Dreams of Trespass

Have you ever read a book that gripped you so completely that you not only revisited it many more times, but begin to view it as a friend? I was thirteen when I stumbled across Fatima Mernissi's Dreams of Trespass in the biography section of my local library, and it instantly became a favorite that I checked out many more times before caving and actually buying it a few years later.

Dreams of Trespass is Mernissi's memoir of her childhood in Fez, Morocco around the second World War. Funny, fascinating, and extremely informative, she describes her family harem as both a prison and a refuge, and compares it to her grandparents' lives up in the mountains.

As a child, Mernissi is sent to school to learn hudud, the sacred frontiers. But soon she, and we as her readers, begin seeing frontiers everywhere. She is a child looking at an adults' world, a female looking at a men's world, and a Moroccan looking at a European world. Yet her description of it all is done in a delightfully adroit manner and in a child's voice. Her take on Germans:

The Allemane (Germans) were Christians, that was for sure. They lived in the North like all the others, in what we call Blad Teldj, or the Snowland . . . To warm themselves up, they had to drink wine and other strong beverages, and then they goat aggressive and started looking for trouble.

And the English:

Cousin Zin, who had visited England, said the tea up there was so bitter, they mixed it with milk. So Samir and I poured milk into our mint tea once, just to give it a try, and it was ugh! awful! No wonder the Christians were always miserable and looking for fights.

This was the book that inspired me to read as much as a I could about Morocco, with the knowledge that one day, I would go. And when I finally did, I wondered about hudud, and how they had changed since Mernissi was a girl.

All images via here.