EGYPT: Thy Brother’s Betrothed

And it came to pass in an eveningtide that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house; and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. And David sent and enquired after the woman. And one said: “Is not this Bath-Sheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” . . . And it came to pass in the morning that David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah . . . saying: “Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten and die.”

—Samuel II

On the western side of the Sinai Peninsula last week, Egypt’s King Farouk, 29, who recently divorced Farida (“Peerless”), his queen of eleven years, was behaving remarkably like David. Farouk was getting ready to marry again. There are several non-synoptic versions of how this came to pass, and the most reliable account is this:

From the Balcony. Narriman Sadek, 16, daughter of a civil servant, has been betrothed for the past five years to Zaki Hachem, 27, a Harvard-trained economic aide to the U.N. Secretariat. Narriman and Zaki had set their wedding day for Dec. 8, and a few days before, they went shopping for a ring at the Cairo store of Ahmed Nagib Pasha. Ahmed, who in his spare time helps out Farouk with new telephone numbers, told the young couple to come back next day. His Majesty hustled down to size up Ahmed’s find from a concealed balcony. Narriman, beautiful to look upon, Farouk decided, was for him.

Since that moment she has not been allowed to leave her home, where she is being tutored in court etiquette as she waits for Farouk to name the day. Her wedding to Zaki, which had been hailed by the Cairo society editors as “the wedding of the year,” has, of course, been called off, and 500 invitations have been canceled. Zaki charges that his apartment has been entered by Farouk’s agents and that all letters and pictures of Narriman have been stolen; he has been followed by secret police. Nobody tried to put him in the forefront of a battle, but he says that he was offered the next worst thing: the ambassadorship to Russia. When he refused, he was told to get back to his job at Lake Success as fast as he could.

“In the 20th Century.” Farouk’s advisers are worried over the King’s public flouting of the ancient command: “Thou shalt not usurp thy brother’s betrothed.” Even his sister Fawzia does not try to defend his action, but shrugs the story off with: “It must be a joke—he can’t really mean it.” By censoring the Egyptian press and holding the threat of expulsion over foreign correspondents, the Egyptian government for years has tried to conceal Farouk’s way of life and other noxious matter lying beneath Cairo’s glitter. The King, however, will not cooperate in concealment; his private life is about as private as the Pyramids.

Flustered Egyptian diplomats tried to hush the Narriman story. The palace public-relations man announced that this talk about Farouk’s marriage was “entirely premature . . . completely without foundation.” But nobody denied that the King was going to marry Narriman.

Zaki, at first stunned, is now furious, and prudently dosing himself with sedatives to keep himself quiet. He will soon return to Lake Success “because I feel I’m going crazy here, but I will marry no one else. I still love Narriman, and I know she still loves me . . .”He added: “At first I thought all this was a bad dream. I did not think such things could happen in the 20th Century. Now I know better.”