (61). This abstract harem, of course, is much more difficult to break free from than simply climbing over a wall, and Yasmina emphasizes to Fatima that the young girl must do all she can to demand equality. Above all, however, Yasmina wants Fatima to live with “happiness,” as a “modern, educated lady” (64) free from confines both literal and figurative.

Samir is Fatima’s cousin, born on the same day as her—and while a male child would ordinarily be given special treatment, Mother demands both infants receive the same celebration, so that “the neighbors got confused and thought that two baby boys had been born” (9). This early indication that Fatima, unlike previous generations of Islamic women, will be on more equal footing with the opposite sex continues to develop throughout the book. Fatima and Samir become inseparable companions and troublemakers, both trying to understand their changing world. While Samir is the more outwardly rebellious of the two, the one who “stage[s] his mutinies against the grownups” (8) by screaming and fighting, Fatima becomes equally powerful in her own way: as a keen observer of her world, she learns that “words could save a person” (10)—specifically, a woman—and resolves to become a skilled wielder of words. While Samir takes physical action, Fatima becomes an inner rebel.

By the end of the autobiography, when both Fatima and Samir have turned 9, they must drift apart—and their separation represents the larger gulf between the sexes in Islamic Morocco. Fatima wants to participate in beauty rituals with the adult women, so she abandons Samir’s more childish games, and at the same time he is told he must attend the male hammam, or bath, rather than the female one. As another harem resident, Mina, tells Fatima, this separation of boys and girls at the hammam is the beginning of a lifelong split, one that leaves men with the power and women without it, and both sexes unable to “understand” (242) each other. Through her personal relationship with Samir, Fatima comes to understand the larger realities of the gap between the sexes in 1940s Morocco—a situation she will continue to wrestle with throughout her life.

Tamou is one of Grandmother Yasmina’s co-wives, a woman from the Rif people who continued to fight foreign invaders after the rest of Morocco had surrendered. Tamou arrives at Grandfather’s farm harem in 1926, seeking help for her people trapped within a Spanish military zone. Thus, she is considered a “war heroine” (51) rather than an ordinary woman, and she shows Fatima that Islamic women can exist outside of traditional societal molds.

Tamou stays on at the farm harem and marries Fatima’s grandfather, and even when she overcomes her grief for a family murdered in the fighting, she remains a rebel. Tamou doesn’t just defy tradition and convention; she “behave[s] as though she [does] not know about tradition” (51) at all. Her existence on the farm, Fatima says, “with her tattoos, aggressive bracelets, and constant horseback riding,” allows the other women to see that there are “many ways to be beautiful” (53). Fatima, too, is fascinated by Tamou and comes to understand that “ignoring tradition could make a woman irresistible” (53). While Fatima is not a warrior like Tamou, the younger girl also chooses to defy tradition as she continues to grow.