Prologue

PROLOGUE

It is unbelievable to me that I have written the first chapters of my journal for an audience I do not know and cannot picture. Nevertheless, I write regardless, it fills my time if nothing else. I write in French, slipping back to Arabic occasionally when lost for a word or phrase. Why do I write in French? Because to me it is easier and quicker than writing Arabic script, and here, in the harem, no one reads or understands French. If others found my journal, my words would remain a mystery, which at this time is the way I wish it to be.

Previously, my short stories and poems have been for family and close friends, but they are all now far away, and I find myself confused and wandering without their direction. Am I telling a story or writing a diary, and for whom? My style flows as the moment takes me, so please bear with me. It is after all, just a collage of thoughts and moments in the life of a harem girl—many trivial, some momentous.

From here onward, I shall add to my journal as my life unfolds. I chance that my experiences and writings will be worthy of your reading—whoever you may be.

To find a beginning I must go back to when I was fourteen, when I was neither a child nor an adult. I had stopped playing children’s games such as pick-up-stones, dressing up in my mother’s clothes, and reading books in the forked branch of the old olive tree. Boys had become exciting to me, they made me blush and feel uneasy, and I had my showings—but in my mind, I was not yet a woman. At that point, I had no plans for my life—what fourteen-year-old does? Certainly, I had romantic thoughts, love and marriage, and other dreams young girls have, even so, being a slave girl in a harem was not one of them. I was not seeking change; I was content in life to follow the path that unfolded before me.