enchanting book, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood. She describes growing up in a large, wealthy, sunny, polygamous harem in Fez, Morocco, in the 1940s.
For her it was an active, busy quarter peopled by magically philosophical, loving, and high-spirited women who concocted elaborate homemade beauty treatments that they applied to themselves and to each other; they also visited the hammam (the public Turkish baths) and the occasional movie—and always en masse, all together. Mernissi also presents the harem as a refuge for female relatives “in trouble,” such as abandoned wives and war widows. She describes a Berber horsewoman, Tamou, who could ride and shoot as well as any man and who, upon seeking refuge, was asked by all the cowives to please consider becoming a wife, too; they so loved her company! (She accepted their offer.)
Tamou was a war heroine from the Rif Mountains. She rode in on a “Spanish saddled horse” wearing a “man’s white cape”; Tamou had a Spanish rifle, a dagger at her hip, and “heavy silver bracelets with points sticking out . . . the kind you could use to defend yourself.” She had a green tattoo on her chin and a “long, copper-colored braid that hung over her left shoulder.”
But Mernissi is clear that the women were confined: They had to ask husbands and fathers for permission to leave. Women were not allowedto do their own shopping; they had to describe the purchases they wanted to a male servant. As a child, Fatima was bothered by the separation of the sexes. One of the wise harem women explained it to her: “There are two kinds of creatures walking on Allah’s earth, the powerful on one side, and the powerless on the other. I asked [Mina] how would I know on which side I stood: Her answer was quick, short, and very clear: ‘If you can’t get out, you are on the powerless side.’”
Both Fatima (as a child) and I (as an adult in Kabul) were definitely on the powerless side.
At least Mernissi grew up loving these harem women who in turn loved her. I have come here as a feared stranger, knowing only one person, unable to speak the language, cherishing opposite values.
Abdul-Kareem refuses to acknowledge that this is so and that our living conditions are wrong, unacceptable, intolerable—for me and probably for most Western women.
He will not—he cannot—free me.
Five
My Mother-in-Law
S ome of the most daring adventurers to the Orient fainted in the bazaar, spent feverish days in bed retching and dragging themselves to whatever passed for a bathroom, endured vertigo, nausea, dysentery, tuberculosis, jaundice, and malaria.
The Arab Middle East and Central Asia implacably assault the Western traveler’s gastrointestinal and nervous systems with germs and parasites to which those of native inhabitants are usually inured. A traveler knows that she is really in Afghanistan when she becomes deathly ill.
I am in awe of those nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western travelers, especially the women, who crossed deserts without enough water or food; who rode horses and camels right into sandstorms; who faced danger with daggers and pistols at their sides; who survived the kind of heat and humidity that make breathing difficult and the kind of cold that leads to frostbite or death; who went without sleep, privacy, soap, or a change of clothing for weeks or months.
As for me, I am not that kind of hale-and-rugged traveler.
I was and still am a soft city-bred American who never learned to ride, shoot, hunt, navigate by the stars, or speak ten languages. My immune system and my gastrointestinal tract are simply not ready for Kabul.
The hygiene leaves everything to be desired.
Even though I have a picture-perfect modern bathroom, the city’s sewage system consists of open irrigation ditches that run alongside thestreets. These ditches are used as a public bathroom—they are also used for bathing, doing laundry, and washing fruits and vegetables.
Long
For her it was an active, busy quarter peopled by magically philosophical, loving, and high-spirited women who concocted elaborate homemade beauty treatments that they applied to themselves and to each other; they also visited the hammam (the public Turkish baths) and the occasional movie—and always en masse, all together. Mernissi also presents the harem as a refuge for female relatives “in trouble,” such as abandoned wives and war widows. She describes a Berber horsewoman, Tamou, who could ride and shoot as well as any man and who, upon seeking refuge, was asked by all the cowives to please consider becoming a wife, too; they so loved her company! (She accepted their offer.)
Tamou was a war heroine from the Rif Mountains. She rode in on a “Spanish saddled horse” wearing a “man’s white cape”; Tamou had a Spanish rifle, a dagger at her hip, and “heavy silver bracelets with points sticking out . . . the kind you could use to defend yourself.” She had a green tattoo on her chin and a “long, copper-colored braid that hung over her left shoulder.”
But Mernissi is clear that the women were confined: They had to ask husbands and fathers for permission to leave. Women were not allowedto do their own shopping; they had to describe the purchases they wanted to a male servant. As a child, Fatima was bothered by the separation of the sexes. One of the wise harem women explained it to her: “There are two kinds of creatures walking on Allah’s earth, the powerful on one side, and the powerless on the other. I asked [Mina] how would I know on which side I stood: Her answer was quick, short, and very clear: ‘If you can’t get out, you are on the powerless side.’”
Both Fatima (as a child) and I (as an adult in Kabul) were definitely on the powerless side.
At least Mernissi grew up loving these harem women who in turn loved her. I have come here as a feared stranger, knowing only one person, unable to speak the language, cherishing opposite values.
Abdul-Kareem refuses to acknowledge that this is so and that our living conditions are wrong, unacceptable, intolerable—for me and probably for most Western women.
He will not—he cannot—free me.
Five
My Mother-in-Law
S ome of the most daring adventurers to the Orient fainted in the bazaar, spent feverish days in bed retching and dragging themselves to whatever passed for a bathroom, endured vertigo, nausea, dysentery, tuberculosis, jaundice, and malaria.
The Arab Middle East and Central Asia implacably assault the Western traveler’s gastrointestinal and nervous systems with germs and parasites to which those of native inhabitants are usually inured. A traveler knows that she is really in Afghanistan when she becomes deathly ill.
I am in awe of those nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western travelers, especially the women, who crossed deserts without enough water or food; who rode horses and camels right into sandstorms; who faced danger with daggers and pistols at their sides; who survived the kind of heat and humidity that make breathing difficult and the kind of cold that leads to frostbite or death; who went without sleep, privacy, soap, or a change of clothing for weeks or months.
As for me, I am not that kind of hale-and-rugged traveler.
I was and still am a soft city-bred American who never learned to ride, shoot, hunt, navigate by the stars, or speak ten languages. My immune system and my gastrointestinal tract are simply not ready for Kabul.
The hygiene leaves everything to be desired.
Even though I have a picture-perfect modern bathroom, the city’s sewage system consists of open irrigation ditches that run alongside thestreets. These ditches are used as a public bathroom—they are also used for bathing, doing laundry, and washing fruits and vegetables.
Long
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