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Life is a cabaret! For those in early twentieth-century Ezbekiyya, a central district of Cairo, Egypt, the parties never stopped. At the neighborhood’s heart was a constellation of roads lined with dance halls, bars, and cafés. On Wish al-Birka Street, a vibrant red-light district hummed through the night. From the middle of Wish al-Birka ran Bab al-Bahri Street, home to the famous Alhambra Casino. A block east, toward the Nile River, Emad al-Din Street was long and wide, with a tram line down its center, taking passengers past the city’s most popular theatres and cabarets to the northern suburbs of Shubra and Abbasiyya. The Italian-owned Grand Kursaal Music Hall stood where Emad al-Din Street crosses Alfi Bey Street, its two-story facade adorned with stars and crescent moons that evoke the nation’s flag.
British novelist Norma Lorimer, who visited Cairo in 1907, described Ezbekiyya as she saw it from the terrace of her hotel: “It is so strange, so picturesque, so unceasingly amusing, so changingly changing, so simple, yet so depraved,” she wrote. “Here was the most delightful feast of colour and oriental happenings you could ever hope to find.”