Relates the story of a woman born in a harem in Morocco, growing up with wise, funny, individualistic women, and creating a fantasy world from sheer imagination because the outside world was inaccessible

Autorentext

Fatima Mernissi

Klappentext

""I was born in a harem in 1940 in Fez, Morocco..." So begins Fatima Mernissi in this exotic and rich narrative of a childhood behind the iron gates of a domestic harem. In Dreams of Trespass, Mernissi"

Zusammenfassung
This "wonderful and enchanting" memoir tells the revelatory true story of one Muslim girl's life in her family's French Moroccan harem, set against the backdrop of World War II (The New York Times Book Review).

"I was born in a harem in 1940 in Fez, Morocco . . . "*
So begins Fatima Mernissi in this illuminating narrative of a childhood behind the iron gates of a domestic harem. In Dreams of Trespass, Mernissi weaves her own memories with the dreams and memories of the women who surrounded her in the courtyard of her youth -- women who, without access to the world outside, recreated it from sheer imagination.

A beautifully written account of a girl confronting the mysteries of time and place, gender and sex, Dreams of Trespass illuminates what it was like to be a modern Muslim woman in a place steeped in tradition.

Inhalt

• My Harem Frontiers * Scheherazade, the King, and the Words * The French Harem * Yasinas First Co-Wife * Chama and the Caliph * Tamous Horse * The Harem Within * Aquatic Dishwashing * Moonlit Nights of Laughter * The Mens Salon * World War II: View from the Courtyard * Asmahan, the Singing Princess * The Harem Goes to the Movies * Egyptian Feminists Visit the Terrace * Princess Budurs Fate * The Forbidden Terrace * Mina, the Rootless * American Cigarettes * Mustaches and Breasts * The Silent Dream of Wings and Flights * Skin Politics: Eggs, Dates, and Other Beauty Secrets * Henna, Clay, and Mens Stares