Ok here is a summary of the first long interview with Princess Farial Farouk , the elder of king Farouk and the sister of King Fouad II with an Egyptian TV host
the most important thing I learned from the interview was that we are all wrong when we say King Ahmed Fouad II , he is Fouad II because it turned out that he changed it to Fouad II to be like his grand father Fouad I , Well I do not know why King Farouk did not name his son Fouad II in the beginning and at least now it is more logic ,Fouad I ,Fouad II
Now this is what I noticed about Princess Farial's interview :
- Again The Arabic language was a problem to the princess who do
not speak Arabic for long time , It was better if the interview was in French as it would be easy for her to express herself ,but I understand why she insisted to speak Arab because it will appear bad for her and her family that she does not speak the mother tongue language of her original mother country
- No every person can accept the presentation style of Amr Adeeb and I consider myself among those people ,sometimes I felt hat he crossed the line and sometimes I felt that he thinks that he can use his comic talents with her ,sometimes I felt he is trying to play an idiot, look an Egyptian ,well brought up Egyptian will understand what Adeeb is doing ,but the princess despite being Egypt she lived only 13 years in a Royal palace in Egypt then to abroad , I felt she did not understand him well and sometimes she treated him as an idiot ,yes I know many won't like what I say but honestly I wished that others would have made this interview like Late Samia Al-Atraby,Laila Rostom,Mona El-Shazaly and Hamdi Kandeel , of course the first is impossible as she is dead now May Allah bless her soul , Rostom would have accepted the interview because she is a Royalty sympathizer ,unfortunately El-Shazely and Kandeel both are Nasserites, yet all those names could have interview with people like Princess Farial better than Adeeb
- The Princess is afraid till now and I do not know why , the Nasser fearful era is ended ,still she refuses to speak more openly , may be it is the old age , I do not know , may be it is the language barrier ,yet I feel she is afraid
Now to the interview :
- I may not like Adeeb's style but there are some questions he asked if I were a journalist I would ask them the Princess too; the 1967 and 1973 questions what she thought and felt about these two wars , What her father did from mistakes that costed him his throne,when she started to work , the only thing I did not like in the 1967 question was that Adeeb told her that Nasser's armies were conquered ,sorry these were not Nasser's armies in the end they were Egyptian armies in the first place and Nasser died and Sinai was under the Israeli occupation it was a tricky question ,I do not know Adeeb expected her to say that "oh I felt so happy that Nasser's army were conquered or what ??!!"seriously already the wicked man told her the six days war which took place after her father death by short period "actually two years after King Farouk's death" , her father death , the death that she believes that it was not a normal death but an assassination yet she does not say so
directly because she is still afraid , a tricky question but she answered wisely saying that she felt sad in 1967 and happy in 1973 just like the rest of the Egyptians ,She has to say this model answer logically otherwise she will lose any sympathy what so ever the Royalties now have in Egypt
If I were in the place of Adeeb the war which I will ask about is the war of 1956 because that when King Farouk was alive and if you check in my time Archive search about the war 1956 , I found that during the war he was a constant guest in the people's section in a comic way ,oh yes they did not plan to return him back but they made fun of him appearing him as the sort of man who goes to buy chocolate from some store in Italy ,he appeared as the boy King Size XXL who did not give a damn for his own people , the real wrong image ,so we need to know how really he felt during that time and already she was only 17 years old then
- Most of the question was about her life as a princess more about her life as a commoner ,she does not have a maid ,she washes her clothes by herself , her animals,her daily routine now ,her relation
with her brother
- He asked her about the truth regarding what was said that Queen Farida burned her memories , she confirmed that Queen Farida had burned some documents before her death , yet she did not know what was inside these documents
- He did not ask her about her sisters ,he only concentrated on her life
- The most important question ,the question that made Ahmed Rageb commented on the interview
Does King Fouad II have any hopes or plans to restore his throne like the son of the shah of Iran ??
Princess Farial said the following :
I refuse to answer this question
Refusing to answer the question made her like as if there were real hopes for the king to return back to the throne of the kingdom of Egypt and Sudan not to mention Darfur and Kordafan !! The thing that made a man like Ahmed Ragab write one of his bee' sting comments in Daily Al-Akbar last Thursday saying that the last king to rule Egypt was King Tiam El-Hassan !!!!!!!!!!!!
Well her refusal was a surprise to me because King Fouad II himself denied any plans and after the problems he faced I think it will be hard for him to start a new political life , not to mention that I am sure that many Egyptians will refuse him because they do not want any monarchies what so ever !!!
The last thing I want to tell you is that I heard that Amr Adeeb is working so hard to convince king Fouad II
The interview kept cutting up on youtube but I watched most of it. The interviewer Amr is somewhat annoying indeed and when he tried on her royal ring I was shaking my head.
ReplyDeleteYes some questions were relevant but others were silly. What I took from the interview was a woman who lived a short time as a princess but was then forced to live as an ordinary person. Most of her life has been similar to that of any other European's life. She fills her days with her animals and her plants. Her daughter lives in Egypt and is married and has a family there. She speaks to her brother on a daily basis and really it sounds like she keeps herself busy in the way most of us do. Sounded kind of lonely but who knows.
Princess Ferial which is how I've usually seen it spelled seems almost reluctant to be interviewed but allowed it nevertheless. I found it interesting that she said she didn't see the tv series but sounded like she knew most of what had taken place in it.
I suppose it's natural to be fascinated with a part of Egypt's recent past as unfortunately Egypt has been spiralling downward economically since then. Overpopulation, corruption, lack of services, a government that doesn't care. All of the promises that were broken sometimes I suppose lead people to think they might have been better off if they had kept their monarchy. Who knows. Jordanians have a monarchy. So do Saudis. Poverty is rampant in both places so who knows.
@anonymous,I was going through the same problem but I managed to overcome it but download the videos to see them offline through a video rip plugin in FF
ReplyDeleteand Yes I think the princess is so lonely in her life ,already she was busy after her divorce and her daughter depature to Cairo by taking care after her Princess Fawzia ,who was terribly sick
then her brother got sick and she took after him
the problem as you said she is like any European ,an ordinary woman , not like Farah Diva for example
by the way I also noticed that especially during Ramdan weekly Sawt El-Oma published a short interview through the phone with her and she had her remarks on the Tv series !
you are right , in fact Dr. Yasser Thabat , a dear friend,Jouranlist and follow blogger once said that the new generations are crazy about monarchy because they did not see any significant improvement from the revolution
I believe the revolution and its promises were great , men like Mohamed Naguib,Youssef Sadik were honest but .........but it was taken by others who only cared about themselves
as you said who knows !!??