Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood

by Fatima Mernissi

  These occasional tete-a-tete dinners on the terrace during moonlit summer nights were another peace offering that Father made to help satisfy Mother's yearning for privacy. We would be transplanted to the terrace, like nomads, with mattresses, tables, trays, and my little brother's cradle, which would be set down right in the middle of everything. Mother would be absolutely out of her mind with joy. No one else from the courtyard dared to show up, because they understood all too well that Mother was fleeing from the crowd. What she most enjoyed was trying to get Father to depart from his conventional self-controlled pose. Before long, she would start acting foolishly, like a young girl, and soon, Father would chase her all around the terrace, when she challenged him. "You can't run anymore, you have grown too old! All you're good for now is to sit and watch your son's cradle." Father, who had been smiling up to that point, would look at her at first as if what she had just said had not affected him at all. But then his smile would vanish, and he would start chasing her all over the terrace, jumping over tea-trays and sofas. Sometimes both of them made up games which included my sister and Samir (who was the only one of the rest of the family allowed to attend our moonlit gatherings) and myself. More often, they completely forgot about the rest of the world, and we children would be sneezing all the next day because they had forgotten to put blankets on us when we had gone to sleep that night.

  After these blissful evenings, Mother would be in an unusually soft and quiet mood for a whole week. Then she would tell me that whatever else I did with my life, I had to take her revenge. "I want my daughters' lives to be exciting," she would say, "very exciting and filled with one hundred percent happiness, nothing more, nothing less." I would raise my head, look at her earnestly, and ask what one hundred percent happiness meant, because I wanted her to know that I intended to do my best to achieve it. Happiness, she would explain, was when a person felt good, light, creative, content, loving and loved, and free. An unhappy person felt as if there were barriers crushing her desires and the talents she had inside. A happy woman was one who could exercise all kinds of rights, from the right to move to the right to create, compete, and challenge, and at the same time could feel loved for doing so. Part of happiness was to be loved by a man who enjoyed your strength and was proud of your talents. Happiness was also about the right to privacy, the right to retreat from the company of others and plunge into contemplative solitude. Or to sit by yourself doing nothing for a whole day, and not give excuses or feel guilty about it either. Happiness was to be with loved ones, and yet still feel that you existed as a separate being, that you were not there just to make them happy. Happiness was when there was a balance between what you gave and what you took. I then asked her how much happiness she had in her life, just to get an idea, and she said that it varied according to the days. Some days she had only five percent; others, like the evenings we spent with Father on the terrace, she had full-blown one hundred percent happiness.

  Aiming at one hundred percent happiness seemed a bit overwhelming to me, as a young girl, especially since I could see how much Mother labored to sculpt her moments of happiness. How much time and energy she put into creating those wonderful moonlit evenings sitting close to Father, talking softly in his ear, her head on his shoulder! It seemed quite an accomplishment to me because she had to start working on him days ahead of time, and then she had to take care of all the logistics, like the cooking and the moving of the furniture. To invest so much stubborn effort just to achieve a few hours of happiness was impressive, and at least I knew it could be done. But how, I wondered, was I going to create such a high level of excitement for an entire lifetime? Well, if Mother thought it was possible, I should certainly give it a try.

  "Times are going to get better for women now, my daughter," she would say to me. "You and your sister will get a good education, and you'll walk freely in the streets and discover the world. I want you to become independent, independent and happy. I want you to shine like moons. I want your lives to be a cascade of serene delights. One hundred percent happiness. Nothing more, nothing less." But when I asked her for more details about how to create that happiness, Mother would grow very impatient. "You have to work at it. One develops the muscles for happiness, just like for walking and breathing."

  So every morning, I would sit on our threshold, contemplating the deserted courtyard and dreaming about my beautiful future, a cascade of serene delights. Hanging on to the romantic moonlit terrace evenings, challenging your beloved man to forget about his social duties, relax and act foolish and gaze at the stars while holding your hand, I thought, could be one way to go about developing muscles for happiness. Sculpting soft nights, when the sound of laughter blends with the spring breezes, could be another.

  But those magical evenings were rare, or so they seemed. During the days, life took a much more rigid and disciplined turn. Officially, there was no jumping around or foolishness allowed in the Mernissi household - all that was confined to clandestine times and spaces, such as late afternoons in the courtyard when the men were out, or evenings on the deserted terraces.

  10.

  THE MEN'S SALON

  THE PROBLEM WITH entertainment, fun, and foolishness at our house was that they could easily be missed. They were never planned in advance unless Cousin Chama or Aunt Habiba were in charge, and even then, they were subject to serious space constraints. Aunt Habiba's story-telling and Chama's theater plays had to take place upstairs. You could never really have fun for long in the courtyard; it was too public. Just as you were starting to have a good time, the men would come in with their own projects, which often involved a great deal of discussion, such as going over business matters., or listening to the radio and debating the news, or card playing, and then you would have to move elsewhere. Good entertainment needs concentration and silence in order for the masters of ceremony, the storytellers and the actors to create their magic. You could not create magic in the courtyard, where dozens of people were constantly crossing from one salon to the other, popping in and out of the corner staircases, or talking back and forth to one another from one floor to the next. And you certainly could not create magic when the men were talking politics, that is, listening to the radio on the loudspeakers, or reading the local and international press.

  The men's political discussions were always highly emotionally charged. If you listened carefully to what they were saying, you had the impression that the world was coming to an end. (Mother said that if you believed the radio and the men's comments, the planet would have disappeared a long time ago.) They talked about the Allemane, or Germans, a new breed of Christians who were giving a beating to the French and the British, and they talked about a bomb that the Americans across the sea had dropped on Japan, which was one of the Asian nations near China, thousands of kilometers east of Mecca. Not only had the bomb killed thousands and thousands of people and melted their bodies, it had shaved entire forests off the face of the earth as well. The news about that bomb plunged Father, Uncle `Ali, and my young cousins into deep despair, for if the Christians had thrown that bomb on the Asians who lived so far away, it was only a matter of time before they attacked the Arabs. "Sooner or later," Father said, "they will be tempted to burn the Arabs too."

  Samir and I loved the men's political discussions, because then we were allowed into the crowded men's salon, where Uncle and Father, each dressed comfortably in a white djellaba, sat surrounded by the chabab, or the youth - that is, the dozen adolescent and unmarried young men who lived in the house. Father often joked with the chabab about their uncomfortable, tight Western dress, and said that now they would have to sit on chairs. But of course everyone hated chairs; sofas were much more comfortable.

  I would climb up into my father's lap and Samir would climb up into Uncle's. Uncle would be sitting cross-legged in the middle of the highest sofa, wearing his spotless white djellaba and a white turban, with his son Samir perched on his lap in Prince of Wales shorts. I would nestle in my father's lap, neatly
dressed in one of my very short French white dresses with satin ribbons at the waist. Mother always insisted on dressing me in the latest Western fashions - short, fluffy lace dresses with colored ribbons and shiny black shoes. The only problem was that she would fly into a fury if I dirtied the dress, or disarranged the ribbons, and so I would often beg her to let me wear my comfortable little sarwal (harem pants), or any traditional outfit, which required less attention. But only on religious festival days, when Father insisted, would she let me wear my caftan, so anxious was she to see me escape tradition. "Dress says so much about a woman's designs," she said. "If you plan to be modern, express it through what you wear, otherwise they will shove you behind the gates. Caftans may be of unparalleled beauty, but Western dress is about salaried work." I therefore grew to associate caftans with lavish holidays, religious festivals, and the splendors of our ancestral past, and Western dress with pragmatic calculations and stern, professional, daily chores.

  In the men's salon, Father always sat opposite Uncle, on the sofa near the radio, so he could control the dials. Each man would be dressed in a double djellaba - the outer one made of sheer snow-white pure wool, a specialty of Ouazzane, a religious city to the north with a fine weaving tradition; the inner one made of heavier cloth. Father would also wear his one little eccentricity, a pale yellow turban made of embroidered cotton from Cham (Syria).

  "But what good does our wearing traditional dress do," Father joked one day to my young cousins sitting around him, "when all you young people dress like Rudolf Valentino?" Without exception, they all wore Western attire, and with their short hair uncovered and cut above the ears, they looked very much like the French soldiers standing at the end of the street. "One day, we will probably manage to throw the French out, only to wake up and find out that we all look like them," added Uncle.

  Among the young cousins who frequented the salon were Samir's three brothers, Zin, Jawad, and Chakib, and all the sons of the widowed and divorced aunts and relatives who lived with us. Most of them went to the nationalist schools, but a few of the brightest attended the very select College Musulman, located just a few meters from our house. The College was a French secondary school which prepared the sons of prominent families to fill key positions, and the students' scholastic excellence was measured according to the degree to which they mastered both Arabic and French language and history. To beat the West, Arab youth needed mastery of at least two cultures.

  Of all my male cousins, Zin was considered to be by far the most gifted. When in the salon, he would usually sit near Uncle, with the French papers ostentatiously displayed on his lap. He was extremely handsome with fine brown hair, almondshaped eyes, high cheekbones, and a light mustache. He bore a distinct resemblance to Rudolf Valentino, whom we often saw on the screen at the Boujeloud Cinema, where we were treated to two films at a time, one Egyptian and in Arabic, and the other foreign and in French. The first time Samir and I saw Rudolf Valentino, we promptly adopted him as a member of our harem because he looked so much like our cousin Zin. By that time, Zin had already cultivated "the Sheikh's" sullen expression, somber attire, parted hair, and tiny red flower in the breast pocket.

  Appropriately, Zin's name meant "beauty," and I admired his handsomeness and elegance. Like everyone else, I respected him for his eloquence in French, a language which no one else in the family had mastered at that point. I could listen to him uttering those bizarre French sounds for hours. Everybody else would stare at him in awe, too, whenever Uncle gestured to him to begin reading the French papers. He would start by quickly reading the headlines and then go back to the articles that Uncle or Father had picked out more or less intuitively, since their French was quite poor. These he would read out loud, before giving summaries in Arabic.

  The way Zin spoke French, and most particularly, the way he rolled his is gave me thrills. My is were disastrously flat even in Arabic, and my teacher, Lalla Tam, would often stop me in my chanting of the Koran to remind me that my ancestors had had very forceful r's. "You have to respect your ancestors, Fatima Mernissi," she would say. "Why massacre the innocent alphabet?" I would stop, listen to her politely, and swear that I would respect my ancestors. Then I would gather all my thoracic strength and make a brave, desperate attempt to pronounce a robust r, only to end up choking. And here was talented Zin, so gifted and eloquent that he could speak French and roll hundreds of is without any apparent effort. Often I would stare at him intently, thinking that if I could just concentrate hard enough, some of his grace, and maybe his mysterious ability to roll r's, would rub off on me.

  Zin worked very hard at becoming the ideal modern nationalist, that is, one who possessed a vast knowledge of Arab history, legends, and poetry, as well as fluency in French, the language of our enemy, in order to decode the Christian press and uncover their plans. He succeeded beautifully. Although the modern Christians' supremacy in science and mathematics was evident, the nationalist leaders encouraged the youth to read the classic treatises of Avicenna and Al-Khwarizmi,1 "just to have an idea about the way their minds functioned. It always helps to know that your ancestors were fast and precise." Father and Uncle respected Zin as one of the new generation of Moroccans who was going to save the country. He led the procession to the Qaraouiyine Mosque on Fridays, when all the men of Fez, young and old, turned up in the traditional white djellaba and fine yellow leather slippers to go to public prayer.

  Ostensibly, the reason for the Friday noon gathering at the mosque was religious, but everyone, including the French, knew that many important political decisions of the Majlis al- Baladi, or City Council, were in fact settled right there. Not only did all the members of the Council, like Uncle `Ali, attend that prayer service, but delegates from all the city's interest groups, from the most prestigious to the most humble, were present as well. The mosque, which was open to everyone, compensated for the exclusive nature of the Council, which had been set up by the French, according to Uncle `Ali, as an assembly of dignitaries. "Although the French have dethroned their nobles and kings," he said, "they still prefer to talk with men of rank alone, and it is up to us, the locals, to be responsible and communicate with the people. Any person who holds a political office ought to attend the Friday prayer regularly. That's how you stay in touch with your constituency."

  Five groups who had insured the city's intellectual and economic position in Morocco for centuries were always heavily represented in the mosque on Fridays. First came the ulema, or men of learning, who devoted their lives to science, and could often trace their ancestry back to Andalusia, or Muslim Spain. They kept the veneration of books and the book industry alive, from papermaking, calligraphy, and bookbinding, to encouraging reading, writing, and collecting rare editions. Then came the sharifs, or descendants of the Prophet, who enjoyed enormous prestige and played key symbolical roles during marriage, birth, and death rituals. The sharifs were known to be of modest means; making money and building fortunes were not their chief concerns. Those were the obsession of the tujjar, or merchants, who constituted the third, highly mobile and crafty group. They were the adventurers, and in the break between prayers, they would often describe their risky travels to Europe and Asia, where they bought luxury goods and machinery, or to the South, beyond the Sahara Desert.

  Then came the fellah families, or landowners, the group to which Uncle and Father belonged. The word fellah meant two contradictory things: poor, landless peasants on the one hand, and rich landowners and sophisticated agricultural developers on the other. Uncle and Father were proud to be fellah, but they belonged to the second category. Uncle and Father were attached to their land, and nothing gave them more pleasure than spending long days on their farms even though they had chosen to live in the city. The fellah did their farming on a more or less large scale, and often were busy catching up on the modern agricultural techniques introduced by the colonial French. Many of the landowning families were like ours, originally from the pre-Rif Mountains north of the city, and were proud
of their rural origins, especially when faced with the conceited arrogance of the Andalusians, the learned group. "The ulema are important indeed," said Father whenever the topic of the city's hierarchy came up, "but if they did not have us to produce food for them, they would die of hunger. You can do a lot of things with a book - namely, look at it, read it, ponder its ideas, and so on. But you cannot eat it. That's the intellectual's problem. So one shouldn't be excessively impressed by an intellectual. It's better to be a fellah like us, who love the land and admire it, and then educate ourselves. If you can work the land and read the books, you can never go wrong." Father worried a lot about the chabab, or family youth, getting too much pleasure from books and losing interest in the land, which was why he insisted that they stay with him on Uncle's farm, a few kilometers from Fez, during their summer holidays.

  The fifth and largest key group in the city was that of the craftsmen, who had produced practically everything that was needed in Morocco before the French had invaded the markets with their machine-made goods. Districts in Fez were named after the products that the craftsmen produced there. Had- dadin, literally, "iron workers," was the district where metal products were made from iron and brass. Debbaghin (treated leather) was the leather district; the potters worked in the Fakharin (pottery district); and you went to the Najjarine (wood district) to buy products made of wood. The most prosperous craftsmen were those who worked with gold and silver, and those who turned silk threads into luxurious sfifa (passementerie), to complement caftans pre-embroidered by women.2 People from the same district often sat together in the mosque and went back home in a group, chatting and exchanging ideas about the latest news.