The Women

Women by the hundreds steamed into Rabat to pay their respects to Morocco's newly re-enthroned Sultan Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef. Some were old, some young; some fat, some thin, some rich and some poor, but all had one thing in common: their faces were unveiled.

A generation ago, such exposure would have been tantamount to public nudity. The wearing of the veil--derived not from Koranic law but, like most feminine fashion, from an instinct for artful concealment--has largely disappeared from many modernized corners of Islam, but in Morocco it has hung on to become a symbol of woman's enslavement. Inside the palace, however, sits Morocco's foremost champion of unveiling: the Sultan's own daughter, Princess Lalla (Lady) Aisha.

Slim, svelte and curvesome at 25, she has never worn a veil in her life. Reared in the European manner by a series of

French governesses, she brushes her full lips with pink, wears blue jeans, listens to Frankie Laine records, and goes partying like other girls. It is not the fact that Moroccan women wear veils that bothers Princess Aisha: "The main thing is that they have the right to take them off if they want to."

The Missionary. Actually, the Sultan has only himself to thank for Aisha's militant feminist career. When Aisha was 16 years old, veilless and innocent of all social problems, she was put on a platform to deliver a speech written by her father demanding more rights for women. "I didn't know what it was all about," she recalls, "but after I delivered the speech, I began to understand what had to be done."

In time, Aisha's agitating and her father's condonement of it provided fine ammunition for the Sultan's enemies. Conniving old El Glaoui, scheming with the

French to oust the Sultan, made a practice of indignantly exhibiting like a filthy postcard a picture of the Sultan's daughter clad in a bathing suit. Aisha herself made so many speeches on female emancipation that the French Resident General ordered her to stop. When at last in 1953 El Glaoui had his way and the French packed Ben Youssef into exile with two wives and a few favorite concubines, the aroused women of Morocco were the first to unite in demand for his return. Many were killed in street fighting. Others did their strike duty at home, refusing to have children during the Sultan's absence.

The Weak. When Ben Youssef was reestablished last November on his throne as Mohammed V, the women of Morocco were sufficiently organized to demand their rewards: the right to vote, the right to join unions, the right to better schooling for their children. Some even went so far as to demand a fairer deal in marital matters. As one explained, "Although we cannot be against polygamy, for Allah decreed it, at least the Koran decrees that a man can take [four] wives only if he treats them equally." But the Sultan's daughter, who lives in a palace which not only contains the Sultan's two wives but his more than 20 concubines, is willing to admit that full emancipation will not be achieved overnight. "The older generation," she says, "is not going to do anything. It's the children who must revolutionize Morocco."

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