This Week… 10/16/26

I’m Listening to: Nagat ‘Ali (1913-1996) نجاة علي

An Egyptian singer and actress, who, according to the Arabic Wikipedia page, participated in the inauguration ceremony of Egyptian Radio in 1934 with Umm Kulthum and Muhammed Abdel Wahhab, amongst many other things.

I was just flicking through some old notes and noticed I’d underlined her name. I couldn’t picture her face or remember what she sounded like - I’ve not listened much to her songs - so I went straight to YouTube. And wow! I’m really glad I made a note! She has an amazing voice, and the music is gorgeous. I definitely need to spend more time going through her recordings!

I’m reading: The Desert War: the classic trilogy of the North Africa Campaign 1940-43. Alan Moorhead.

Was listening to Al Murray and James Holland’s “We Have Ways” WWII podcast and they recommended this trilogy, as a nicely written first-hand account by a war reporter, literally sat on the sidelines watching on as the battles unfolded. It’s definitely holding my attention and a good read. But there are some really terrible takes on the virtues of the British Empire, and on the justifications for the colonial war. For example, this passage:

“Nor were we more than a few days in Khartoum when we found how sorely unprepared for war both psychologically and materially was the place. Most of the white men had been in the colony for years, building by sheer hard work in a difficult climate an administration and an economy that was a model of government anywhere. Unlike the administrations of Egypt, the Sudan officials had made their homes there and established families and identified themselves with the country. They had won over the confidence of the natives. They had, moreover, a great deal of sympathy for the Italian settlers and administrators across the border who in the few years they had been in Abyssinia were making a titanic effort to produce another model colony as well. Friendships had naturally grown up between Italians and British. … Now all that these administrators had painfully built up through the years was to be torn down and thrown away in warfare. The bridges they had built, the roads they had forced through mountains and across deserts, the railways and fine new houses and waterworks they had forged in this barren waste, were suddenly to be destroyed.”

(Location 549 in my kindle ebook, Aurum Press).

I will never understand how this kind of thinking, and action, was the accepted norm. Or why it persists.