Editing Dalida (section)

=== Childhood in Cairo ===
[[File:Dalida 1937.jpg|thumb|Dalida in 1937, aged 4]]
Dalida was born Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti in [[Cairo]], [[Kingdom of Egypt]], on 17 January 1933. Her father Pietro Gigliotti (1904–1945) and mother Filomena Giuseppina ({{née|d'Alba}}; 1904–1971) were born in [[Serrastretta]], [[Calabria]], Italy.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://dalida.com/biographie/son-histoire.html|title=Dalida site Officiel – Son histoire—du Caire à Paris|website=dalida.com|access-date=19 November 2018}}</ref> Pietro studied music at school and played the violin in taverns; Giuseppina was a seamstress.<ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite web|url=http://www.ina.fr/video/I08212886/interview-biographie-de-orlando-video.html |title=Interview biographie de Orlando – Vidéo |language=fr|publisher=Ina.fr |date=10 November 2001 |access-date=13 August 2018}}</ref> By birth, Dalida automatically gained Italian nationality through ''[[jus sanguinis]]'' of both Italian parents.

Unable to make a living in their hometown, the young couple moved to the [[Shubra]] district of [[Cairo]] the year they were married, where, between the births of Iolanda's older brother Orlando (1930–1992) and younger brother Bruno (1936), the Gigliotti family [[Mutamassirun|became well established in the community]]. In addition to earnings from Giuseppina's work, their social status benefited when Pietro became [[concertmaster|primo violino]] at Cairo's [[Khedivial Opera House]], and the family bought a two-storey house.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://dalida.com/biographie/son-histoire.html|title=Dalida site Officiel – Son histoire—du Caire à Paris|website=dalida.com}}</ref>

At 10 months old, Gigliotti caught an eye infection and had to wear bandages for 40 days. Her father would play [[Lullaby|lullabies]] on the violin to soothe her. She underwent eye operations between the ages of three and five. Having to wear glasses throughout elementary school, for which she was bullied, she later recalled: "I was {{sic}} enough of it, I would rather see the world in a blur than wear glasses, so I threw them through the window."  Gigliotti attended the Scuola Tecnica Commerciale Maria Ausiliatrice, an Italian Catholic school located in northern Shubra.

In 1940, [[Allies of World War II|Allied forces]] took her father and other Italian men from their quarter to the Fayed prison camp in the desert near Cairo. When Pietro was released in 1944, he returned home a completely different person, so violent that Gigliotti and other children in the neighbourhood were scared of him. She later recalled, "I hated him when he beat me, I hated him especially when he beat my mom and brothers. I wanted him to die, and he did." Gigliotti was twelve when Pietro died of a [[brain abscess]] in 1945.