MIDDLE EAST: The Will of Allah

Like Britain’s Princess Elizabeth, Egypt’s Queen Farida was once an enthusiastic Girl Guide. Unlike Elizabeth, she never bore a son, and in Egypt, where only male heirs count, that can be important.

Born Sasi Naz Zulficar, the daughter of a prominent judge in Alexandria’s Mixed Court of Appeals, Farida (“Peerless”) had other drawbacks as a queen in Islam. Before her marriage she had shocked orthodox Moslems with her Western ways. She dressed in the latest Paris fashions, swam and danced with vigor, and mixed freely with the cosmopolites in Alexandria’s foreign colony. Her courtship by Egypt’s young King Farouk had been a riotous affair during which the two were often seen careering through Cairo in Farouk’s snappy speedster or dancing together at Shepheard’s. Although some 400 Egyptians were trampled to death or otherwise injured in the jubilation that followed the wedding, all might have been well if only Farida had had a son. But three times during the next few years the bells rang for a royal birth, and each time it was a princess.

Rocky Roads. By 1944 Farida was as discouraged over Farouk’s endless procession of mistresses as he was over her sonlessness; she left her husband’s bed & board and set up housekeeping alone. The king asked his advisers’ permission to divorce her, but the politicians said, “Wait.” Farida had sworn to remarry. If she had a son by another man that would look bad for Farouk. He waited. But last week, as the news of Britain’s princeling reverberated around the world, he could wait no longer. “The will of Allah,” he announced through his ministers, “directed the hearts of King Farouk and Queen Farida to a desire for divorce in spite of all the regret they feel.”

At the same moment another royal romance went aground—that of Farouk’s sister and Farida’s childhood playmate, 27-year-old Princess Fawzia with the Shah of Persia. Since the day in 1939 when she was palmed off on an amiable, feckless young prince, whom she had never met, to cement relations between his country and hers, blue-eyed Fawzia’s marriage had traveled much the same rocky road as her brother’s.

Lithe, svelte Fawzia, considered one of the most beautiful women in the world, was every bit as Westernized as her friend Farida. She never learned to like her new home. Mohamed Reza Pahlevi built her a palace in Teheran and cast off two mistresses to show his devotion, but it did no good. Fawzia bore him one child—a girl—but she refused to speak his language or attend public functions.

By Mutual Accord. In 1945, pleading ill health, she left Persia for a visit to Egypt. She never came back. Mohamed Reza blamed her brother Farouk for influencing her against him. Meanwhile, the young Shah’s father, tough old self-made Reza Shah Pahlevi, died in exile in South Africa and Mohamed Reza made arrangements to bring his body back to Persia. The body was duly shipped via Cairo, where the Egyptians sidetracked it into a small local mosque. Ever since then Egyptians and Persians have been dickering over a suitable divorce settlement for Fawzia. “No settlement, no body” was Egypt’s stand in the matter. Persia refused to submit to any such “disrespectful blackmail.”

With that stalemate the matter rested until last week, when Cairo and Teheran finally got together. “By mutual accord,” the marriage of Fawzia and her Shah was declared off. “This conjugal rupture,” the royal proclamation added hastily, “will in no way affect the friendly relations between Persia and Egypt.”

Apparently a financial settlement has been reached, and the body of old Reza Shah Pahlevi may soon rest in peace in his native Persia.