Scheherazade Goes West [Paperback]

Fatema Mernissi, the world-renowned Islamic feminist, has shed unprecedented light on the lives of women in the Middle East, in works hailed as enchanting (The New York Times Book Review), exuberant (Elle),and remarkable (The Washington Post Book World).Now, inScheherazade Goes West,Mernissi reveals her unique experiences as a liberated, independent Moroccan woman faced with the peculiarities and unexpected encroachments of Western culture. Her often surprising discoveries about the conditions of and attitudes toward women around the world -- and the exquisitely embroidered amalgam of clear-eyed autobiography and dazzling meta-fiction by which she relates those assorted discoveries -- add up to a deliciously wry, engagingly cosmopolitan, and deeply penetrating narrative.Fatema Mernissiis a professor of sociology at the University of Mohammed V in Rabat, Morocco. She is the bestselling author ofDreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood, The Veil and the Male Elite,andBeyond the Veil.Chapter One: The Tale of the Lady with the Feather Dress

If by chance you were to meet me at the Casablanca airport or on a boat sailing from Tangiers, you would think me self-confident, but I am not. Even now, at my age, I am frightened when crossing borders because I am afraid of failing to understand strangers. To travel is the best way to learn and empower yourself, said Yasmina, my grandmother, who was illiterate and lived in a harem, a traditional household with locked gates that women were not supposed to open. You must focus on the strangers you meet and try to understand them. The more you understand a stranger and the greater is your knowledge of yourself, the more power you will have. For Yasmina, the harem was a prison, a place women were forbidden to leave. So she glorified travel and regarded the opportunity to cross boundaries as a sacred privilege, the best way to shed powerlessness. And, indeed, rumol.