The king, it seemed, was not a man who liked to lose. “He used to gamble with all the big bankers,” said Mahmoud Sabit, son of close courtier and Farouk’s cousin, Adel Sabit.

Narriman’s memories of her exile with Farouk and their divorce in Feb. 1954 - which she initiated - were “nasty, painful and depressing,” Nakeeb told Al Arabiya News.