Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood

As this chapter begins, Mother discusses the tales of A Thousand and One Nights with Fatima, and particularly the frame story of Scheherazade and the king who planned to execute her. Mother says that after the king found his wife in bed with a slave, the king took revenge by marrying a new wife every night and beheading her in the morning. When Scheherazade married the king, she told him an “entrancing, captivating tale” (13) every night, but never finished her story before morning, so the king wouldn’t kill her. After 1,001 nights, the king had fallen in love with Scheherazade and they had two children, and he couldn’t “imagine living without her” (15). Significantly, Scheherazade’s stories are not silly, “innocuous” fantasies, but tales that “bring the King to see himself” and motivate him “to change and to love more” (15).

As a result of Scheherazade’s story, Fatima learns that her personal power, and, as her mother puts it, her “chances of happiness,” both “depend upon how skillful [she] became with words” (16). Fatima also witnesses the power of storytelling from her aunt Habiba, who lives in the harem’s upstairs rooms where “troubled” (16) female relatives come to stay. Aunt Habiba, who was abandoned by the husband she loved for no reason at all, has “hanan,” or an “unconditionally available tenderness” (17) that draws Fatima to her. Samir and Fatima look forward to Aunt Habiba’s “Friday storytelling sessions” (18) and sometimes even spend the night, allowing their aunt’s stories to take them to strange lands—and Fatima yearns to become an “expert storyteller” herself, one who can “talk in the night” (19).

Fatima begins Chapter 3 by describing another hudud: the front gate of the harem, guarded by the doorkeeper Ahmed, a place where “you needed permission to step in or out” (21). As Fatima explains, the harem gate separates women from male strangers, thus cementing her uncle’s and father’s “honor and prestige” (22). While children like Fatima can leave the harem, adult women cannot. Fatima’s mother dreams of walking the “deserted” city streets of the “early morning,” while her aunt tells a story of a woman “who could fly away from the courtyard whenever she wanted to” (22).

In addition to the harem gate, another frontier in Fatima’s world is the line separating the old city, the Medina, from the French Christian’s new city, the Ville Nouvelle. The harem is located close to this dividing line, so Fatima can see that the French city has large streets, cars, and bright lights, while Medina is full of “narrow, dark, and serpentine” streets “that cars could not enter” (23). Fatima realizes that the French stay in their cars because they are afraid—a stunning insight that “the powerful ones who had created the frontier were also the fearful ones” (23).

However, these same “fearful” soldiers are also capable of “terroriz[ing] […] the entire Medina” (23). Mother tells Fatima that in January 1944, when Fatima and Samir were 4, the Moroccan king asked the French for independence, and in response the French attacked Medina. Samir and Fatima saw “the blood-soaked corpses” (24) and suffered nightmares for months, although Fatima no longer remembers this.

Fatima also talks about these events with her maternal grandmother Yasmina, who lives on a farm about 100 kilometers away, and whom Fatima visits once a year. Yasmina tells Fatima she’s an “expert on fear” (25) and will show Fatima how to overcome it.

As the chapter ends, Fatima also mentions that her grandmother has a duck she’s named after Thor, her “most hated co-wife” (25). Lalla Thor, the first wife of Grandfather Tazi, is rich and doesn’t have to do chores like the other wives—a fact Yasmina considers unjust because “Allah said” that all Muslims are “equal” (26). Yasmina tells Fatima to “never accept inequality” (26)—and she has named her “fat white duck” (26) Thor in rebellion.

When Lalla Thor discovers that Yasmina calls her duck Thor, the first wife is so angry that she calls Grandfather Tazi to her quarters, which are actually “a self-contained palace” (29). Thor says she’ll leave Grandfather if Yasmina doesn’t rename her duck, but Grandfather is actually “amused” (30) by the situation. As Fatima explains, Yasmina’s ability to make “moody” (31) Grandfather laugh has always saved her, despite her strange behavior such as climbing trees and convincing the other wives to as well. Thor complains that Yasmina is a “troublemaker, like everyone from the Atlas Mountains,” and that her mountain-dwellers’ heritage makes her “like an ugly giraffe” (31). While Yasmina’s tall, thin, suntanned frame doesn’t fit ideals of the time, Thor’s pale skin and voluptuous body do.

Grandfather confronts Yasmina about the duck, and Yasmina argues it doesn’t matter if Thor leaves—Grandfather will still have eight brides to keep him company. He attempts to “bribe” (32) Yasmina by giving her a bracelet if she’ll kill the duck, but Yasmina keeps the bracelet without agreeing. After a few days, she says she can’t kill the duck because its name is Thor, so its death “would not be a good omen” (32). However, she agrees to call the duck Thor “only in her mind” (32).

In addition to naming her duck Lalla Thor, Yasmina has named the farm’s peacock King Farouk, after the Egyptian king, whom Yasmina and the other wives despise. Farouk wants to divorce his “lovely wife” (32), Princess Farida, because she has borne only daughters who cannot rule under Muslim law, and thus he has no heir. Princess Farida is from a humble background and the wives identify with her, “lov[ing] her and suffer[ing] for her humiliations” (33). For “there is nothing so humiliating for a woman,” Yasmina tells Fatima, “as being cast out” (33).

Even after resolving the matter of the duck, Yasmina has trouble dealing with Lalla Thor, who comes from a high-class city family, unlike Yasmina and the other wives with their “modest rural background[s]” (34). However, Yasmina concludes that Thor “is still stuck in a harem, just like [her]” (34). When Fatima wonders what it means to be “stuck in a harem,” Yasmina sometimes tells her it means losing the freedom to go where you please, and other times that it means having to share your husband—something Fatima herself won’t have to do.

As Fatima explains, the Moroccan nationalists battling the French have pledged to make all Moroccans equal, abolishing slavery and giving women equal rights, including the right of monogamy. Since many of Yasmina’s co-wives were slaves bought at market, some stolen from their families after the French invaded in 1912, this potential change is particularly important. During violent times such as the French invasion, Yasmina says, “women always pay a high price” (36).

Fatima and her cousin Samir try to understand the meaning of a particularly “explosive” word—“harem” (40). Fatima finds it hard to believe Yasmina’s farm harem, where the wives can ride horses and swim in the river, is identified by the same word as the “fortress” (39) in Fez where women can only step outside if they follow a series of restrictive rules. And within this fortress, the word “harem” can “start a war” (40): Grandmother Lalla Mani and Chama’s mother, Lalla Radia, support the harem, while Fatima’s Mother, Cousin Chama, and Aunt Habiba condemn it. Mani says that if women are free to roam the streets, men will stop working to “have fun” (40), and society will crumble.

“Fun,” Fatima and Samir determine, has to do with sex, and they consult their Cousin Malika to learn more about the subject. When Malika fails to share the interesting details, the young cousins use a trick they’ve picked up from Aunt Habiba: pretending to be uninterested in what those with more authority say is “one good way for the weak to take power” (41). Malika, hoping to regain her cousins’ attention, reveals that a husband and wife kiss on the mouth and lie all night in one bed together.

Aunt Habiba herself is one of the “weak” members of society she references: as a divorced woman, she is not allowed to speak against Lalla Mani. Instead, she relies on Mother and Chama to do so. Mother argues that the French don’t “imprison their wives behind walls” (42), and they still manage to get their work done. Chama, meanwhile, has her own “theory” (42) on how harems began: she believes that in the past men were always fighting, so they chose to name a sultan who would use his authority to stop the violence. They decided “the man who catches the most women will be appointed sultan” (43), and thus men established harems to imprison their captive women.

At first, Byzantines captured the most women and ruled both East and West. Yet as the years passed, the Arabs gained power until Caliph Harun al-Rashid—a true historical figure—conquered many territories and built a harem of 1,000 women. As the Arabs continued collecting women, the Christians decided that women no longer represented power—instead, “the most powerful weapons and machines” (44)did. The Christians kept this change secret for years, and the Arabs “went to sleep” (45) confident in their power. Now, “only a few weeks ago,” the Arabs have “finally woke[n] up” to the reality that a French king with only one wife rules Morocco, and “men’s power is no longer measured by the number of women they can imprison” (45). Thus, Chama’s largely invented story ends by describing Morocco’s true political situation. 

After Chama’s story, her mother Radia always tells Samir and Fatima “the correct version of history” (46) and affirms the role of harems. In the end, the two young cousins are left perplexed by “all these contradictory opinions” (46), without a clear answer to their question of what a harem is and what purpose it serves.