Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems

Moroccan author Fatema Mernissi believes that some of the most sage guidance that she ever received was her grandmother's insistence that nothing teaches or empowers a woman better than travel. To Mernissi, grandmother Yasmina's advice to "use your wings" was paradoxical: She herself had led a restricted and traditional life, having been raised in a harem and remaining illiterate until her death. Nevertheless, her words (and, one gathers, her indomitable spirit) gave her granddaughter a determination to view a world beyond the veils. What Mernissi discovered in her immersion in the "civilized West" dispels any notions of cultural superiority in gender relations. In Scheherazade Goes West, she presents a candid picture of invisible harems in places very cosmopolitan.