Women organized themselves into small teams formed along friendship and interest lines, and split the chores among them" (p. 69).
Fatima describes the women's gardens. The men's garden was quiet and formal. But in the women's garden, "each co-wife claimed her own little plot of land which she declared to be her garden, where she raised vegetables, hens, ducks, and peacocks" (p. 50). The women's gardens bustled with activity. Gardening was the favorite work of Fatima's grandmother, Yasmina, whose apartment was simple because she didn't "care about all that, as long as she could...have enough space to experiment with trees and flowers, and raise all kinds of ducks and peacocks" (p. 50) Yasmina also "took care of Tamou when she was sick..." Tamou had a nervous breakdown (actually, post-stress disorder) after her family was killed in the war. Yasmina "cared for her for months until she recovered" (p. 52).
The work of status enhancement is work invariably done by women, which involves putting on a show for others that builds and maintains the status of the man who "owns" her and helps his career advance.
It includes things like volunteer work, arranging dinner parties, and organizing charity events. In the harem the #1 wife, usually from a rich family, lived more opulently and conspicuously than the other wives who were from more humble beginnings. In the city harem where the writer lived, Lali Mani was this person. She was excused from household duties. Her salon was "furnished with silk brocade-covered sofas and cushions running along all four walls; a huge...
6). Lali Mani wanted respect and "to sit elegantly dressed in her bejeweled headdress, and look silently out into the courtyard" (p. 7). Being a status symbol is a form of this kind of work.
Finally, the work of morale building is almost always the work of women. Women arrange social events. They do the work for holiday celebrations, rituals, religious observances, visiting the sick, writing letters, calling people, planning weddings, outings, and family reunions. In Dreams of Trespass, the women organize a picnic once a year when everyone leaves the harem for a whole day in the country. They also plan and throw parties. For example, when Tamou, who had come there to live, began to recover from her illness, "Yasmina organized a party for her. The co-wives gathered together in her pavilion and sang so she would feel that she belonged" (p. 52). Later on, Tamou teaches these women how to ride horses and organizes races with prizes for the winners.
One of the striking things about Dreams of Trespass is that although the women long for freedom and dream of walking through the gates alone into the streets, of living in the world instead of in the harem, they manage to find fun and a degree of happiness at the same time. Their happiness often stems from their work. There's a kind of courage in them that women have always exhibited no matter what their particular oppression. It is an unrecognized courage that…
