The Politics of Female Notables in Postwar Egypt

A week after unrest broke out in early March 1919 in Cairo, and had started to spread throughout the country, veiled elite Egyptian women “descended from their harems” onto the streets of the city, protesting the military suppression of demonstrations. The women marched down main thoroughfares of Cairo, but before they reached their final destination, they were surrounded by a cordon of British troops. Then, according to accounts, Huda Sharawi, a female notable who would later emerge as the leader of the feminist movement in Egypt, approached the soldiers and challenged them with the words: “We do not fear death, fire your rifle into my heart and make in Egypt a second Miss Cavell.” ¹ What an irony! Here we have an Egyptian woman evoking the memory of nurse Edith Cavell— who had been executed by the Germans in occupied Belgium for spying and had become a symbol of British patriotism—in the midst of a struggle to rid Egypt of the British occupation. Rather than look to the pantheon of ancient Arab or Egyptian female heroes cited in the Arabic press, Sha'rawi drew on the British war experience. Her cultural frame of reference, like that of many Westernized Egyptian notables, was European.