…if towns have a gender then Cairo is a lady…Its mood is gay, rather flashily romantic in the evening, shrill and ugly in the morning. By instinct, I am afraid, the lady was a prostitute.
-African Trilogy, Alan Moorehead
People applauded and called out “Allah!” and “Ya Sitt!”
-The Voice of Egypt: Um Kalthum, Virginia Danielson, describing her concerts when she first began to sing
Al-Qāhira, The Victorious One (f.), Mother of the World, Masr simply put, Egypt herself. In Arabic you say, Ya Rājul!, O Man!, but there is no polite way to address the distaff. You shouldn’t say it crudely and literally, O Woman!, so you say, Ya Sayyida!, O Lady!, which in Egypt gets garbled, as usual in the vernacular, as Ya Sitt!, and to be additionally polite, Ya Sitti!, O My Lady! Ya Qāhira, Ya Sitti, Ya Kawkab al-Sharq! [O Orb of the East!, as Um Kalthum was known- and Egyptians don’t mean it as one half of the way she was built up top.]