A book written in Arabic by Egyptian artist Lotus Abdel-Karim, sheds more light on the life of the former Queen of Egypt, Farida, the first wife of King Farouk. According to Lotus, Farida, at the age of 16, married the young Farouk in 1938, after a brief love story that started during a royal visit to Europe. But their marriage foundered and fizzled out completely in 1948, because the young queen failed to produce a male heir to the throne and because of Farouk's many Egyptian and foreign mistresses, according to Lotus' book Egypt's Farida. The divorce aroused great antipathy in Egypt because of Farida's youth and beauty and because the King was regarded as the personification of the corrupt old order, the author, a close friend of the former Queen, wrote. "The marriage might have continued happily, if only Farida had had a son. Three times during the next few years, the bells were rung for a royal birth, but each time it was a girl," the book says. After Egypt's 1952 Revolution, which toppled Farouk, the former Queen lived most of her life in Lebanon and Paris with her daughters: Ferial, Fawzia and Fadia. Anwar el-Sadat became Egypt's President after Gamal Abdel-Nasser died in 1970, and Farida, an artist and the niece of renowned Egyptian artist Mahmoud Saeed, returned to Egypt four years later, where she lived in the southern Cairo quarter of Maadi. She never remarried and died of leukaemia on October 17, 1988, aged 68. She was buried in Egypt, as she had always wished. According to book, when Farouk asked his political advisers' permission to divorce her, they advised him to wait because she had sworn to remarry and, if she had a son by another man, that would embarrass him as the King. "He waited. But he could wait no longer. He divorced her, despite the advice he'd been given," Lotus wrote. Many Egyptians, who loved Farida, said that the divorce hastened Farouk's fall from grace. In her small Maadi apartment, the late Queen chose to live in seclusion, away from the media and governmental officials, who offered her a helping hand, which she always proudly refused, Lotus writes. Because she adored painting, Farida (Arabic for ‘Unique'), became an accomplished artist who sold her works, the main themes being Egyptian landscapes, to Gulf sheikhs, the book says. Queen Farida never regretted the fact that she ended her life as a common citizen. "She had artistic interests like painting, which gave her fresh purpose as she sought a profession to cover her expenses without help from anyone," Lotus explains. Farida, a courageous and resourceful woman who was loved and respected by her fellow Egyptians, removed her crown and picked up her brush to create lovely paintings that showed how much she loved her country.
