"Cairo and the Age of the Hedonists"

Cover of "Egypt's Belle Epoque: Cairo and the Age of the Hedonists."

Cairo has a reputation these days for fundamentalism, anger, hatred, and the like, symbolically summarized by the 1994 stabbing in the neck of a Nobel-prize winning novelist for political reasons. So it was with mild shock that I took in the title of a newly-arrived paperback by Trevor Mostyn from Tauris Parke: Egypt's Belle Epoque: Cairo and the Age of the Hedonists. The book, originally published in the UK in 1989, offers a vivid evocation of the Egyptian capital between (roughly) the accession of Ismail in 1863 and the overthrow of his grandson Farouk in 1952. Mostyn gives a sense of the Europeans' grand life during those nine decades by quoting from journals, travelogues, press clippings, and the like.

As a former resident of Cairo who first arrived in that extraordinary city in 1971, I am highly aware of this layer of the city's history. I lived in the part of town Ismail had constructed, I enjoyed the faded but still recognizable architecture of that period, I hobnobbed a bit with the French-speaking Turko-Egyptian elite, I whiled away afternoons at the Gezira Sporting Club, and I heard reminiscences from old-timers who recalled the monarchy.

By now, this is an all-but vanished world, yet Mostyn's book and my memories both bear on the present, pointing out that the wheels of history never cease from turning:

Huda Sha'rawi (1879-1947), Egyptian feminist.

• A century ago, European culture was on the march, building cathedrals, English-style clubs, Italianate palazzos, and French gardens in Cairo, while today mosques, Islamic cultural centers, madrasas, and interest-free banks are going up throughout the West.

• I lived on the Cairene street named after the feminist Huda Sha'rawi (1879-1947), famous for having publicly cast aside her face-covering in 1923, causing a national scandal; now, Egyptian women are anew covering their faces, often voluntarily.

• The Islamism so rampant today in Cairo was quite absent 35 years ago and may well be as weak in another 35 years.

The lesson is clear; there is no greater mistake than taking present circumstances and extrapolating them outward, assuming that what is must be. (October 12, 2006)

Apr. 9, 2015 update: The Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram recalls today a small but poignant aspect of Cairo in the age of hedonists: the roller-coaster life of Nazli Sabri (1894-1978) who "was the second wife of King Fouad, the mother of King Farouk, the lover and wife of a senior courtier and, eventually, a pauper living in California."

Queen Nazli.