Fikriyya Husni was a well-known orator of the 1919 anticolonial revolution in Egypt and a founding member of the nationalist party Wafd’s Women’s Central Committee (WWCC). Despite the years I had passed reading about this revolution, I wasn’t aware of her role until I came across her name in an article published in the weekly al-Mussawwar on October 14, 1927, about the commemoration ceremony held forty days after the death of the nationalist leader Saad Zaghlul. In the midst of a vivid report, the journalist notes that when she took the podium to recite an elegy she had composed for Zaghlul—the only woman among several prestigious orators—some sheikhs and other men ostensibly left the room.
I was intrigued by this woman, by her determined presence onstage. My first online search about her led me to another anecdote, which also placed Husni on a podium—albeit in a much less hostile...
