Farouk of Egypt - Exile and Death

Exile and Death

Farouk fled Egypt in great haste, and his abandoned possessions—including a huge collection of pornography—became an object of curiosity and ridicule. On his exile from Egypt, Farouk settled first in Monaco, and later in Rome, Italy. On 29 April 1958, the United Arab Republic, a federation of Egypt and Syria issued rulings revoking his citizenship. He was granted Monegasque citizenship in 1959 by his close friend Prince Rainier III.

The blue-eyed Farouk was thin early in his reign, but later gained an enormous amount of weight. His taste for fine cuisine made him dangerously obese, weighing nearly 300 pounds (136 kg)—an acquaintance described him as "a stomach with a head". He died in the Ile de France restaurant in Rome, Italy on 18 March 1965. He collapsed and died at his dinner table following a characteristically heavy meal. While some claim he was poisoned by Egyptian Intelligence, no official autopsy was conducted on his body. His will stated that his burial place should be in the Al Rifa'i Mosque in Cairo, but the request was denied by the Egyptian government under Gamal Abdel Nasser, and he was going to be buried in Italy. King Faisal of Saudi Arabia stated he would be willing to have King Farouk buried in Saudi Arabia, upon which President Nasser agreed for the former monarch to be buried in Egypt, not in the Mosque of Al Rifai' but in the Ibrahim Pasha Burial Site.

A likely apocryphal story about Farouk's lavish living in exile was that he refused to donate money to relieve poverty on the basis that "If I donate my fortune to buy food, all of Egypt eats today, eats tomorrow, and the day after that they are starving once again", thus rationalizing his high living.