OvercommuniKate’s Reviews > Midnight in Cairo: The Divas of Egypt's Roaring '20s > Status Update

Okay so the author says some venues didn't have to follow the rules of decorum. Okay but what are the rules, why do they exist, and why does not everyone have to follow them.

I wish the book started with the story of Ghawazi and khawal (dancing troubadors) where after Muhammad Ali ban on women dancing in 1834 led to even more cross dressing. It pisses me off in Part 1 they hid the ball that laws prevented women from working. Ali was Albanian viceroy in Ottoman Empire who expanded the Egypt empire of control. His family ruled Egypt for 220 years.

It's really frustrating that when mentioning which starlet was Jewish or Christian is simply an aside. No considering why this star is the first Muslim star and what it meant for a Jewish woman to say diva stuff (all men cheat, etc) to reporters versus if a Muslim woman. Egypt wants to throw off the shackles of UK while doing the same to Sudan. Egypt hated the USA exoticization, but then the same of Cairo dancers

I feel like going from troubadors to vaudeville to established theater like opera to then pop star that happens in the 20s is really muddled in the first Part because of how the author structures it. But more than anything, the author's inability to discuss religion is a massive elephant in the room. Women couldn't vote until 1957. Why? British women got it partially the year before the Egyptian Revolution

Gender equality first appeared in Article 31 of the 1956 constitution. In contrast, the previous 1923 constitution called for equality for all Egyptians, without discrimination with respect to “origin, language, or religion,” without mentioning sex. In addition to gender equality, the 1956 constitution introduced the tension between women’s public work and her duties to the family” (Article 19).

I think this author is doing a disservice by not explaining more on this belly dancing part because it's still being litigated in the Egyptian Supreme Court to this day (lawsuit ~4 years ago). Amira Jamarkani is a Sam Diego professor whose written about the Chicago Worlds Fair introducing belly dancing to Americans and it fed into this change post Victorian times but not quite sure where women's bodies fit.

I really hate that this book isn't going chronological. Like start with when women were banned from theater and go through how then belly dancing was banned. Interestingly, belly dancing is still highly regulated in Egypt. Illegal to do a belly dancing in shorts and foreign dancers often get denied visas on the basis their art is diluting Egyptian heritage. And the choreography is also regulated still today.

I feel like the author blew past the irony of Egyptians not wanting to be colonized by Britain but Egypt also wanting to colonize the Sudan.

I wish there was more outside pop culture history used to contrast what was going on in Cairo. I feel like if you have no knowledge of the 1920s you're not going to see the differences because the author has such a narrow view. Specifically I think the diversity of religion and backgrounds is interesting and isn't all that different from Europe but that's based on my prior knowledge.

I think it's very obvious this author is a man without a pop culture background because, no it's not weird that women wrote more theater memoirs than men at this time, they had fewer economic opportunities. Writing a memoir is what you do when you need money. Plus, it was novel and interesting to the public.