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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 40 (2008), 78. Printed in the United States of America

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Euro-Egyptian Romance in Turn of the Century CairoM ARIO M. R UIZDepartment of History, Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.; e-mail:hismmr@hofstra.eduDOI: 10.1017/S0020743807080026

I put on a Malayia [robe] so as to be admitted. I sat on [a] bench withother native women & as he passed fell on my knees & asked for expla-nations. He did not reply but went in [his] consulting room. I followed him and upraided [sic] him.

He said his brother was against marr[iage]. I offered to become a Moslem. He did not want me to do so. I upraided

him again & threatened to commit suicide. He laughedsaid nothing. I said, at any rate dont abandon me, help me a little. He replied that

I sh[ould] get someone else, he was not the only man in the world. I reproached him that he had ruined me. 1

The above excerpt is taken from the deposition of a twenty-one-year-old Greek woman named Giorgina Rizzo, who lived in early 20th-century Cairo. Rizzo,

who was on trial in a British consular courtroom for murdering an Egyptiandoctor named Muhammad Abd al-Megid, narrates a dark tale of romance thatcaptivated the jury who heard her case. This case raises a number of questionsabout the nature of love and romance in colonial Egypt. Why, for example, wasthe consular court jury persuaded by Rizzos narrative of love gone awry? Whatdoes her testimony tell us about interethnic and interreligious relationships atthe turn of the century?

Reading Rizzos case enables us to posit a new approach to writing the cos-mopolitan history of transgression in modern Egypt. Specifically, it sheds lighton the various sexual indiscretions that occurred among different classes of Eu-

ropeans and Egyptians. Although Egyptians referred to Europeans by different

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names that emphasized their collective status as foreigners, we need to drawcareful distinctions among the diverse strata of Europeans who lived side byside with local Egyptians. 2 As Rizzos case illustrates, in spite of the religious

and ethnic differences that existed in Cairo, transgressive notions of the illicitand the intimate were embedded in the complex relationships between EuropeanChristians and Egyptian Muslims.

In her testimony, Rizzo alleges that she was seduced by Abd al-Megid afterhe swore on the Qur an that he would marry her. As their relationship pro-gressed, the doctor declared that he could not marry Rizzo because his familyopposed MuslimChristian marriages. Yet familial pressure did not prevent himfrom having discreet sexual relations with her, which resulted in three preg-nancies during their relationship. After a series of botched abortions, Rizzoappeared at the doctors Cairo clinic on 20 September 1914 and shot him

to death. At her trial, Rizzos recollection of the doctors seduction and herthreats to commit suicide underscored the gendered choices available to heras a working-class woman. At the same time, because Rizzo claimed the legalprivilege of being a European in Egypt, the jury found her not guilty of murder. 3

Although exceptional in some regards, Rizzos case is by no means unique. 4

Hundreds of early 20th-century court records provide insight into how ideasof sexual difference, romantic violence, and interethnic relationships were ar-ticulated in colonial Egypt. British consular court records, in particular, of-fer a unique perspective on the range of moral boundaries that demarcatedcolonial life. Through criminal cases from this period, it becomes clear thatcompeting notions of love, jealousy, and respect were intrinsic to Europeanand Egyptian communities that lived alongside each other. Popular notions of respectability, shared ideals of sexual propriety, and charged acts of violencehelped shape the disputes that erupted in Euro-Egyptian neighborhoods. In spiteof linguistic and class differences, the physical proximity of these communitiesoften provided the framework for dangerous liaisons between Egyptian men andEuropean women.

N O T E S

1 United Kingdom National Archives, Foreign Office 841/147, Cairo, case no. 78, 13 October1914.

2 See, for example, Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism,Communism, and Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 18821954 (Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1987); J. R. Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypts Urabi Movement (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993);Robert Vitalis, When Capitalists Collide: Business Conflict and the End of Empire in Egypt (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1995).

3 For a discussion of the legal privileges accorded to Europeans living in Egypt, see JasperBrinton, The Mixed Courts of Egypt (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968); ByronCannon, Politics of Law and the Courts in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Salt Lake City, Utah:University of Utah Press, 1988).

4 For another case involving a GreekEgyptian romance, see Rudolph Peters, The InfatuatedGreek: Social and Legal Boundaries in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Egypte/Monde Arabe 342e

semestere (1998): 5365.