Farida: The Crown and the Art

This book brings together all the elements of beauty. It is first of all about a woman who was a queen, an authentic Egyptian queen who loved her people and was loved by them, so much so that they called her “the People’s Beloved,” even though there was a natural coolness between Egyptians and the inhabitants of the royal palaces. Yet Farida, or Safinaz Zulfikar (5 September 1921 – 16 October 1988), broke with that historical pattern in the Egyptian consciousness. Its beauty also lies in the fact that its author, Dr. Lotus Abdel Karim, was a close personal friend of Queen Farida, the keeper of her secrets, and an admirer of her person and her art; she knew much and wrote it, and knew more and kept it silent. Dr. Lotus Abdel Karim can simply be said to have helped bring Farida back to life, after dust had been heaped on what she represents of beautiful values and innate Egyptian authenticity, her love of art, refinement and nature, and her attachment to her history. She was the queen who never spoke ill of her ex-husband, a king, but remained, as an Egyptian, protective of her man’s dignity. Here Dr. Lotus Abdel Karim sets down a piece of Egypt’s beautiful history, adorned with nobility and beauty, love and tolerance, in more than one thousand three hundred photographs, paintings and documents, published for the first time and found nowhere else. They embody the greatness of a woman whose art and history were a shining landmark and a chapter of the ancient Egyptian civilization, whose deep sap refuses to die despite ordeals, disasters, ugliness and shallowness. Here is writing that drips with art, and art that revives a spirit we long for: a new kind of writing in history, whether in the art of biography or in the history of art, drawing on the author’s overflowing and sweeping narrative spirit, tinged with her loyal heart, about a queen whom the people associated with purity, chastity and dignity. She is “Farida of Egypt,” who became a symbol of the beauty of the royal era, blending with the popular spirit and the human heritage of Egyptian civilization. Whether in the photographs, portraits or paintings, most of which are published in this book alone, you will learn how Queen Farida’s simplicity and depth inspired beauty in everyone who knew her or came into contact with her, including many secrets and figures, writers, artists and leaders of peoples, who stood before this beauty humbled and appreciative of the personality and what she represents. Yet the leaders of the Egyptian revolution, to whom she had given all she owned, were harsh to her and insulted her, a human drama of extreme crudeness and shallowness, which Farida accepted, believing in her people and their right to a dignified life, though the revolutionaries were not of the same stature. In short, Queen Farida of the Egyptians represented the struggle of brilliance and nobility against shallowness and arrogance, the struggle of refinement against vulgarity and decline. The Queen would speak to herself, and to Lotus Abdel Karim, of a malicious plot against beauty in Egypt that begins in secret and soon spreads ugliness and crudeness in Egypt and in the spirit of Egyptians, and she would say: Poor is the country whose own people do not love it.