Dreams of Trespass

Upon completion of Fatima Mernissi's memoir Dreams of Trespass, I have a totally new understanding of what it would be like to grow up in a harem. If you look back at my previous post, you can see that I obviously had a misconstrued idea of what a harem was in the first place. Mernissi's novel also opened my eyes to other things as well, such as a very different Middle Eastern lifestyle than we have been reading about, more specifically Woman at Point Zero.

Woman at Point Zero portrays a battered woman struggling day after day until she finally reaches a breaking point. Dreams of Trespass is much less heavy, to the point of even using some light humor. This book tells of the life of a girl growing up in Morocco in a harem. When she talks about her childhood, she tells of a life that was at times difficult, but for the most part, it seems that she had a good childhood. While she did have a lot more freedom than Firdaus did in Woman at Point Zero, Mernissi was constantly questioning the people around her. She wanted to know why the women were confined to the home while they men were allowed to go about town as they pleased. In fact, Mernissi questioned her family so often that they had to tell her to stop asking questions. Firdaus never had this kind of freedom.

I think one of the reasons why this book portrayed women as having a lot more freedom than we women we have read about thus far is because Mernissi had a few strong role models in her life. Mernissi's mother was definitely the strongest woman (or maybe even the strongest person altogether) that I have read about in this class. Even though she was confined to the home, she was constantly standing up to her husband. She complained several times about being confined to a Harem and how she hated living with so many people together. Mernissi's mother would also talk about how she longed to live alone with only her husband and children; most of the Middle Eastern women we have read about so far in this class wouldn't dare voice these types of opinions to men.

Mernissi's grandmother, Yasmina, is also a very strong woman. One of my favorite scenes in the book occured near the beginning. Mernissi was describing her grandmother's life in her harem (which was somewhat different than Mernissi's: her grandfather lived with his nine wives). Yasmina said that she was sad because she really did not like sharing her husband with eight other women, especially because she did not like one of the wives, Lalla Thor. In an act of rebellion, she named her duck Thor, and Lalla Thor, not surprisingly, was upset. When her husband went to talk to her about changing the duck's name, Yasmina simply said that if she didn't like it, he should get rid of her. She had no problem whatsoever standing up to her husband (even if it was in vain).

Fatima Mernissi had a much easier life than some of the other women we have read about in this class, and I think the main reason for this is the group of strong women that she grew up surrounded by. In Woman at Point Zero, Firdaus's mother died when she was very young and she had no other mother-figures in her life to set an example for her. I think that we learn how to behave and we learn what is right from wrong from watching, and if we dont' have anyone strong in our life to set an example for us, we will end up living a very difficult life.