The Farouk Thing

There was a TV soap opera aired recently about King Farouk that was less critical of the dude than any portrayal of him ever seen on Arab TV. Then a Farouk fan club emerged with people who know nothing about him going on and on about how wonderful Egypt was when he was king. I have a theory about the members of the Farouk fan club. They probably come from lower class families who had no status whatsoever during the king days. They watch a lot of old Arabic movies and see all the pashas and the beys with their big houses and glitzy stylish surroundings and they want to pretend that they belong to this class. True Egyptian aristocracy (i.e. anybody who was anybody during the Fouad and Farouk days and before) don't care about Farouk. Such people are proud of their own families and backgrounds and don't revere Farouk. To all the pretentious royalists (ha...) I can only say that Egypt wasn't that great under Farouk. There was a lot of injustices that probably your own grand parents and great grand parents suffered from. For fucks sake, the dude wasn't even Egyptian.