From correspondents in Cairo Agence France-Presse November 30, 2009 12:00am
PRINCESS Ferial, the daughter of Egypt's last reigning monarch, has died after a long battle with cancer, a family friend says.
The princess died today in a hospital in Geneva, Switzerland where she had been receiving treatment for stomach cancer, which she was diagnosed with seven years ago, Lotus Abdel Karim said.
"She will be buried in Egypt. Her body will be flown back home within one or two days," Abdel Karim said.
Born in 1938 in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Princess Ferial was the daughter of King Farouk who ruled Egypt from 1936 until he was overthrown in the 1952 revolution.
The princess was the king's oldest child from his first wife Farida. She was educated at a private boarding school in Switzerland, where she had been living up until her death.
The dynasty ruled Egypt for 150 years until 1952, when King Farouk abdicated. His infant son Ahmed Fouad ascended to the throne but had to join his family in exile when a republic was declared the next year.
Farouk's only surviving child is Fouad, Ferial's half-brother who will attend the funeral in Egypt along with her daughter Yasmine, according to the family friend.
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^ It's been 30th November only for a half an hour now (at least in Finland + Egypt, not sure about Switzerland though). I'm sure she died 29th because it's too fast if she died today on 30th and it already made in the news...
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Oh actually Wikipedia listed yesterday evening the dod as 20th Nov so I guess it was a typo.
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Princess Ferial Farouk, who died on November 29 aged 71, was the eldest daughter of the late King Farouk of Egypt.
Published: 7:03PM GMT 09 Dec 2009
Princess Ferial (left), with Queen Narriman, Prince Fouad, King Farouk, and Princesses Fadia and Fawzia in exile in Capri Photo: CSU Archives / Everett Collection / Rex Features
Farouk abdicated in 1952 when revolutionary officers led by General Muhammad Naguib and Colonel Gamal Abd al-Nasser ousted him in a revolution. She was 13 when she sailed with her father, her stepmother Queen Narriman, her two sisters Fawzia and Fadia and her half-brother Ahmad Fouad to Naples, Capri and then Rome. Ferial spent a lifetime as a much-loved royal exile in Italy and Switzerland.
Her birth, on November 17 1938, came at a time when her father was at the height of his popularity, married to the beautiful and equally popular Farida (formerly Safinaz) Zulfiqar. When Farida went into labour in the palace of Montazah in Alexandria, however, the king was nowhere to be found.
He was eventually discovered asleep on a beach, where he and his Italian childhood friend and palace servant, Antonio Pulli, had been salvaging cannons. The two young men had found a Napoleonic howitzer on the other side of Alexandria from the palace.
Arriving at Farida's bedside, the king listened to the gun salute, hoping for a son – but it stopped after 41 rounds; had it been a son it would have been a 101-gun salute. "It will be loved just the same," he announced, and named the child Ferial after his paternal grandmother. (All the Egyptian royals took names starting with the auspicious "F".) Every child born in Egypt that day received a pound; free food and clothing were given to the poor, and sweets were given to children.
Born when Farouk was 18 and Farida just 17, Ferial's early years reflected the high life of Cairene society at the Abdin Palace. A year after her birth, Farouk's sister Fawzia married the Shah of Iran. Farouk himself considered marrying Ferial to King Faisal of Iraq when the two came of age.
The Egyptian royal family was popular at a time when Britain, represented by the mighty ambassador Sir Miles Lampson, was taking a heavy hand with the king as the Second World War approached. The crucial year 1942 would see a British coup d'état in which Farouk, accused of pro-German leanings, only just managed to escape being forced to abdicate.
Ferial's birth had also come at a time when her mother was losing out in a power struggle with Farouk's powerful mother, Queen Nazly, who doted on her son. Farouk's liaison with Princess Fatma Tussoun deeply hurt Farida, while her own friendship with the painter Simon Elwes gave rise to gossip. The marriage ended in divorce, and Farouk then married Narriman Sadeq, with whom he had a son and heir, Fouad.
Ferial's life was not a particularly happy one. As the family sailed away in 1952 on the royal yacht Mahroussa, the 13-year-old princess wrote to Farida: "My very dear Mother, it is heartbreaking to have to leave Egypt and not to kiss you goodbye. I hope God never again makes me go through the experience of these past few days. Having to say farewell to so many whom we love, and to so many beloved things."
The King had loaded his gold into 12 ammunition boxes and had servants sent to Montazah Palace to collect Queen Narriman's jewellery. General Naguib arrived to say goodbye along with the former prime minister Ali Maher and the American ambassador, Jefferson Caffery.
Ferial shunned the limelight, for long resisting intense pressure to speak to the media. Over this past year, however, after her illness was pronounced terminal, she gave several important interviews on Arab television channels. In these she made a dramatic revelation: that a group within Egypt's new revolutionary council had tried to torpedo Mahroussa as it sailed for Italy, and failed only because of the skills of the captain, whom she called "Le Prince de La Mer". The story had never before been told, and apparently showed the determination of some revolutionaries to put an end to the 200-year dynasty of Muhammad Ali.
Two years after his abdication Farouk sent the three princesses to a Swiss boarding school, Le Grand Verger, at Lutry. Farida remained in Egypt for a decade after the revolution, before moving first to Lebanon and then to Switzerland, where she joined her daughters. She eventually returned to Egypt, where she spent her last years and was ultimately buried, as she had always wished.
In exile in Rome, Farouk was astonishingly strict with his daughters. According to his biographer Hugh McLeave, they had to seek his permission to cut their hair or varnish their nails. It took Fawzia months to pluck up the courage to ask her father's consent to study at an interpreters' school in Geneva, and he would allow Ferial to teach at a secretarial school in Lausanne only if she did not reveal who she was. He sent his son Fouad to the village school at Cully. Ferial was later to teach typing and French literature at a school near Montreux, where she spent much of her life after her marriage.
In 1966, at Westminster, London, she married the son of a Swiss hotelier, Jean-Pierre Perreten, who converted to Islam, taking the name Samir Cheriff. They had a daughter, Yasmine, who in 2004 married 'Ali Sha'arawi, the grandson of Huda Sha'arawi, the pioneering Egyptian feminist and author.
For a time Ferial and her husband ran a hotel near Montreux, in Switzerland; but the couple divorced soon after the birth of their daughter, and Perreten died in 1968.
After their mother's death in 1988, the three sisters filed a lawsuit against the Egyptian government in an attempt to repossess a royal palace and land in the Nile Delta.
They claimed that the properties belonged to their mother, but the court ruled against them on the ground that their mother had divorced Farouk in 1948, long before the revolution confiscated all royal properties.
Princess Ferial was a discreet woman who spent much of her time looking after her ailing sister, Fawzia, who suffered for many years from multiple sclerosis.
After Fawzia's death in 2005, Ferial cared for her brother Fouad, who has suffered from serious depression since his divorce from his French wife, Dominique-France Picard, who converted to Islam under the name of Fadila. Ferial had strongly disapproved of this marriage, and took on her brother's troubles as if they were her own. She did more than anybody to hold the 'Alid clan together and in harmony.
She died in Geneva of stomach cancer, and was buried alongside her father and sisters Fawzia and Fadia in the Khedival mausoleum of Cairo's Rifa'i Mosque, where all members of the dynasty of Muhammad Ali are interred. Princess Ferial is survived by her daughter.
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