CAIRO: For more than 50 years Egyptians looked upon their last king Farouq as a debauched puppet of the West, but a new teledrama has shown an entirely different image of him and sparked a nationwide debate. Everyone is talking about it and you can detect a whiff of nostalgia for the monarchy, says columnist Samir Raafat, who believes the King Farouq series has exploded many myths set in stone since the king was deposed in 1952 by future president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Writer Alaa El Aswani, author of the renowned Yacoubian Building, says: The series' huge success is explained by Egypt s despair with the lack of democracy under the [President Hosni] Mubarak regime - even if the past is being over-glorified. The series was originally shown on a pan-Arab satellite channel during Ramadan, a high-season for TV drama, and is now being shown again in a simultaneous broadcast every evening on two local channels. King Farouq, who inherited his title aged 16 following the sudden death of his father Fouad, made an inglorious exit from Egypt and history aboard his yacht in 1952. He was to die in Rome in exile in 1965. A coup d etat led by Nasser and the Free Officers put an end to the monarchy and replaced it with an authoritarian and populist regime built on Arab nationalist ideology. Nasser, an anti-imperialist hero and friend of the people, was contrasted with the corrupt, aristocratic and sexual obsessive Farouq who was unable to resist the machinations of colonial power Britain. The TV star image of Nasser, chin jutting out from under a dashing military cap, was set against that of the puffed-up pasha who wore the red tarboush hat of the royal regime. An inveterate drinker even though he never touched a drop, says filmmaker Asma El-Bakri, who says that despite certain credibility gaps the TV series still tears to shreds a tissue of lies that we were taught at school. Played by Syrian actor Tayem Al-Hassan, Farouq s character evolves against the background of a divided but prospering nation, caught up in palace intrigues under the British yoke amid a mounting nationalist movement. The king, who was pulled out of Britain s Royal Military Academy to become monarch, is shown as a modernizer who loves his country but is torn between competing forces, including pro-Nazi elements during World War II. It s a shame that he came to the throne too early, where he suffered continuously under the British, says one of the king s cousins, Prince Hussein Tussun. His image was caricatured to the extreme and the [television] series has re-established the truth. Nevertheless, writer Aswani says that scriptwriter Lamis Gaber has been over-kind to the defunct monarch. The series is remarkable... but too enthusiastic about Farouq who fought relentlessly against the nationalist Al Wafd party, he says. His regime was not a model of democracy, even if it s worse now. While some intellectuals say it is time to put the Nasser era behind them, other leftists have come out against this anti-republican revisionism. Let s be done with Nasserism, says Raafat, while Bakri attacks Nasser s accursed revolution, which was nothing less than a coup d etat backed by the Americans. I can tell you that the people wept with joy when Farouq left, says writer Baha Taher, nostalgic for the Nasser era which wasn t a model of democracy, but he did what he did for the people. The series is well done, even if it s wrong to condemn the Nasser era, he says. But still I must say that the monarchy was better than now. Agence France-Presse
