Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood

Anyone going to Morocco or interested in the Muslim household in mid 1940's should read this book; it's an amazing true story of a girl growing up in a very conservative home, but who manages to pursue higher education. Fascinating story & it made my trip to Morocco so much more meaningful. Lovely country & wonderful people.

This book gives a powerful look at the Fez, Morocco of days gone by and the changes that swept through a very cloistered society at the end of the French protectorate. It's a fascinating read and I highly recommend it.

Subtitled, "Tales of a Harem Girlhood," this is the story of the author, Fatima Mernissi's Moroccan childhood in the 1940s. Now a sociologist at the University Mohammed V in Rabat, Morocco, she has skillfully recreated the sense of wonder and observation of a child. Her own father had only one wife, but she lived in an extended family with an aunt, uncle, cousins, divorced female relatives, and even some women who had once been slaves and who no had nowhere else to go. The term "harem" as she uses it, means the seclusion of women. Her mother, who was illiterate, dreamed moving beyond the walls, but did not even have the privilege of simply walking down the street as western women do. Instead, she rebelled by embroidering birds of flight and encouraged her daughter to get an education. The household was lively, and I felt myself drawn right in, getting to know each person through Ms. Mernissi's eyes. I was treated to their storytelling and home theatrical productions; I observed them sneaking up to the roof to get a bit of privacy; I understood why the act of chewing gum was considered a rebellion; I left the walled compound in the city with her when she visited her maternal grandmother who lived on a farm, one of eight co-wives, who gets to "cuddle" with her husband only one out of eight days.As I'm about the same age as the author, I couldn't help thinking about my life and how much I took for granted in my own childhood - such as the simple act of walking down the street and being exposed to the outside world through newspapers, radio and television. This book provided a magnificent glimpse into a world that seems as strange to me as mine would have seemed to her. And it certainly opened my eyes. At only 242 pages, "Dreams of Trespass" was much too short. I could have gone one reading and reading. And my only criticism is that it was only about her childhood. I wished it would have gone on and described the next fifty years. Highly recommended.

Subtitled, Tales of a Harem Girlhood, this is a most fascinating tale of the realities of a Moroccan harem. Most Westerners take the word harem and think Turkish harem - hundreds of women floating around large tiled rooms waiting to serve the lord and master. Mernissi, a western schooled sociologist, feminist, and scholar, takes us into the life of a young girl born into a family in Fez (in Western Morocco) in the 1940's. Her harem is not the rooms of I-Dream-of-Jeannie look-alikes but rather the complex social structures of the Moroccan/Muslim family in the middle of this century. Her harem is the world of women, daughters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers who live 'inside' the urban home (but interestingly, live more freely out on the country farm). We learn about the feelings she and her brother (with whom she is close) experience when they come of an age to be separated; he relegated to the world of the men, and she to the hidden world of the harem. Mostly, though, this beautiful book tells the stories of the women in Fatima's harem who have dreams and fantasies (that will never come true), including the dreams of trespass into the outside world, the world of men. After having worked in Morocco in the early 1990s, I could see that much has changed for Moroccan women, but thoughout the Arab world there still exist plenty who still have those dreams of trespass.

It is really difficult for Americans to comprehend a culture as different as traditional Moroccan culture. In particular, the lot of women, confined in domestic harems and obliged to submit to male rules, seems intolerable. This lovely book gives a portrait of one Moroccan family living in a tradtional way. Or are they? Rebellious ideas abound, and women find ways of stretching restriction. The stories are beautifully human and funny. It is easy to be critical of another culture that seems so different, and I would never be able to live that way. But I feel that I have a better understanding of how they did. I sent a copy of this book to my mother.

I had to read this book for class and I found this book to be easy to follow and interesting. It was interesting because it discussed what life was like in a harem. The book was written from a child's perspective, which made it more personal. The book provides a lot of information on harem life that the reader does not even realize they are being taught while enjoying the story. I also thought the title was good because it describes how the women of the harem are dreaming of the outside world and what is beyond the walls. I thought Fatima Mernissi did a good job describing harem life and I would recommend reading the book for those interested in harem life, Moroccan women, or for enjoyment.