About a year ago I came across a turn of the century book of poems about Cairo's nightlife district with a picture of an American woman I had never heard of:
مدام شيمي
I just discovered that she was the Princess de Chimay, one of the most scandalous women of her age [thread]

She was born Clara Ward in Detroit in 1873, daughter of the rich industrialist Eber Ward. As a teenager she went to Europe and caught the eye of the Belgian Prince of Caraman-Chimay. They were married in 1890 when she was only 16. But she caused a huge scandal in 1896 when she...

left the prince and ran off with a Hungarian-Roma violinist called Rigó Jancsi. For the next 20 years she lived in infamy: newspapers picked apart the details of her life, all kinds rumours circulated, one professor of psychiatry wrote an academic article on her sexual exploits.

There are too many stories to detail here (she eventually left Rigo for an Italian tourist guide and died in Padua in 1916) so I will focus on her notorious time living in Cairo. She and Rigo moved to the city in 1898 and lived there for several years...

Of course, the Western press printed sensationalist stories about the huge marble palace she had allegedly bought in the desert, about the lavish parties she attended, the new friends she was making in Egypt's aristocracy, her drug use, and the American eagle tattoo on her back.

The Western press reports, though, were partial and full of contradictions (several reports appeared that either Rigo or the Princess had died, which then had to be swiftly retracted). Browsing through the Egyptian press recently, I came across a totally different story from 1932

While living in Cairo, they said, the Princess de Chimay also ran The Sphinx, the city's most popular dancehall, where Cairo's elite would when it opened at midnight (after they had been at the theatre). It was decorated with paintings of the princess, who would always be there

Her stay in Cairo only lasted a few years. By 1904 she had left Rigo, who moved on to New York and was playing with a band in Harlem. She had married an Italian was mostly living in Europe (though she did continue to visit) and the Sphinx had closed down.

When she died in 1917, the Nashville Tennessean printed a whole page article detailing how her moral failings had led to her ruin. Her stay in Cairo was relegated to a tiny reference but they did not forget it in Egypt.