Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood

by Fatima Mernissi

  Asmahan was the exact opposite of Oum Kelthoum. A small-chested and lanky woman who often looked both completely confused and desperately elegant, she dressed in lowcut Western blouses and short skirts. Asmahan was oblivious of Arab culture, past and present, and totally absorbed by her own fatally tragic quest for happiness. She could not have cared less about what happened on the planet. All she wanted was to dress up, put flowers in her hair, look dreamy, sing, and dance away in the arms of a loving man, who would be as romantic as she - a warm and affectionate man who had the courage to split away from the group, and dance publicly with the woman he loved. Arab women, forced to dance alone in closed-off courtyards, admired Asmahan for realizing their dreams of hugging a man close in a Western-style dance, and swaying with him in a tight embrace. Aimless enjoyment, with a man by your side also totally engaged in the same, was the image that Asmahan projected.

  Asmahan always had a pearl necklace around her long neck, and I would beg Chama to let me wear hers for a few minutes at a time, just to create some mysterious link between me and my idol. Once, I dared to ask Chama if there were any chance for me to marry an Arab prince like Asmahan, and she said the Arab world was heading towards democracy, and the rare princes available would be bad dancers. "They would be totally absorbed by politics. Look for a teacher if you want to dance like Asmahan."

  We all knew about Asmahan's life in great detail, because Chama would constantly stage it in the plays she organized on the terrace. She would stage the lives of all kinds of heroines, but the romantic Princess was by far the most popular. Her life was as fascinating as any fairy tale, although it had a tragic end, as one could expect - an Arab woman could not seek sensuous enjoyment, frivolous entertainment, and happiness and get away with it. Asmahan was a princess born in Lebanon, in the Druze Mountains. Married at a very young age to her own cousin, a rich prince named Hassan, she was divorced at age seventeen, and dead at age thirty-two (in 1944), killed in a mysterious car accident involving international spies. In between, she was a singer and an actress living in Cairo, where she became an instant sensation throughout the Arab world. She entranced crowds with an unheard-of dream, that of individual happiness and of a sensuous, self-indulgent life, oblivious to the demands of the clan and its codes.

  Asmahan practiced what she believed in, and what she sang. She thought that a woman could have both love and a career and insisted on living a full conjugal life while at the same time exploring and exhibiting her talents as an actress and a singer. Her first husband, Prince Hassan, could not accept that and divorced her. She tried again, twice, and in both cases, her husbands, both magnates of the Egyptian entertainment industry, began by giving in to her wishes. But soon, those marriages also ended up in outrageous divorces, with her last husband running after her with a gun and all the Cairo police following them and trying to stop him. Her final involvement with British and French intelligence agents, in their attempt to block the German presence in the Middle East, made her an easy target for moralistic attacks, and a defenseless victim of the region's explosive politics.

  Then for a few years, back in Lebanon, Asmahan seemed finally to have found a place for herself. She looked beautiful, independent, and happy. She hosted high-powered meetings at her private residence in Beirut and at the King David Palace in Jerusalem between General de Gaulle of France and the President of Syria and Lebanon. At her eclectic soirees, Arab nationalists met European generals of the Allied Forces, and aspiring revolutionaries mingled with bankers.

  Asmahan lived life on the run, tasted everything in a rush. "I know my life is going to be short," she always said. She earned plenty of money but never seemed to have enough to pay bills for her expensive jewels and dresses, and her capri cious travels. She often impulsively decided to go on an unplanned journey, one of her favorite pastimes and one which constantly surprised her entourage. And it was during one of those spontaneous trips, when she was traveling by car with a female friend a few hundred miles out of Cairo, that death suddenly caught up with her. The car was found floating in a lake. Asmahan's fans mourned her while her enemies spoke of a conspiracy involving spies. Some said that she'd been killed by British intelligence because she had started acting too independently. Others dismissed her as a victim of German intelligence. Still others, self-appointed righteous bigots, congratulated themselves on her untimely death, calling it a just punishment for her disgraceful life.

  Still, after her death, Asmahan became even more of a legend than ever because she showed Arab women that a life filled with deliberate self-indulgence, as short and scandalous as it might be, was better than a long and respectable one devoted to a lethargic tradition. Asmahan entranced both men and women with the idea that failure or success did not matter in the adventurous life, and such a life was much more enjoyable than a life spent sleeping behind protective doors. You could not hum one of her songs without fragments of her incredibly exciting, albeit short and tragic life popping into your mind.

  When Chama staged the first part of Asmahan's life, she threw a green carpet on the terrace floor so that we could visualize the forests of the steep Druze Mountains where Asmahan was born. Chama then pulled a sofa onto the stage to represent the Princess's bed, and smudged kohl powder around her eyes to suggest the Princess's dreamy green ones. The hair was more of a problem - the heroine's had been jet black -- and so Chama was obliged to pull a charcoal-colored turban over her disturbingly red locks. There was not much she could do about her freckles, however, and Asmahan had had the clearest of skins. Instead, Chama concentrated on re-creating the actress's famed beauty spot on the left side of her chin. It would have been impossible to play her without it. Chama would then recline on the sofa, dressed in a satin gamis which was stretched out at the bottom with wire, so as to suggest a romantic Western dress. With a sad and gloomy look, she would stare at the sky in silence for a while. Then, voices behind the drapes would start singing a wistful melody about what an absurd waste of time it was to be lying there, when fun was going on everywhere else. The lovely voices belonged to Chama's sisters and other cousins.

  A wooden horse would be standing near Asmahan's bed. For, you see, Asmahan had started running early in life. What else could a woman do who was born extremely beautiful into a princely family in a remote Arab region where everyone still remembered the crusades of long ago, dreaded foreign occupation, and watched a woman's every move? Asmahan rode horses like Tamou in the war-torn Rif zone; to her, liberation meant running. To be free was to be on the move. Riding fast, even when you had no purpose, could give you a taste of happiness - movement for the sheer joy of it. So Chama would get off the bed and ride the immobile horse, while the voices behind the drapes continued to sing about how depressing it felt to be trapped in a dead-end situation. Sometimes Samir or I would push the horse back and forth a few times to give the scene a sense of movement, while the audience (consisting of Mother, my adolescent cousins, Aunt Habiha, and all the other divorced and widowed aunts and relatives) sang along with the chorus.

  Next, Samir and I would pull the drapes so that we could switch to the marriage scene. Chama did not like to see her audience sinking into despair for long. "Escape from bad feelings ought to be the focus of entertainment," she said. Cousin Zin would appear, dressed in a white cape, playing the part of the groom, Prince Hassan. At the sight of Zin's beauty, I would swoon and neglect my duties as a stage technician. And then the audience would start to complain, because it was the technicians' responsibility to provide refreshments whenever an important event, such as a marriage or birth, was taking place. Samir and I were in charge of the cookies. At one point, the audience also requested tea to go with the cookies, and threatened to strike if Chama did not provide it. But so many glasses got broken that Grandmother Lalla Mani intervened and prevented us from ever serving tea again. "Theater is a sinful activity to begin with," she said. "It is not mentioned in the Koran, and no one ever heard about it in either Mecca or Medina. Now, if careless women
still insist on indulging in theater, so be it. Allah will make everyone pay for their sins on Judgment Day. But breaking my son's tea glasses just because Asmahan, that scandalous lazybones is getting married, is utter recklessness." After this, the theater marriages had to be celebrated in a very ascetic fashion and so we handed out small cookies, often prepared by Aunt Habiba, at the last minute. You had to treat the audience well, if you wanted them to stick around.

  But to return to the play. You had not even finished your cookies when Prince Hassan threw out Asmahan, and Chama appeared on stage, with death-like powdered cheeks, carrying a big trunk, on her way to Cairo. The chorus would sing about separation, painful weaning and exile, while Aunt Habiba would whisper to Mother, "Asmahan was only seventeen when she got divorced. What a shame! But then it was her only chance to get out of those stifling Druze Mountains. When you think about it, divorce is always a kind of an advancement. It forces you to take on adventure, which most of the time, you could do without."

  What made it all especially interesting, was that Prince Hassan threw his wife out because she wanted him to take her to cabarets and out dancing! Not only did she wear Westernstyle dresses with low necklines, high heels, and short hair, but she also wanted to frequent dance halls where people sat in stiff Western chairs around high tables, and talked nonsense or danced until dawn. During this scene, Cliama would walk forward on the stage, pale and quivering, with her eyes half closed. "Asmahan wanted to go to chic restaurants, dance like the French, and hold her Prince in her arms," she would say. "She wanted to waltz away with him all night, instead of standing on the sidelines behind curtains, watching him deliberate in endless, exclusively male tribal counsels. She hated the whole clan and its senseless, cruel law. All she wanted was to drift away into bubble-like moments of happiness and sensual bliss. The lady was no criminal; she meant no harm."

  At this point, Aunt Habiba would interrupt the show. "I never dreamed of such things," she would chant, imitating one of Asmahan's melodies. "And I got divorced just the same! So remember ladies, please, don't restrict yourselves. An Arab woman who does not go after the moon is a total idiot."

  "Be quiet!" everyone would call out, and then Chama would resume her dramatization of Asmahan's sensuous quest for romance in a society where the veil choked women's most elementary whims. As I watched Chama perform, I vowed to myself that when I became a grownup woman as tall as she, I definitely would be affiliated with a theater of some sort. I would dazzle Arab crowds, neatly seated in rows and looking up at me, and tell them about how it felt to be a woman intoxicated with dreams in a land that crushes both the dreams and the dreamer. I would make them cry over wasted opportunities, senseless captivities, smashed visions. And then, once they were on the same wavelength as I, I would, like Asmahan and Chama, sing of the wonders of self-exploration and the thrills of adventurous leaps into the unknown.

  I shed many tears over Asmahan's tragic life during those afternoon theater sessions on that remote terrace. I assisted Chama in her short-lived Lebanese adventures, while at the same time keeping an eye on the shifting stars up above my head. Theater, that spelling out of dreams and giving up of body to fantasy, was so essential. I wondered why it was not declared a sacred institution.

  13.

  THE HAREM GOES

  TO THE MOVIES

  ALTHOUGH OFTEN DISMISSED as trivial, in our house, entertainment drew crowds. As soon as the women finished their domestic chores, they would rush to inquire where Aunt Habiba was telling her stories, or where Chama was presenting her plays. Entertainment thrived in out-of-the-way spaces, top floors, and terraces. Everyone was supposed to bring along aglissa (cushion) to sit on, and tried to find a good spot up front, on the carpet which defined the audience space. But many did not respect this rule, and brought stools instead. They were forced to sit in the back.

  Seated comfortably on my cushion, with my legs crossed, I journeyed all over the world, hopping from one island to the next on boats that were always being wrecked and then miraculously set afloat again by resourceful princesses. When the excitement got really intense, I would take my cushion into my lap and rock back and forth, riding spellbound on the strange words being tossed out at the audience by Chama and Aunt Habiba, the high priestesses of imagination. Aunt Habiba was certain that we all had magic inside, woven into our dreams. "When you happen to be trapped powerless behind walls, stuck in a dead-end harem," she would say, "you dream of escape. And magic flourishes when you spell out that dream and make the frontiers vanish. Dreams can change your life, and eventually the world. Liberation starts with images dancing in your little head, and you can translate those images in words. And words cost nothing!" She constantly kept hammering at us about this magic within, saying that it was all our fault if we did not make the effort to bring it out. I could make frontiers vanish too - that was the message I got, sitting on my cushion, up on that terrace. It all seemed so natural as I rocked myself back and forth, throwing my head back occasionally to feel the starlight shining on my face. Theaters ought to be always situated high up, on whitewashed terraces, near the skies. In Fez, on summer nights, faraway galaxies joined in our theater, and there were no limits to hope.

  Oh, yes, Aunt Habiba, I thought, I will be a magician.

  I will cross past this strictly codified life waiting for me in the narrow Medina streets, with my eyes fixed on the dream.

  I will glide through adolescence, holding escape close to my chest, like the young European girls hold their dance partners close to theirs,

  Words, I will cherish.

  I will cultivate them to illuminate the nights,

  Demolish walls

  And dwarf gates.

  It all seems easy, Aunt Habiba, with you and Chama going in and out of the fragile draped theater,

  So Frail in the late night, on that remote terrace.

  But so vital, so nonrishing, so wonderful.

  I will become a magician.

  I will chisel words to share the dream and render the frontiers useless.

  During the day, Chama and Aunt Habiba waited patiently for the night, when they could summon imagination and arouse dreams, while sleep knocked out the less curious among us. Many of the women of the household lived for those nights, but the young men, sometimes called upon to take part in our plays, never responded with more than a mild enthusiasm. They did not care that much for storytelling and theater, for they, unlike the women, had unlimited access to our neighborhood Boujeloud Cinema, located next door to the hammam.

  You knew that the young men were going to the movies when you saw Zin and Jawad put on their red bow ties. Often Chama would try to follow her brothers, begging them to take her along. Reluctant, they would argue that she had not gotten permission from either her own father or from mine. But she would try to follow them anyway, hurriedly putting on her djellaba, veiling her face with a black chiffon scarf, and rushing to the door behind them. Ahmed the doorkeeper would stand up as soon as he saw her. "Chama," he would say, "Please don't force me to run after you in the street again today. I have no instructions to let women out." But Chama would just keep on walking, as if she did not hear, and sometimes she did manage to slip out, so fast was she. Then all the courtyard women would flock to the hall to see what would happen next. A few minutes later, you saw Ahmed panting and puffing very loudly as he pushed Chama through the door. "I have not been instructed that women were going to the movies," he would repeat firmly. "So, please, don't create trouble for me, don't force me to run at my age."

  Mother would get very agitated when Chama failed to escape and was brought back like a criminal. "You wait and see, Ahmed," she would prophesize, "very soon you'll lose your job, for women will be free to run around the world." She would then put her arm around Chama and cross the hall back to the courtyard, with all the other women following behind and mumbling about rebellion and punishment. Chama would remain silent, big tears running down her cheeks, and after a while, she would ask Mother in
total bewilderment, "I am seventeen and I can't see a movie because I am a woman! What justice is this? Who is going to lose in this Arab world if girls and boys are treated equally?"

  Only when a film was a big hit, and the entire population of Fez turned out to see it, were the Mernissi women allowed to go too. That was the case with all of Asmahan's films, and with the film Daiiaiiir, about the singing jarya, or slave girl, who so captivated Caliph Harun al-Rashid with her voice and wit that he forgot all about his other one thousand jarya. Dananir was played by Oum Kelthoum, and brought to life by her incredibly powerful voice.

  Dananir was based on history. Caliph Harun met a beautiful slave girl named Dananir during a samar evening. Samar was a sleepless night when an overworked caliph tried to relax and listen to poetry and music, either before or after important events, such as battles, dangerous voyages, and difficult negotiations. The most talented of artists were summoned to the palace, and since women were allowed to compete with men in these affairs, very soon Baghdad's jarya outpaced their male teachers, and samar became a women's affair. It was the opposite of a battlefield.

  Caliph Harun badly needed to relax, because he spent most of his days fighting. During his reign, the Muslim empire stretched as far as China. but when it came to Dananir, Caliph Harun had a problem. She belonged to his own vizier, the highest official in his court, Yahya Ibn Khaled al-Barmaki.1 And the Vizier loved Dananir. So the Caliph kept his feelings for Dananir secret, and started visiting the Vizier regularly, in hopes of hearing Dananir's voice again. He could not openly acknowledge the love she inspired in him, but before long the entire city of Baghdad knew his secret anyway, and five hundred years later, the city of Fez still flocked to the movie theaters to witness his thwarted love, as filmed by Egyptian studios.