Princess Aisha, Daughter of the King of Morocco

The first Moroccan woman to speak unveiled before crowds; she wears "blue jeans," drives a car, swims, rides horses, and dances.

Last month Princess Aisha, daughter of the Sultan of Morocco, provoked a crisis between the Arab states and Morocco by accepting the honorary presidency of one of the Jewish societies concerned with giving Jewish youth vocational training in preparation for their transfer to Israel. The Arab League intervened with King Mohammed V, and official circles considered this incident a point of weakness for the Arab front on the international plane. The King expressed his regret that this error had occurred, and said that the princess had not been aware of the committee's aims... But no official reports have arrived confirming that Princess Aisha herself has gone back on her earlier decision.

One recalls the extraordinary warmth of welcome with which the Moroccan princess was received early last September in Damascus and Beirut, on the morrow of the convening of the general congress of the Arab Women's Union in the Syrian capital. In these parts the princess was treated as a great leader and a symbol of the refined Arab woman.

The newspapers scrambled to reach Princess Aisha and set down information about her, but she was reserved and did not open up in her interviews with the journalists, either as they wished or as she wished. It was noticed that the hand of her escorts lay above her hand, and that their word came before hers... The editor-in-chief of this magazine met with her at the time, but obtained not a single answer from her lips... The princess kept murmuring apologies... absent-minded! Yet she insisted on keeping the list of questions, promising to answer them from Rome — the first stop at which her plane would land before reaching Rabat... Despite this, the answers never arrived either... And doubts circled in the editor's head: what prevented Princess Aisha from keeping her promise? In our questions we had nothing but good intentions; our first and last aim was to introduce the leader of Moroccan womanhood to our readers by way of her upbringing, her culture, her personal inclinations, and the pattern of life she leads...

And behold, the latest issue of the American magazine Ladies' Home Journal brings us the story we sought, in abundance beyond all abundance... We pluck from it this article here, asking ourselves as we do: "Through what breach, one wonders, did the patriotism of Princess Aisha crack, that she should disown the first principle on which the ranks of all the Arabs have agreed — I mean, opposition to Zionism?..."

We still hope and trust that the princess will turn back from her error, to prove that she is fit to lead the Arab women of Morocco and worthy of our love and our respect... Otherwise we shall declare against her a war without quarter.

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It is a familiar sight in the cities of Morocco today to see hundreds of girls, with their clean faces and their loose-flowing Moroccan garments, setting off happily for school, with the picture of their king's daughter — Aisha! — dangling, as is proper, from their necks. "With my soul... I would ransom Princess Aisha," cried one of them; "she is our leader to freedom!"

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On her blue "mosaic" terrace, at her residence on one of the heights of Rabat, the princess herself sat amid a heap of blue and yellow cushions, sipping her tea from a glass, her eye on the verdant garden, talking of freedom. She seemed somehow tired and weak of faith... Behind her stretch centuries upon centuries of long-rooted heritage and antiquated thinking... It is a heritage most of which she takes pride in, but if Morocco is to catch up with the caravan of civilization it must come out of the shell of the past, and this is to be done by "renewal," not by "revolution" — the latter destructive, the former constructive. And it is for the rising generation to carry out this renewal...

Princess Aisha enjoys, in her country today and under the direction of her father King Mohammed V, a freedom that is not inconsiderable. She wears European clothes; she walks in the streets and mounts the platforms of public gatherings unveiled; she drives a car; she swims. But she is not permitted to attend public parties likely to include unmarried young men. She is free to dance in France and in America, but not in her own country, where she lowers her gaze merely upon meeting a strange man face to face... Her friends sometimes describe her as "a bird in a golden cage!"

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Two civilizations contend in Morocco today: the first Eastern, Arab, and conservative; the second Western, French, and extreme. Mohammed V is trying to unite these two civilizations, borrowing from the second everything that may advance his country, on condition that it not collide with the principles and laws of the Islamic religion. The King derived his power, at the outset, from the French. It was they who chose him, over his elder brothers, in 1927, to succeed his father on the throne. And it was they who permitted him, after his coronation, a journey to Europe, from which he returned full of admiration for the manifestations of Western civilization and eager to borrow from it whatever his religion and his traditions would allow. And so, when his firstborn Moulay Prince Hassan was born in 1929, the Sultan went himself to Paris — he was then only 19 years old — and brought back with him a complete layette for the child, and a French governess. A year later Princess Aisha was born; in 1933 Princess Malika was born, and then Princess Nezha in 1939 — all four of one mother.

As is the custom in royal families, the upbringing of the royal children was entrusted first to a nurse, then to a governess, and their mother was rarely permitted to interfere with the precise and rigorous order of their lives. They ate, slept, exercised, studied, and prayed by the clock... Each child had a Moroccan nurse and a French one, and so they were trained in the Moroccan and French ways of life at one and the same time, and learned the Western rules of conduct in addition to their Arab Moroccan traditions. The King personally supervised this double upbringing, visiting his children several hours a day, watching them at their lessons, their meals, or their play, and giving his orders and directions... In their little world they were allowed to call him "Papa" instead of "Your Majesty." It was he who wiped away their tears and kissed their knees when they tripped and fell in their play and their running... And so the little princes and princesses learned to love their father and respect him at one and the same time.

In their private palace he showered them with gifts and sumptuous clothes. On the national holidays they appeared in ornamented Moroccan dress, while their wardrobes were filled with the newest and most elegant Parisian clothes... for every occasion and every season.

With the passing days their world widened, and its bounty overflowed in the form of gifts of every color and every desire. In what ease and luxury the four royal children lived! Yet they remained in the atmosphere of the palaces and rarely accompanied their father to public ceremonies, except on Fridays, when he went to the mosque to perform the prayer. Little Aisha would wear a short white frock and a sun hat — and her French governess insisted that she wear gloves! Hassan wore a long white djellaba, in keeping with the local dress.

In their private school, built expressly in the neighborhood of the palace, the little royal children enjoyed everything that could occur to a teacher's mind in the way of modern means of instruction and recreation together: a swimming pool, a tennis court, and a playing field with complete athletic equipment. The children learned skiing, horseback riding, and swimming at the hands of the most skillful instructors...

"I still love swimming, riding, tennis, and skiing," says Princess Aisha, "despite the strictness imposed on us while we were learning them, by the instructors and by my father... He was most insistent that we master these sports, and he was right..."

In this soft and happy atmosphere Aisha grew up. When she reached sixteen, having finished her lessons at the palace school, her father the King summoned her, handed her a paper, and said to her in a serious tone: "This is a speech on the subject of 'the awakening of woman.' You are to deliver it before a great gathering of women — and without a veil!" And so Aisha took up the speech and did as her father commanded; nor did the "heroine" know, that day, how great an effect her speech would have on the daughters of her sex, who regarded her as the standard-bearer of woman on the road to renaissance and emancipation.

Princess Aisha then went on to complete her higher studies at a French college for girls in the European quarter of Rabat, where most of her companions were the daughters of French army men and senior administrative officials. In this period the princess was keenly intelligent, upright, frank, and modest... So her companions described her, and she is still distinguished by these same qualities. But after four years of study at the French institute, the princess found herself frequently clashing with her companions in opinion and belief... so much so that they often misconstrued the freedom she enjoyed, and criticized her conduct and her manner of dress...

"But," her father reassured her, "no one on earth escapes the tongues of criticism — how much less a princess?... And you are in the right, so long as you believe that your conduct is correct... Only, you would do well to keep away from the eyes of the photographers while you are in your bathing suit... It is enough that people know you swim!"

As for the veil, which Princess Aisha was the first to cast off, the girls and women of Morocco cast it off after her by the thousands upon thousands... Once the princess put on a veil, by way of a joke, and went out with a bouquet of girl friends to watch the King's procession and the celebrations of the anniversary of his accession to the throne. She remembers, laughing, how she kept tripping over her robes!...

With the days the King's popularity grew and his leadership gathered strength; the French feared for their supremacy, and by a contrived plot they surrounded the palace and led him away captive to the island of Corsica. That was in the summer of 1953. Three days later his family was permitted to join him — it all happened with extreme speed and without preparation — and when they returned to their palace two years afterward they found it in a pitiable state.

We shall not speak at length of the days of captivity, for their events are painful to every member of the royal family. One of their close friends has affirmed that what they suffered from the arbitrary cruelty of the French and their ill-treatment was many times what Napoleon suffered from the English! The King's repeated protests, official and unofficial, availed nothing... Two years passed with Morocco in a state of mourning, expressing its deep feeling and its love for its king in every kind of way: the mosques deserted, the women wrapped in black, and the demands for his return to the throne pouring in from every quarter — this besides the outside pressure for Morocco to be granted her independence... At last the French were compelled to bow to modern history, and the exiled Sultan was invited to Paris to discuss Morocco's independence; and he brought his family with him.

Finally, in the summer of 1955, the Sultan boarded the airplane returning to Rabat, and minutes after him flew his family's plane. Before landing at the airport, the two planes circled over Rabat four times at a low altitude, while the massed crowds cheered and waved to their beloved king. It was a moment in which joy was overwhelming, and royal tears were shed in both planes, moved by that magnificent scene of loyalty — the loyalty of a people to its king... And when Princess Aisha at last stepped down from her plane, throngs of Moroccan women met her, and all at once they lifted their veils and flung them to the ground, crying with one voice: "Long live Aisha! Long live the renaissance of woman! Long live the independence of Morocco!" From that day Princess Aisha was consecrated as the leader of Moroccan womanhood and the symbol of its renaissance.

In the winter of 1956–57 she was permitted to accompany her brother Prince Hassan to the United States, where he took part in the ceremonies of Morocco's admission to membership in the United Nations. But this journey was not a very happy one, because most of the time was taken up with the banquets and official receptions that the princess detests — this besides her ignorance of English and her consequent inability to mingle in American society, which brought her only boredom and weariness.

The princess by nature has no inclination for formalities. In her dress she prefers Italian "sport" clothes; she touches her lips with a rose red and the nails of her hands and feet with the same color. She is, to a degree, elegant in her simplicity, but far from being extravagant in adornment after the fashion of Frenchwomen.

After her return to Morocco her life took on a special order, filled with duties and responsibilities. She is president of dozens of charitable and humanitarian societies, and is often invited to speak, or to open an institute, or to patronize a charity bazaar, or a ceremony for the awarding of school diplomas, or the laying of a cornerstone for a national project, and the like. Sometimes she accompanies her father and her brother the Crown Prince to public functions, where one of her chief duties is to look after her pampered little sister Amina, a child of three who insists on accompanying her father and climbing up to his lap and his shoulders...

Until recently Princess Aisha slept in one room with her sister Princess Malika; now, however, a private bedroom has been furnished to her own taste. It is well aired and well lighted, modern, gay in color, with blue curtains... In the room are a bookcase, a radio, a gramophone, and a large collection of dance-music records. Her favorite singer is Louis Armstrong.

Princess Aisha drives her American car herself; she is skilled at the wheel and loves speed, and so the traffic policeman often stops her — and no sooner does he make out who she is than he apologizes!...

Aisha has, besides Malika, a beautiful sister named Nezha, 18 years old, who now lives in a modern villa adjoining the palace. On a visit she made last year to Paris, the newspapers published a picture showing her with bare shoulders, whereupon her father cabled her: "If this is how you dress at seventeen, what, pray, will you be wearing at twenty-five? Come home at once!"

There is also Prince Abdullah, aged ... years, a handsome young man who is studying law under private tutors. And Prince Hassan is, of course, the official Crown Prince, occupied most of the time with learning his responsibilities and acquainting himself with his duties as heir to the King.

And there is the Sultan's first wife — the mother of Princess Aisha and her brothers and sisters, except the youngest, Amina. She is forty-five, dark, attractive, and intelligent. She manages the affairs of her "little kingdom" and organizes the official and private banquets, but she does all this from behind the veil, and lives in social seclusion. Within the circle of the royal family, however, she enjoys a certain freedom, and there are those who affirm that she swims with them in the private pool. The girls run after her, snatching at her jewelry; she pretends to be vexed, but soon enough she joins them in their teasing and their fun...

There is also the second wife, who is more beautiful than the first and brighter of complexion, and of an age with the princesses; hers is Princess Amina — and the two wives live in accord and harmony.

In this atmosphere Princess Aisha goes on performing her mission to the women of Morocco. But she has reached twenty-seven, and she is intelligent, refined, and charming — does she not think of marriage, now that its season has come?

Opinions conflict on this subject, but all the signs indicate that Princess Aisha, like every woman, has her dreams and the wishes of her heart; and that she longs to meet the prince of her dreams — the more so since the Moroccan girl, however far she may go in culture and freedom, cannot enjoy her freedom and her happiness except after marriage... Hence the look of distraction, perplexity, and anxiety that has settled in her two black eyes...

Her father the King is a modern man, but he has not yet attempted to beckon to the fortunate young man who is to be his son-in-law; he leaves his daughter entire freedom to choose her bridegroom, on one condition only — that he be "a Muslim." But how is she to choose when, for all her freedom, she is not permitted to meet unmarried men?... It remains for Princess Aisha to arm herself with patience, awaiting her destined one, who shall storm the walls of the palace and knock with the golden door-handle, asking for the royal hand!

...Until this miracle comes to pass, Princess Aisha will remain in the whirl of her daily routine; for despite her many tasks, her great responsibilities, and the people's devotion to her person, a shade of melancholy and weariness lies over her countenance. She doubtless feels an emptiness, and longs for a settled life; and nothing will fill this emptiness but a great love, to sweep her head over heels and carry her on its rosy wings to paradise... When, then, will this miracle come to pass... when, one wonders?