Fatima Mernissi

This is the author. She is a girl growing up in a harem in Morocco as the story opens. Fatima is a precocious child and she is very close to her mother. It is from her mother and grandmother that she comes to realize some important facts of life, specifically as it pertains to women living in Moroccan harems. Fatima puts a great deal of thought into every aspect of life. For example, when her mother says that her goal for Fatima is that Fatima should be happy "one hundred percent of the time," Fatima immediately begins to think about how a person would go about accomplishing this. She puts the same level of thought into understanding all aspects of life and especially wants to understand and explore the ideas of a frontier, or boundary, between the harem and the outside world. Fatima knows firsthand about the...