Midnight In Cairo: Meet Egypt’s 1920s Dance Hall Divas, the Arab World’s First Feminists

Within the thriving music halls of Emad al-Din street was the birthplace of Egypt’s underground feminist movement…

The Roaring Twenties instantly conjures up images of New York, Chicago, Paris or London in a heyday of interwar prosperity and social change – a cultural celebration filled with jazz, dancing ladies and flapper-style fashion. What might be lesser known is that at the same time, Egypt was experiencing its own post-revolution transformation – embracing it in an equally glamorous and lavish style. And in the heart of Cairo, in the dancehalls and cabaret theatres that enjoyed excess and the arts as much as any Western city, was an unlikely group of Arabic-speaking women who were challenging traditional gender roles.

Here, in the buzzing nightlife area of Ezbekiyya, women didn’t only work the clubs and theatres as dancers, singers and actresses, the women were also the troupe leaders, the talent scouts, the club owners, the magazine publishers, the theatre landlords and, in turn, the Arab world’s first celebrities. Here, within the thriving music halls of Emad al-Din street was the birthplace of Egypt’s underground feminist movement.

“There had been a revolution against British rule which had brought the country together, there was a real cultural confidence with people willing to try new things out and questioning the religious and political establishments,” explains British author Raphael Cormack, whose new book Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt’s Roaring ’20s tells the colourful stories of the women at the helm of these theatres and music halls.

“For women in general, there were no political rights, for example there was no right to vote and no real participation in mainstream politics,” writes Raphael.

This doesn’t mean women weren’t campaigning for reform – but success was limited.

Aziza Amir, pioneer of Egyptian cinema, who produced silent drama Laila in 1927 – the first ever Egyptian film

“There was a more educated and elite feminist movement, encouraging female education and pushing for legislation around raising the marriage age, but it had not really been able to put women into mainstream politics,” he continues.

“That’s why the story of these dancehall women is so exceptional, because they don’t come from that background but were the ones changing gender roles, by and large they came from poverty. For many, their fathers had died, others had run away from their families and this was one of the only ways to support themselves financially as a woman in the 1920s.”

Raphael, who has lived in Cairo a number of times, first to study Arabic and then for his PhD in Egyptian Theatre, spent three years researching the lives of the most prominent of these dancehall divas, dedicating a chapter to each of his ‘leading ladies’. One of these women and the real veteran of the scene was singer Mounira al-Mahdiyya.

“She started her career in the very early 20th century near the end of the first generation of these dancers,” explains Raphael. “So she worked in the dancehalls from 1905 to about 1915, she quickly became this enormous star, a big recording artist, and managed to make herself a celebrity and exert a lot of control over her career.”

Rose al-Youssef, actress-turned-magazine Editor

Mounira toured the Arab region as a singer and started accumulating a small fortune and when the British started closing the dancehalls in attempt to curb the spread of nationalist songs and indeed to stop the raucous behaviour of their own soldiers, she was able to move into theatre. She had little acting experience but had the funds to set up her own touring theatre troupe and hire a scriptwriter to work on plays for her – and the power to pick the best roles for herself.

“She was at the very beginning of her acting career and a lot of the best roles were for men – so she took them,” explains Raphael, who believes this stemmed the conversation around traditional female roles. “Also, during the 1920s off the stage, what Mounira and a lot of actresses were doing was having photos taken dressed up as men and sending them to the entertainment press who would print them.” he explains.

‘What’s going on in this period is that the questions about gender and gender roles are being asked and explored, and actresses are a big part of this. It’s a mixture of asking what is a man’s place and what is a woman’s place – what does it mean to be a man or mean to be a woman.”

A postcard of the famous Emad Al Din street in Cairo’s Ezbekiyya

Inspired by Mounira’s success was Badia Masabni, another of these early female entrepreneurs, whose success as a singer and actress meant she had the money and power to buy her own cabaret. “She was an actress in Beirut, and after seeing Mounira’s repertoires in Cairo, Badia started singing Mounira’s songs back in Beirut,” reveals Raphael of Badia, who was one of the first Arab women to fly in an aeroplane.

“Then Badia came back to Cairo and set up one of the best known cabarets in the city. Badia was famous for getting in acts from all over the world, she would tour Europe and the Levant in the off season – that was her trademark.”

And what would the audiences have seen? “A night at Badia’s cabaret would have included her singing and dancing, there would have been a music orchestra and various other cabaret performances including dancing, singing and variety acts of people who could lift a lot of weight or quick-change artists who could change costumes really quickly,” tells Raphael.

Pioneer of the scene, Mounira al-Mahdiyya

Badia would soon become one of the most successful women in Cairo. “The average dancer is probably not making much money, most actresses didn’t have any savings, but people like Badia and a few of the others in the book were making a lot of money,” explains Raphael.

“If you were a singer, it would be from recording and touring around the Arab world as they were paid quite a lot of money per show, Badia is exceptional in that she had financial control over her business and she owned the building where her cabaret was, she was taking in a lot of the money from ticket sales which wasn’t true of the other successful artists at the time.

These women were pioneers in that they were women that owned businesses, although people look at it as a time of debauchery that these women were pushing boundaries.” Badia also launched a women’s-only matinee, putting on shows for a mixture of women who didn’t mind being seen at a cabaret, which was considered less respectable than the theatre.

Badia and her troupe

And what were women like Badia and Mounira spending their hard-earned money on? “The sensible ones were spending money on houses. Mounira was more flamboyant and spent it on a big house boat on the Nile, which she did up in a very lavish style and would throw big parties,” says Raphael of the women who would often be seen in the latest 1920s flapper fashions.

“They were spending money on clothes and costumes too, Mounira had a costume that was studded in gold coins which she kept in a safe between performances because she was so worried about it being stolen.” Alongside their financial success came fame. “These women were the first real Pan-Arab celebrities,” says Raphael. “There were male celebs at the time but they didn’t get the same coverage, they wouldn’t get the covers.”

And with media coverage came levels of backlash from the press. “This was a counter-culture so in the press and in the religious establishment there was a lot of push back against it,” says Raphael. One actress who decided to do something about the negative and salacious coverage was Rose al-Youssef.

“She started off as an actress in various vaudeville plays and performed in an adapted French play called Don’t Walk Around Stark Naked – the press took this rather provocative title and suggested that she appeared naked in the play,” tells Raphael. “Like in all celebrity culture – women are the ones who get most of the coverage but women are also the ones who face all the scrutiny and are asked questions of their personal life.”

New book Midnight In Cairo unearths the stories of the fascinating women on the fringes in 1920s Egypt

Unhappy with the way the press were treating her, Rose took the bold step of starting her own magazine in 1925. “It would be a magazine that took theatre and contemporary literature seriously and she named the magazine after herself – it was very female-driven,” explains Raphael of the weekly publication that tackled taboo subjects, hired female newspaper sellers, and is still going today despite Rose’s death in 1958.

Her other feminist ventures included campaigning for women’s rights to vote – which culminated in her leading a march of performers who were dressed up as Napoleon and Othello.

Other famous names whose career origins stem from treading the stages of Cairo’s many theatres include Aziza Amir – the pioneer of Egyptian cinema, who produced silent drama Laila in 1927 – the first ever Egyptian film. There was also Fatima Rushdi, who grew sick of working for men and formed her own theatrical troupe so she could give herself the best roles – famously playing the roles of both Anthony and Cleopatra  – in separate productions.

The most famous name is definitely that of legendary singer Oum Kalthoum, one of very few women from the scene whose career and legacy stood the test of time. “She is more remembered for her work in ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, but her career starts in the 1920s and is a product of this time,” explains Raphael.

Theatrical troupe founder, Fatma Rushdi

“She goes on to sing on Egyptian state television and radio in the ’60s but she started here like everyone else. She managed to keep her career going for much longer by painting herself as an embodiment of the Egyptian people – something the others didn’t manage to do. She played with the press in a very different way, whereas Mounira played up by dressing up as men and throwing lavish parties. Oum Kalthoum, was more restrained and reserved, she didn’t give many interviews.”

And whereas Oum Kalthoum was given a public funeral in 1975, and mourned by a million people, many of the other women saw their careers and finances nosedive after the 1930s. “There was a big global crash which meant people weren’t going out as much,” explains Raphael.

“And then it morphed into the cinema industry, and in the ’40s and ’50s, men dominated film – even though the first filmmakers were women. There’s still a vibrant dance scene in Egypt but not in that area – which has lost some of its glory. There’s still some cabaret but maybe it’s more seedy, you wouldn’t go for the quality of the dancing.” The dancehalls might be a thing of the past but Midnight in Cairo brings the stories of its most colourful characters back to life – and what a read they make.

Midnight in Cairo by Raphael Cormack is on sale now. 

From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s June 2021 Issue

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