New King, Old Trouble

In a bleak stone villa in London's suburban Kingston Hill, a tall, dazed, blue-eyed boy of 16 last week got a long-distance call from Cairo. It was his mother, Queen Nazli. "My son," she sobbed, "you are King." Egypt's fat and flabby King Fuad had just died of heart attack and gangrene of the mouth (TIME, May 4).

For half a year Prince Farouk had been virtually a prisoner on the four-acre estate except for two afternoons a week at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. An endless round of tutors drilled him in English, French, Arabic, history, geography, mathematics, chemistry, physics, gymnastics, boxing, fencing and tennis. In that time his face had lengthened and hardened out of the sly sophistication of a Prince of Albanian-Egyptian blood. His father's only son, he could not get to Fuad's funeral because Moslem law requires burial of the dead within 24 hours.

In Cairo the body of Fuad went on a gun carriage, without women or flowers, from Abdin Palace to the Mosque of Er-Rifai on Citadel Hill where lie his dynastic ancestors. As the coffin reached the Mosque, soldiers cut the throats of seven live bulls lying shackled on the pavement. After the simple funeral exuberant Egyptians poured through the streets of Cairo shouting, "Long live Farouk, King of Egypt and the Sudan!"

Fuad's father was Ismail the Magnificent, a foolish spendthrift who dissipated himself out of the khediveship, under Turkish rule. When Ismail's oldest living son died in 1917 as sultan, his son in turn declared that since he had the best wife and the best horse in the world, he did not want to succeed his father. Thereupon the British Army of Occupation skipped to the youngest of Ismail's twelve children, chose Fuad to be sultan and in 1922 made him King of Egypt, Sovereign of Nubia, the Sudan, Kordofan and Darfur. Thus the great-great-grandson of an Albanian tobacco peddler, the great Mohammed Ali, became the first sovereign in Egypt since Cleopatra died of an asp bite in 30 B.C.

Never expecting to be sultan, much less king, Fuad had spent his youth in Italy. The two doctors at his deathbed last week were Italians. Lest Farouk grow up under the same influence, Britain last year ceremoniously whisked that downy-lipped young prince off to Kingston Hill for a good British education (TIME, Oct. 21).

From the house on Kingston Hill last week went word that new King Farouk planned to take train to Venice, there board the Italian liner Victoria for Alexandria. The British Foreign Office buzzed excitedly. Presently a new itinerary was announced: train to Marseille, the British liner Viceroy of India to Alexandria, and H. M. S. Ajax to escort the new King across the Mediterranean. Farouk, in his first act as King, politely declined the Ajax. The kindness of the British Admiralty to young King Farouk was matched last week by the British Royal family. King Edward VIII invited King Farouk to Buckingham Palace for a long, friendly talk. To see King Farouk off on the boat train went the Duke of Kent and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden.

Under Egypt's joke status as a "free, independent and sovereign Kingdom." there are three powers in that ancient country: Britain, the Egyptian King and the overwhelmingly popular Wafd Party. Of these three, any combination of two is possible. Britain and Fuad combined to suppress the Wafd; Britain and the Wafd combined to clip Fuad's autocratic powers; Fuad and the Wafd combined to defy Britain. Last week the death of King Fuad cut short the deliberations of delegations of Britons and Egyptians engaged in drawing up a new Anglo-Egyptian treaty giving Egypt a few new privileges and confirming Britain's military strangle hold. From Britain's point of view King Fuad had died just a little too soon.

For the next two years, all-important period of the treaty negotiations with Britain, Egypt's real ruler must be a Regency Council. Fourteen years ago King Fuad wrote three names on a paper, sealed the paper in an envelope, put the envelope in his safe, gave a sealed duplicate to the Government. This envelope must be opened (within ten days of the King's death) in the presence of Parliament and voted on. If Parliament dislikes the King's regents, it must nominate its own. King Fuad dissolved the last Parliament two years ago, only last December reluctantly restored constitutional government.

Hence last week there was neither a Chamber of Deputies nor a Senate to wit ness the envelope's opening. A Chamber election was run off with comparative decorum (two killed, 50 wounded) four days after King Fuad died. Result was an overwhelming victory for the Wafd which clinched 118 seats at once, expected when all votes are counted to hold nearly 200 of the Chamber's 235 seats.

There was still no Senate. Oldtime politicians, accustomed to gypping the Egyptian masses, proposed to use the Gov ernment's "temporary sovereign rights" to open the late King's envelope and let the Government of Premier Aly Maher Pasha appoint two-fifths of a new Senate. Had there been a strong new King at hand, Premier Maher Pasha might have done so.

Instead the Premier agreed with the Wafd leader to call a Senate election this week. Senate and Chamber to assemble on the tenth day after Fuad's death to watch the opening of the envelope.

The names they will then hear read off will be Mahmoud Fakry Pasha, Mohammed Tewfik Nessim Pasha and Adly Yeghen Pasha. The last is dead. One of King Fuad's last acts was to nominate as substitute his nephew, Prince Mohammed Ali, to head the Council of Regents.

Whether the Egyptian Parliament accepts or rejects the King's nomination depends largely on Wafd's interpretation of Prince Mohammed Ali's personality and prejudices. An impressive, beak-nosed, 61-year-old bachelor, Prince Mohammed Ali runs one of the world's biggest stud farms for Arabian horses, is the author of Breeding of Arabian Horses. A worldly, amiable and enigmatic man, he is sometimes tagged as pro-British. On the other hand, he has many friends among Wafd politicians.

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