WATANI International
13 December 2009
Princess Feryal (1938 – 2009), daughter of Farouk, King of Egypt
HRH Princess Feryal Farouk was born on 17 November 1938, the eldest child of King Farouk of Egypt and Queen Farida. The young king and especially his queen were well loved by the people of Egypt. Feryal’s birth was marked by 41 canon shots and brought on nationwide celebration. Her father distributed clothes and free breakfasts to thousands of the poor and some1,700 families of the infants born on the same day were given one Egyptian pound, which was a large sum back then.
At the time Feryal was born, King Farouk was 18 years old and Queen Farida was 17. Princess Feryal was later joined by two more sisters, HRH Princesses Fawziya of Egypt and Fadya of Egypt. In search of an heir, King Farouk divorced Queen Farida in 1949 and married Nariman Sadek; the marriage produced in January 1952 Ahmed Fouad II, Feryal’s half-brother and last King of Egypt. In July 1952, the Revolution by the Free Officers gave the Royal Family 24 hours in which to leave Egypt; they boarded the royal yacht al-Mahroussa (The Protected One) and went into exile in the island of Capri in Italy.
Hard times
Feryal was known as a compassionate, friendly, tactful woman. She was 13 when she left Egypt and, deprived of her mother, herself became a mother to her two sisters and half-brother.
When Farouk fell in love with the Italian opera singer Irma Capece Minutolo and she became his companion the children, who had had been educated privately, were sent to school in Switzerland. Princess Feryal went to the Grand Verger Finishing School in Lutry, Switzerland.
After graduating Feryal learned secretarial work and went to work as a secretary to make a living. She was also a sometime teacher.
Farouk died in exile in 1965, but it was not till Gamal Abdel-Nasser died and Anwar al-Sadat came to power in 1971 that Farouk was accorded a burial in Egypt at Rifaie mosque in Cairo.
In 1966, Feryal married a Swiss, Jean-Pierre Perreten, at Westminster, London. They had one daughter, Yasmine, in 1967, but they later divorced and he died in 1968. Feryal did not remarry. She moved to Montreux where she lived in a château owned by her family, taking care of her daughter, sisters, and numerous pets. With her father dead, savings run out and jewellery already sold, she would go fruit picking at harvest time in her neighbours’ palaces and châteaux for a living.
As fortune would have it, “the case of Princess Feryal” was brought to the attention of the Saudi prince Abdel-Aziz bin Fahd who happened to be in Switzerland. He immediately put into effect a non-written pact between the royal families of the region to support one another in times of need, and allocated a life-time pension for Feryal and her siblings.
Princess Fadya died suddenly in 2003, and in 2005 Princess Fawziya died after a 10-year-long battle with multiple sclerosis which had left her paralysed. Feryal accompanied both on their final trip for burial in Rifaie mosque in Cairo next to their father.
Royal burial
On 29 November Princess Feryal died in a hospital in Geneva, Switzerland, where she had been receiving treatment for stomach cancer, which she was diagnosed with in 2002. Her body was flown to Cairo where she was buried at Rifaie mosque. Her daughter Yasmine Perreten-Shaarawi who lives in Egypt with her Egyptian husband Ali Shaarawi, the grandson of Egypt’s leading feminist in the 20th century Hoda Shaarawi; and half brother Ahmed Fouad led the funeral ceremony.
Rifaie mosque was built in 1869 by order of Khushiar Hanem, the queen mother of Khedive Ismail, and at her expense to house a burial place for Egypt’s royal family. Five years later, the queen mother died and was the first to be buried there in a special enclosure inlaid with precious stones. It took 40 years and some of EGP635,000 to complete the mosque using specially imported marble from Turkey and Italy, and made-to-order carpets in the same design as the pattern on the roof. Most of these carpets are still there today.
The burial ground under the mosque is divided into two compartments. The first includes the tombs of Khushiar Hanem beside her son##s Khedive Ismail, both in the same enclosure topped with a dome ornamented with Arab motifs and rare original emeralds. Close by is the burial chamber of Ismail##s three wives: the two Turkish women Shuhrat Hanem Faza and Gashn Akhet Hanem, and a French third wife whose tomb is decorated with Qur’anic verses and crosses, meaning she had probably remained Christian.
The other compartment includes of tombs of the kings Fouad and Farouk. These are less opulent than the older ones and are made of plain white marble. Farouk and his three daughters all lie there.
In a separate room close by lies the Shah of Iran Mohamed Reza Pahalavi who had married the stunningly beautiful Princess Fawziya, King Farouk’s sister, in 1939 but divorced her in 1945 following a rather unhappy marriage. When the Shah died in 1980, years after the Islamic revolution in Iran had toppled him, Egypt’s then president Sadat allowed him to be buried at Rifaie Mosque.
Goodbye Feryal
Feryal’s departure leaves seven living descendents of Farouk: his son the ex-king Ahmed Fouad who lives in Switzerland and six grandchildren. Three are Ahmed Fouad’s children: Crown Prince Mohamed Ali, Prince Fakhreddin and Princess Fawziya who live with their mother in Paris. There are Fadya’s two sons Shamel and Ali Orlof, and Yasmine who is the only one who lives in Egypt.
In the recent years both Feryal and Ahmed Fouad were separately hosted by Egyptian satellite TV channels to talk about their memoires and family history. Both projected images of responsible, gracious, lovable figures and gained wide public admiration. In addition, the 2008 TV serial drama King Farouk which presented Farouk in a humane and patriotic light contrary to the vilified image he had been endowed with by the 1952 Revolution regime, made many modern-day Egyptians think twice of what they had been made to understand about the royal family. It appeared as though King Farouk and his family were finally—half-a-century after they were treated so abominably—finding respect among their people.
Nothing can illustrate that better than the manner in which the Egyptian public met the news of Princess Feryal’s final sickness and death. Facebook groups sprung up to wish the Princess well. One typical posting read: “HRH PRINCESS FERYAL… REST IN PEACE, WE LOVE YOU.” An older one read: “May God save and protect HRH … we request any who lives in Montreux to send our greetings to HRH princess Feryal. Her kind and noble smile in her last interview on Dream TV is still in my mind. God bless you our loveable Princess.”