Princess Fawzia (b.1940) The daughter of King Farouk, Egypt's last monarch, Princess Fawzia died in Lausanne, Switzerland, following a long and courageous struggle with multiple sclerosis -- a disease that had left her paralysed for the past nine years. She was 64. Fawzia was born on 7 April 1940. She was named after her aunt, who was reportedly the king's favourite sister, and who, in her youth, was described as one of the world's most beautiful women, and later became the Shah of Iran's first wife. Princess Fawzia was King Farouk's second daughter from his first wife Queen Farida. Her older sister, Ferial, taught French literature, while princess Fadia, her younger sister, worked as a translator for the Swiss Ministry of Tourism, and was married to Russian Prince Orlof. Princess Fawzia was 12 when her father was overthrown by the 1952 Revolution. Immediately after the Free Officers took charge, they exiled the royal family. On 26 July 1952, King Farouk left Alexandria for Rome with his three daughters. He never returned to his homeland. Two years later, seeking a better education for his daughters, the king sent the three princesses to a Swiss boarding school. Their mother, Queen Farida, remained in Egypt for at least 10 years after the revolution, before moving first to Lebanon and then to Switzerland, where she joined her daughters. Eventually the queen returned to Egypt, where she spent the last years of her life, and where she was buried as she had always wished. Since early childhood, Princess Fawzia was known for her zest for life. A gifted and accomplished athlete, the princess took flying lessons and obtained a pilot's licence. She also qualified as a professional sailor, eventually acquiring the rank of captain. Princess Fawzia was multi-lingual, mastering French, English, Italian and Spanish, as well as Arabic. A highly intelligent and hardworking woman, she passed a notoriously difficult exam -- with a success rate of about five per cent -- which qualified her to work as a simultaneous interpreter in Switzerland. The last years of her life were hard, especially for an athlete of her calibre and vitality. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1995, she eventually became paralysed and bedridden. Hussein El-Shafei (b.1918) Hussein El-Shafei led the cavalry corps in the first hours of the July 1952 Revolution. Having first secured key areas in Cairo, he moved on to Alexandria where his troops surrounded King Farouk's palace, forcing his abdication. El-Shafei was born in Tanta in 1918 and graduated from the Military Academy in 1938. He was one of the founding members of the Free Officers movement, which led the 1952 Revolution. He was appointed minister of war in 1954, and served as minister of labour and social affairs during the merger with Syria. He became vice- president in 1961. As minister of social affairs, El-Shafei introduced radical social insurance reforms. His ministry introduced pensions for widows and launched the winter charity initiative, a campaign providing the poor with clothes and blankets. Egyptian artists, including the actress Faten Hamama, took part in the mercy trains, the focus of the countryside money-raising campaign El-Shafie organised for the benefit of the poor. In 1968, El-Shafei presided over the revolutionary court that prosecuted those accused of corruption in the wake of the 1967 defeat. President Anwar El-Sadat appointed El-Shafei as vice-president in 1971, a post he held until he was replaced by then-Air Force Commander Hosni Mubarak in 1975. El-Shafei, who enjoyed close links with the Muslim Brotherhood before 1952, believed that the state's task was to promote equity and justice among the people. As a leading member of the 1952 regime, he sought reconciliation between Islam's egalitarian ideals and socialist ones, arguing that the July Revolution stood for socialism, not only at home but throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. A staunch enemy of colonialism, El-Shafei often quoted the famous words of Gamal Abdel-Nasser: "Morale is stronger than nuclear bombs." Alfred Farag (b.1929) Born in Alexandria in 1929, Alfred Farag, was one of the most eminent playwrights of the post-1952 Revolution period. At Alexandria University's Faculty of Arts, he studied English literature, which gave him a thorough grounding in Western theatre, an influence that he was to combine in his writings with the abundant resources of an Arabic literary heritage. After obtaining his BA in 1949, he took up a teaching career, which he eventually abandoned for a post in Al-Gomhouriya newspaper. He also became more and more involved in the leftwing activities of the day. His first play, Suqut Fir'on (Fall of Pharaoh) was written in 1955, but not performed until 1957. His Sawt Misr (Voice of Egypt), however, was staged in 1956 . From 1959 to 1963, Farag was detained, together with a large number of leftwing writers and intellectuals; it was in prison that he wrote his play Hallaq Baghdad (The Barber of Baghdad), which was performed by his fellow-inmates, who later helped smuggle the text out of prison. The play was staged in 1964, by which time Farag had accepted a state-sponsored scholarship to devote himself to writing for theatre. He later played an important role in the "mass culture" project of spreading theatrical appreciation in the provinces. 1965, which witnessed the production of his play Sulayman Al-Halabi at the National, was also to bring the first of his awards, the State Incentive Award, and was followed a year later by the Sciences and Arts Medal of the First Order. In 1973, however, having signed with a number of other writers a statement on behalf of leftwing university students detained by Sadat, Farag was banned from writing in the media, and performances of his play were discontinued. He chose exile, moving first to Algeria and then London, where he lived until the late-1980s. In addition to a weekly column in Al-Ahram, Farag continued to write in several genres, and a number of his plays were staged to both critical and commercial success. While drawing on Brecht, one of Farag's signal contributions was his accomplished re-appropriation of the pre- modern Arabic literary heritage for a theatre that was often politically allegorical. This is seen in his use of popular epics, as in his 1967 play Al-Zayr Salim and his many plays inspired by The Thousand and One Nights, including Al-Tabrizi, The Barber of Baghdad, Rasa'il Qadi Ashbilya (The Epistles of the Judge of Seville), and Al-Amira Wal-Su'louq (The Princess and the Vagabond). Farag received the Egyptian State Merit Award in 1993, and the Jerusalem Award given by the General Union of Arab Writers in 2002. Ahmed Zaki (b.1949) Legendary actor Ahmed Zaki died at the age of 55 after struggling with lung cancer for over a year. Born in Zagazig on 18 November 1949, Zaki moved to Cairo to study theatre; he played his first part in 1969, while still a student at the Theatre Institute: in the stage comedy Hello Shalabi, Zaki managed to make his mark in just one small scene in which a room service attendant attempts to convince a down-and-out theatre director (played by veteran comedian Abdel-Moneim Madbouli) of his talent as an actor. This experience was followed by two stage comedies, Madrasit Al-Mushaghibin (The School for Trouble Makers) and Al-Iyal Kibrit (The Children have Grown Up). However, his principal leap resulted from his 1980 television impersonation of the blind litterateur Taha Hussein ("the dean of Arabic literature") in the serial drama of the latter's autobiography Al-Ayyam (The Days). Zaki starred in many of directors Mohamed Khan and Atef El-Tayeb's cinematic creations including: Maw'id Ala Al-Ashaa (Date for Dinner), Ta'er Ala Al-Tariq (Bird on the Road), Zawgat Ragul Muhim (Wife of an Important Man), for which he received the Damascus Film Festival's best actor award in 1987, Ahlam Hind wa Camilia (Dreams of Hind and Camilia), Al-Takhshiba (The Detention Room), Al-Hobb Fawq Hadabit Al-Haram (Love on the Pyramids Plateau), based on the eponymous Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz's novel, Al-Bari' (The Innocent), Al-Huroub (The Escape) and Didd Al-Hukouma (Against the Government). All adopted a staunchly critical outlook on their social-political subject matter. Zaki also worked with other directors of that generation, starring in Al-Awama Sab'in (Houseboat 70), a complex detective movie, and the commercial hit Kaboria (Crab), both by Khairi Bishara. Later, in the 1990s, he played the lead in Dawoud Abdel-Sayed's Ard Al-Khouf (Land of Fear), a multi-layered epic film subtly incorporating political commentary. It was not until the mid-1990s that Zaki, at the height of his achievement, chose to play President Gamal Abdel-Nasser in Mohamed Fadel's black-and-white film about the 1956 Suez crisis, Nasser 56. Several years later, he not only starred in, but produced, the ambitious cinematic biography of President Anwar El-Sadat, Mohamed Khan's Ayyam Al-Sadat (Days of Sadat), another box office hit. This year, while in the throes of the lung cancer that was to take his life, Zaki chose to star in another biographical film, Al-Andalib (The Lark), about legendary singer Abdel-Halim Hafez. Atef Sedqi (b.1930) One of Egypt's longest-serving prime ministers, Atef Sedqi passed away after several months of battling with illness. Dubbed the "architect of Egypt's economic reform", Sedqi headed three cabinets between November 1986 and January 1996. While steering the country towards a market-oriented economy, Sedqi attempted to balance the need for fundamental reform with the state support that millions of Egyptians depend on. Sedqi was born in Tanta, on 23 August 1930. He obtained his BA in law from Cairo University in 1951. He and his classmates have been called the university's "luckiest graduates", with dozens later occupying top official posts. In 1958, Sedqi obtained a PhD in economic and financial sciences in France, where he met his German wife Ursula. For the next 20 years, Sedqi taught law at Cairo University, gradually nudging into the spotlight. In 1980, he became a cultural counsellor at the Egyptian Embassy in Paris. A year later, he was picked to head the Central Auditing Agency, a watchdog body supervising government and public sector spending. Sedqi's tenure as prime minister coincided with several tumultuous events. The 1991 Gulf War, which hit Egyptian tourism hard, and a major earthquake in October 1992, helped catalyse a sharp economic crisis. A long-running conflict between security forces and Islamist militants that left 1,000 people dead also played a part. Sedqi himself was the target of an assassination attempt in 1993, and although he escaped unscathed, the attack killed a 12-year-old schoolgirl and wounded 18 other people. Sedqi's primary challenge involved guiding Egypt's painful transition to a market economy. In charge of an International Monetary Fund austerity plan that saw many state-owned enterprises sold off to the private sector, Sedqi came under heavy fire from the press, and other opponents of this massive privatisation drive that left thousands unemployed. Opposition newspapers often vilified Sedqi for cowing to the dictates of international financial institutions. Sedqi, nevertheless, did manage to reduce inflation rates by up to 20 per cent, and raised foreign exchange reserves to a record $22 billion. When he was honoured with the state merit award for social sciences in 1995, Sedqi donated the LE5,000 prize to an outstanding scholars programme at Cairo University's Faculty of Law. He also received the prestigious French Légion d'Honeur award in 1984 for his books on economy and financing. Sedqi headed the government-affiliated Specialised Councils economic think tank from 1996 until he died. Although he suffered a severe heart attack late last year and was treated in Egyptian and French hospitals, Sedqi continued to work when he could. In 2001, with prices on the rise, Sedqi was reportedly asked to help then prime minister Atef Ebeid's government find its way out of a deep economic crisis.
