Nora Boustany, ContributorWASHINGTON:
IT COULD be the eternal wisdom of Persia's great poets, an unforgettable bond to Iran and an everlasting love for a ruler the world shunned in his last days that have kept Farah Pahlavi anchored.
She has suffered in her 25 years since the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, piloted his family out of Iran. Widowed since 1980, she remains philosophical about her losses, the dizzying highs and lows her journey has involved.
"There are days where I find myself depressed and tired. ... People write to me and they want me to give them courage," said Pahlavi, 66. "Life is a struggle, for everyone at every level, but you should not lose your dignity. To go on is the struggle of life. There are so many answers in Persian poetry. A blue sky, love of family and nature. All this gives me positive energy."
In a recent interview in her suburban Potomac, Md., home, decorated with kilim carpets, modern Iranian paintings and a bronze bust of the shah, she said, "At the end, it is in yourself that you have to find the way to go on."
MEMOIR
The memoir of her life as a glamorous empress who had to give up everything in the face of historical upheaval is called An Enduring Love: My Life With the Shah, published in English by Miramax Books. The book, which was translated from French, topped bestseller lists for weeks last fall in France.
In it, she chronicles Iran's plunge into chaos and arbitrary executions in the revolution's early days, and her husband's battle with cancer.
She describes the humiliation of becoming a diplomatic burden in search of a haven and medical care at the height of the U.S. hostage crisis in Tehran. She details the political manoeuvring she and her husband faced as they jetted from Egypt to the U.S., the Bahamas, Mexico and Panama before finally residing in Egypt.
She follows every newscast and development in Iran as if still there, and each day answers e-mail from students in Iran, parents worried about their children, or disillusioned expatriates who need moral support.
Three years ago, Pahlavi was overcome with grief as her youngest daughter was losing a battle with depression, eating disorders and a dependence on sleeping pills. Leila, 31, died in a London hotel room in 2001.
"I felt so miserable, I started then," she said of beginning the memoir.
In the summer of 1959 in France, while trying to obtain a scholarship to continue her architecture studies in Paris, a chance encounter with the Shah developed into a romance. They married later that year.
If she has one regret, Pahlavi said, it is not spending more private time with her husband and four children.
Her happiest memories are of giving birth, and of travelling around the Iranian countryside, where she met ordinary people.
"I always wanted to travel without maids, or cross the Iranian desert on camel back. Apparently, it is an unbelievable experience," she said longingly.
Longtime acquaintance Haleh Esfandiari, who served as deputy director of one of Pahlavi's many cultural foundations, said that "she never lost that popular touch. She was genuine. While the shah gave the impression of being distant, she allowed people to rush and embrace her while visiting the provinces."
PART OF THE REVOLUTION
Pahlavi describes the final scene of tearful farewells with palace personnel throwing themselves at the shah's feet, and the cook who grabbed his copper pots and bags of lentils and beans to take with him on the plane.
"When we look back, we all had a part in this revolution," she said of her countrymen. "They all, in a sort of hysteria, thought religious men could bring freedom and democracy." Of the grand ayatollah who led the 1979 Islamic revolution, she said, "Khomeini used them all." The political jockeying by some members of the royal entourage after her husband's death still stings.
"It's very hard to have seen one side of human beings, then have to see the other side, their actions and words, coming from people who were close to you," she said. "I have tried to put myself above it."
Borrowing from the words of Hafiz, one of Iran's most celebrated poets, she said, "If you have to cross the desert to reach your goal, go. Pay no heed to the wounding thorns."
LA Times-Washington Post
