My grandmother Zeinab’s radio sent me to sleep every night for as long as I can remember. Ever since I could sleep away from my mother, and in my grandmother’s room, the radio played quietly in the background. In the darkness and silence of a room meant for sleep, the radio’s faint green light illuminated the rug by the bed, and the familiar voices of Egyptian actors and singers, Amina Rezk, Fouad el-Mohandes, or Mohamed Kandeil hummed. I would lie in bed and drift toward sleep as voices spilled into the dark. Before I knew the names of any actors or broadcasters, before I understood the stories they told, my grandmother’s radio became the soundtrack of my childhood. For millions of Egyptians, that radio was far more than an appliance. It was a companion, a teacher, and an entertainer. Its influence stretches back to 1927, when Habashi Gerges established the first Egyptian national radio station, using leftover World War I equipment. Following in his footsteps, Farid Qutri launched Radio de Farid, an Egyptian-made private radio station in 1929 with his wife. In May 1934, Egypt granted a British telecommunications and…
