Meanwhile, he flirted with attractive women. Those who would not succumb, he kidnapped. They were taken to one of his “harems” in the five palaces he owned around the country. Married women were more of a problem. Husbands often caused trouble if he kidnapped their wives. Instead he would resort to blackmail to get them into bed.
He would go through phases, collecting different types of women — the same way he collected stamps and antiquities. His aide, Antonio Pulli, would be sent out to find him European chorus girls who may be in need of the “diamond” bracelets he liked to bestow on his conquests. Or Pulli would be sent to comb the upper-class brothels for fair-skinned girls. Farouk went through a belly dancer phase, going through the top stars in the country.
One of the most attractive of his consorts at this time was an Alexandrian Jewess, Irene Guinle. Farouk never let race, religion or politics stand in the way of pleasure. They met when they were both twenty-one. Farouk was still slim and handsome then. Their affair lasted two years.
The daughter of a cotton broker, Irene spoke six languages. At seventeen, she had been discovered by a scout for MGM at the Alexandria Sporting Club. She took part in a lot of sport and had an athletic body with an especially well-developed bosom. But her mother would not hear of her becoming an actress. She considered them little better than whores. Instead, Irene was married off to Loris Najjar, an English-educated Alexandrian Jew who was about twenty-nine.
Unfortunately, Najjar had picked up certain predilections from his English public school. On their wedding night, he opened an attache case and produced a cane and a pair of black patent-leather high-heeled shoes. Irene ran from their Cairo hotel in horror. He found her cowering behind the pyramids and dragged her back to their room. He forced her to beat him until he bled, then scrape the high heels down his cuts. She had to do it three times a day.
“Everybody does it this way,” he told his young bride.
The whole thing sickened her. She became ill and her hair began to fall out. Irene was naive and believed that marriage was for life. It was only four years later that she discovered she could get a divorce. After Najjar, Farouk came as a welcome relief.
They met at a charity ball in aid of the war effort in 1941, when the German forces were posted on the Libyan border and seemed unstoppable. Although the assignation had been arranged by a mutual friend who knew how unhappy Farouk’s fairy-talc: marriage had become, Irene avoided him.
“I was allergic to anyone pro-German,” she said.
Eventually, he cornered her by the gambling tables. Suddenly Irene found that she was winning every bet. Then she felt as if someone was looking down her dress. She turned around and there was Farouk, grinning like a Cheshire cat. Attendants quickly brought a gilded throne for him to sit on. He gave it to Irene and sat on a small chair beside her.
He asked her to come for a moonlight dip. She refused and got up to go, but as she made her way to the door, she was approached by the British Ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson.
With British control of Egypt and the Suez canal in jeopardy, it was vital that they kept the pro-Nazi King Farouk under their wing.
“Of course you must go swimming with him at the palace,” Lampson said. “You must.”
She only consented because she hated the Germans and still she played hard to get. She sent Farouk’s RollsRoyce to her home to fetch her swim-suit. On the long beach at Montazah, Irene changed into her swimming costume and plunged into the warm sea. Farouk, in full military regalia, sat on the sand in the jasmine-scented air and watched. Afterwards she went to the bathhouse in the Palladian temple to change. She had left her sandals on the beach and sent Farouk back for them. After that, the Rolls took her home.
He called her at ten o’clock the next morning and asked if he could see her. She refused, saying she did not like men with beards. This was a deliberate ploy on her part. Farouk’s newly grown beard allied him with the militant Muslim Brotherhood, who also wanted the British out of Egypt.
The fact that Irene was Jewish did not bother Farouk. In fact, it rather counted in her favour. His father, Fuad, had a Jewish mistress, Mrs Suarez, for twenty years. She even arranged his first marriage for him to his nineteenyear-old cousin, Princess Shivekar. The princess was one of the wealthiest women in Egypt. Fuad had crippling gambling debts and Mrs Suarez steered the princess’s money into investments with her Jewish friends, who turned an already great fortune into a vast one. Mrs Suarez also pressured the British into putting Fuad on the throne, even though he was not, strictly speaking, next in line of succession. She died in his arms, waltzing at a ball, and he spent the rest of his life mourning her.
After months of pressure from both Farouk and Lampson, Irene eventually consented to go out on a date with him. She wore a black dress that was so complicated to undo that she was confident the king would not get anywhere near her.
They ate a ten-course dinner, featuring oysters, pigeon and sea bass cooked by a French chef. It was served by four Sudanese waiters in his huge bedroom overlooking the sea. From the conversation, she soon realized that Farouk had had his spies checking up on her. He knew every intimate detail of her marriage. She also realized that he was like a child and she could control him.
She reached home around 12.30 a.m. Ten minutes later he called. He wanted to see her again. For two months, they saw each other regularly, but nothing happened.
He invited her to stay the weekend with him at the Abdine Palace. When she arrived, his servants took her suitcase to his bedroom. They were to sleep in the same bed. She asked him if it was all right if she slept naked. It was too hot to wear a nightgown. He said he did not mind if she did not. Then he kissed her goodnight chastely on the check and the two of them slept together naked.
Next day they went swimming in the palace’s indoor pool, naked. But there was no sex. After her nightmare marriage, Irene was rather relieved.
Farouk told Irene that he loved her. Fatima Toussoun had just given birth to a baby girl at the time and Irene asked about their relationship. Farouk said that he had sent her a pearl necklace in hospital, but had not gone to visit her.
Farouk began to take Irene out publicly and she became his official mistress. But he refused to accompany her to pro-British events.
Eventually she became his mistress in the physical sense and he shaved his beard off for her. In return, he wanted her to convert to Islam and gave her a jewelled Koran, which she studied. In the street, people would shout “Long live Irene” at her and Irene became queen of Egypt in all but name. Farida was wheeled out only on state occasions. Otherwise Irene would be seen everywhere with him. The only person who disapproved was Irene’s mother, who asked her to move out of the family’s apartment.
Irene spent most of her time in the Abdine Palace, which had five hundred rooms. Farida and Farouk’s other women were kept in the harem, but Irene stayed with Farouk in his apartment.
While Irene kept Farouk entertained, pro-German demonstrations on the streets reached fever pitch. The pro-British Egyptian prime minister was forced to resign but Lampson was determined to pick his successor. He surrounded the Abdine Palace with tanks, shot the locks off the palace gates and led troops up the grand staircase to Farouk’s study. There he presented the king with articles of abdication. Farouk could either sign them, or approve Lampson’s new prime minister. He had no choice.
By 1943, the German threat had receded and their affair rather lost its urgency. Farouk and Irene went to Farouk’s hunting lodge at an oasis south of Cairo, with Humphrey Barker who Irene believed to be the “bastard son of the king of England” — and his attractive companion, Barbara Skelton. One evening, Irene saw Humphrey drinking alone. She went upstairs to Farouk’s bedroom and found the door locked. She pounded on it until Farouk opened the door. Inside, Irene saw Barbara in their giant bed.