CAIRO -

On the anniversary of King Farouk's abdication from the throne of Egypt on July 26, 1952, controversy continues over the king and his era, and did Egyptians really love him?

It is not possible to resolve this controversy, which raged even among those closest to him in their memoirs, where the accounts differ.

The most important of these testimonies were from his press secretary, Karim Thabet, who condemned and criticized the king, and his private secretary, Hussein Hosni, who seemed closer to objectivity.

King Farouk abdicated the throne of Egypt and left the country after the army movement (Free Officers) on July 23, 1952, which later called itself the July Revolution and announced the establishment of the Republic in Egypt.

The new republic was headed by Major General Muhammad Naguib before the army dismissed him following a dispute over the nature of the new regime and the role of the army in political life. The crisis ended with Gamal Abdel Nasser coming to power, knowing that some consider him the real leader of the Free Officers Organization.

Too weak to be a tyrant

In the book “Farouk as I Knew Him,” Karim Thabet, press secretary to King Farouk, says that prison gave him plenty of time to start writing his memoirs, and he decided to start it with memories of the ten years in which King Farouk stayed.

But critics say that these memos were written by Thabet in the prisons of the Nasser regime on the orders of his jailers in order to distort the image of King Farouk in exchange for his release, and therefore it is not possible to judge the impartiality of these memos published after the “July Revolution” 1952.

In his book, Dan Thabet, the behavior of the king, where he described him as being keen to appear as someone who knows everything, and controls every matter in the palace, as he spoke about Farouk’s arrogance and his mockery of those who sit with him, and focused a lot on the king’s morals, so he presented him as a petty, suspicious person, eager to surround himself In an atmosphere of mystery and secrecy, everyone from the Wafd Party leader Mustafa al-Nahhas hates him to those closest to him, and fears the English ambassador.

Thabet describes him in an excerpt from the book that he was "perverted, with tendencies and whims... He was eccentric, movements and behaviors... He was stubborn, and his stubbornness sometimes generated problems, and he was reckless, but not like the recklessness of tyrants, and he was unjust at times, but his injustice was not from The type of oppression of tyrants, and he was tyrannical in his opinion on many occasions, but there was a difference between him and the tyranny of tyrants, as he was in fact too weak to be a tyrant.

Years with King Farouk

As for the book “Years with King Farouk” by Hussein Hosni, the private secretary of King Farouk from 1930 until his removal and expulsion from Egypt, which the writer completed in 1985, it came as a response to all the stories woven by the “July Revolution” in general and Karim Thabet in particular about the king Farouk to tarnish his image.

The long period of the writer’s presence in the royal palace was connected to the king, making him possess historical treasures, in terms of facts and events, as he mentions at the beginning of his book that he is told as a witness to what happened under his sense of events, which he saw with his eyes or heard with his ears, he writes a book that is from historical sources and not Same history.

The late Egyptian historian, Counselor Tariq Al-Bishri, says in the introduction to the book, that the royal palace in that era was not all of its men like Ahmed Hassanein, the chief of the court, nor the likes of Karim Thabet, but there were patriotic, honorable and scholars in it, who were few and did not have influence. effective, but they were present and preserved their purity to the end, as his writer describes that he was a "just witness, not only reassuring of the truth of his narration, but also of the integrity of his objective report."

Loss of trust in those around him

Hosni says that in his book he did not narrate the complete history of the reign of King Farouk, but rather based on what he witnessed himself, or participated in thinking about it, or devising his plan or starting to implement it, adding, “Because I have no purpose in Behind the publication of these notes is the fulfillment of my duty to testify before the Court of History.”

The writer discusses King Farouk’s troubled relationship with his chief of staff, Ahmed Hassanein, and his mother, Queen Nazli, and how this emotional relationship between his mother, his mentor and his teacher affected him psychologically, and made him lose confidence in those around him and in the values ​​of honesty and honor, and made “pains tear his chest and fires raging between his wings.” What prompted him to take stubborn positions to his opponents, such as a child who refuses to obey orders that do not fit his whim.

The writer says that the king wanted to start his rule hostile to the English, as evidenced by his deportation of all those who owed loyalty to them in his palace, and removed the privileges enjoyed by the British ambassador.

Condemnation of the delegation and appreciation of palace officersضباط

In this regard, the writer condemns the leader of the Wafd Party, Mustafa al-Nahhas, and his supporters, when they rejoiced and cheered his assumption of the position of the ministry and their celebration with the British ambassador after forcing the king to assign al-Nahhas to the ministry on February 4, 1942. He also defends the king’s submission to the desire of the British forcibly and not signing the abdication document. From the throne, and says that it was a right to the blood of the Egyptians who would have revolted against the occupier if he had done it.

The writer also refers to the king's appreciation of his palace officers who supported his position, so that he was keen to perform the next Friday prayer with them, and that he kept inviting to his table whomever he saw from senior or junior officers afterwards.

The Egyptians did not hate him

The writer believes that the Egyptians did not hate King Farouk, but rather felt frustrated with his behavior after their frustration with the successive parties and governments, due to the lining of badness around him and his persistence in staying up late at nightclubs and playing gambling.

Hosni concludes his book, considering that the correct history of King Farouk has not yet been written, and that the king lived his reign surrounded by political intrigues from those who served in the palace, politicians and leaders, while the king saw that it was his duty as a king to defend the interests of his people, and even tried to contact Hitler and beg him to avoid The country suffered heavy losses for the people or the destruction of the country’s facilities, during the Second World War, one of whose battles took place in the Western Desert in Egypt.

The writer justifies the king's deviation from public affairs by the fact that his political advisor Ali Maher Pasha kept him away from it, and as for the deviations of his personal behavior, it was due to the guidance of his pioneer Ahmed Hassanein when he was young, or the violent psychological trauma he received later.