In Fatima Mernissi’s Dreams of Trespass, the author chose to tell the stories of her youth through the eyes of a young girl. This was a deliberate choice on the part of the author. As we all know from popular mid-nineties American TV shows, kids can say pretty much anything they want and get away with it. Children are perceived as innocent in western culture and, apparently, in North African culture as well.
In passages such as
“This business of going around with a frontier inside the head disturbed me, and discreetly I put my hand to my forehead to make sure it was smooth, just to see if by any chance I might be harem-free. But then, Yasmina’s explanation got even more alarming, because the next thing se said was that any space you entered had its own invisible rules, and you needed to figure them out. “And when I say space,” she continued, “it can be any space – a courtyard, a terrace, or a room, or even the street for that matter. Wherever there are human beings, there is a qaida” (Mernissi P 62)
Mernissi uses the eyes of her younger self to look about wide-eyed at things that a “grown up” woman wouldn’t see as being odd or wouldn’t require explanation for. Things that would seem silly for a woman to critically examine are perfectly fine for a girl to gaze at with a critical eye.
Along the same lines, I hypothesize that in Moroccan culture, even today; it isn’t very politically savvy to discuss such topics as harems and the like. Veiling it in the fabric of childhood, no matter how translucent it may be, helps to give Mernissi some cover fire while she goes about ridiculing “odd” traditions such as the veil and the practice of attempting to imprison women, whether literally or mentally.
Reexamining the first 143 pages of the book, it does appear that the entire book is an attack at the old customs, which at times makes a reappearance in Morocco, disguised in women’s harem clothes and a child’s recounting of her childhood. It’s brilliant, really. To the average reader on the street, it wouldn’t be apparent that she is putting forth her political and social views. Instead, they are taken in by the “Tales of a Harem Girlhood”, reading about tales of the “exotic”, all the while planting the seeds of her agenda in the readers mind. I’ll be sure to try this tactic out in the next (give me an A in all of my classes) paper I write.