Nariman Sadeq

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Jump to: navigation, search

Nariman Fahmi (née Sadeq, 1934February 17, 2005) was the last queen consort of Egypt. She was briefly married to the country's last king, Farouk.

Known as the "Cinderella of the Nile" for her middle class background, Nariman was 16 when she married Farouk in May 1951. She had been selected in part as a populist gesture to prop up public opinion of the monarchy, and though she already was engaged to a Harvard doctoral student, Zaki Hachem, she broke off the engagement to become Egypt's queen. Extremely plump, she was put on a weight-loss program to please her future husband and schooled in court etiquette. The wedding was spectacularly vulgar: the bride's gown was embroidered with 20,000 diamonds and all wedding presents made of gold were melted down into ingots after the ceremony.

She gave birth to Farouk's heir, Ahmed Fouad, in January 1952, six months before the monarchy was overthrown by the military in July of the same year.

The royal family, including Farouk's three daughters from his first marriage, fled to Italy. Nariman and Farouk separated in 1953, whereupon she resumed her maiden name. She returned to Egypt in early 1954 and divorced the king shortly thereafter; she gave up custody of her son to his father.

The former queen married Dr. Adham Al-Naquib in 1954, and the couple had a son, Akram, before divorcing. in 1967 she married Dr. Ismail Fahmi, a diplomat; that union also ended in divorce.

Nariman Fahmi died on February 17, 2005 in Dar al-Fouad hospital, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, after a brain hemorrhage. Her last years were spent in seclusion in a small apartment in Cairo's upscale Heliopolis neighborhood.

Personal tools
In other languages