A few years ago I stumbled upon a treasure trove of family photos digitized by my father’s late cousin. Amongst the hundreds of photos, I found this one of my paternal great grandmother that no one in my direct family had seen before. This is the earliest photo we have of her which makes it very special.

Her name was Sekina Abdul Rahman Gamali سكينة عبد الرحمن جمالي and she was about 20 years old in this photo which was taken in Cairo, Egypt on Nov. 13, 1918 by S. Mitry and S. Andonian Studio.

She is dressed in an Ottoman-influenced style typical of urban Egyptian ladies. The most noticeable part of this outfit is her yashmak يشمك, a transparent white face veil made of fine muslin or silk chiffon. Rather than covering her face, it’s hanging on one side with the end tucked into her skirt. Her large black scarf is tied in the back with some of her hair visible. She is wearing an outer skirt of embroidered black silk or satin with a scalloped hem over a dress. Her collar, ankle length skirt, silk stockings, and heels were all signs of European influence on clothing.

At first, it was the clothing that caught my attention but then the date on the photo got me curious to learn more about her journey to Egypt. Her father, originally from Aleppo, was a merchant who had settled in Zanzibar with his wife, a Yemeni poet from Al-Hudaydah. They had 4 children who were all born and raised in Zanzibar. My great grandmother, the youngest child, was married at a very young age to the 8th Sultan of Zanzibar, Sayyid Ali Bin Hamoud. As the wife of the Sultan, she was known as Sayyida سيدة Sekina, an Arabic title which means “noble woman.”

In 1915, a few years after her husband was forced to abdicate by the British, she moved to Egypt along with her mother and her husband’s 2 boys from a previous marriage. Her brother had already been sent to the Saidieh Secondary School in Giza and she had a few Egyptian/Syrian/Turkish cousins living there. She first settled in the Sakakini district and then later moved to Heliopolis.

The plan was for her to reunite with her husband in Cairo but he was not successful in obtaining permission to travel. She was widowed a month after this photo was taken when he passed away in exile in Paris after catching the Spanish flu. Years later, she married my great grandfather, an Egyptian from Minya in Upper Egypt.

She passed away in 1990 when I was 6. I’ve managed to piece her story together over the past year by speaking with my father and his cousins but there are so many unanswered questions about her life that I would have loved to ask her. As you can imagine, I’m also really curious about how she dressed before moving to Egypt! Because of her Syrian origin and her father’s trade with Istanbul, I’m assuming she dressed in the Ottoman-style rather than the style of Omani women in Zanzibar.