Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood

Fatima Mernissi is both the narrator and author of Dreams of Trespass, a memoir of her childhood in a harem in 1940s Morocco. In the opening pages of the book, Fatima states that from a young age, she discovered the importance of “frontiers” (3), or boundaries in her Islamic culture that limit her freedom and choices in life. Identifying these frontiers, also called “hudud,” becomes a “life’s occupation” (3) for curious, thoughtful young Fatima. The autobiography follows her attempts to “situate the geometric line organizing [her] powerlessness” (3), and to deal with and even overcome her lack of freedom, through the first nine years of her life.

The greatest frontier in young Fatima’s life is the harem where, along with the adult women she looks to for guidance, she both lives and is imprisoned. While Fatima is occasionally allowed to leave the harem, she knows that adult women have less freedom, making only rare, escorted trips outside the harem walls. Fatima sees that for older women like her mother, her aunt Habiba, and her cousin Chama, the harem restrictions lead to a sense of suffocation and misery: Mother wants only to “go for a walk […] when the streets are deserted,” while Aunt Habiba tells tales of a winged woman who can “fly away from the courtyard” (22).