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September 26, 2004
REVIEW: Phoenix rising
FARAH Diba grew up on Firdausi’s Shahnameh thus imbibing the great poet’s belief that “the greatness of Iran is closely linked to the permanence of the monarchy, and to (its) renaissance should it decline or disappear...”. Thus predisposed to love the Shah, this little girl whose life she describes with such elan, nevertheless disregarded two innocently prophetic statements pointing to her being crowned Queen of Iran by her deeply loving and appreciative husband. Love blossomed quickly between them, and at the proposal, she recalls, “I replied yes right away... because I had no reservations.” On that momentous wedding day, she remembers, “I was replacing a queen they had loved... (but) my countrymen were happy that the king was marrying an Iranian and was a Syedeh.”
This former architecture student soon learned her job as assistant architect of Iran’s further transformation from medieval to modern nation working ceaselessly in a wide range of fields. Later she travelled all over the country to see at first hand the people and their conditions, sometimes dropping out of the sky in her helicopter upon remote villages, where the joyous people embraced her like one of their own. “In all these travels,” she says, “the mullahs, who would later plunge the country into war and backwardness,” smiled and praised the new policies.
Then 10 years after Reza’s triumphant nationalization of Iran’s oil, he launched in 1974 his White (i.e. bloodless) Revolution, a beginning “hailed in all democratic countries” and bringing in agrarian reform. Farah records with characteristic frankness the rapid progress achieved, apparently with the people’s support, in accordance with the king’s desire to catch up with the advanced countries in 20 years. Yet with dismay she reports that, “The survey two years later showed that every reform had given rise to new resentments, and set this or that group against the monarchy.” Chief among the dissidents were the clergy, many of whom were large landholders. From the earliest they tried to raise rebel movements, joined by the communists, who desired the overthrow of the monarchy.
Reza had expected resistance, understanding that it takes much time to achieve a change in people’s outlook; but following the Qom riots, Khomeini’s inflammatory speeches were such that he was exiled, turning up eventually in France. His return from thence to topple the throne had been predicted hundreds of years previously by Nostradamus. “His calls for civil disobedience were relayed by the French media, and by the BBC in Persian, with Iranians perceiving the BBC as willingly assisting in the end of another shah.
Farah vividly describes the effects of the oil price rise, when Japan and the West consequently reduced oil imports. “From 1975 onwards... promises made by the government had to be... cancelled, and a climate of disillusionment (appeared).” And of the ill-advised Pahlavi dynasty anniversary celebrations, she says, “Particularly on that day I felt that something had changed between the people and the monarchy. I could feel it in my bones like a sudden icy wind.”
Then from bad to worse, with newly moneyed merchants giving generous donations to the fiery Khomeini; with the heavy-handedness of the SAVAK; the imposition of martial law in 1978; the Khorasan earthquake which killed 25,000. “I had the physical sensation of staggering under these blows,” she confesses, then, regarding the international media’s about-face, “Those most flattering about the king’s work in the 70s now described everything negatively.”
With oil exports halting in December 1978 and the country “completely paralyzed and close to strangulation”, the ailing Shah, secretly attended since 1974 by an eminent French physician, reluctantly decided to leave Iran. “And so we left... When I think of that morning in January 1979, I feel that heart-wrenching grief again in all its intensity,” writes Farah. She then describes with undiminished eloquence and pathos the agony of watching her beloved husband and country gradually succumb, as they fled, persona non grata, to Egypt, Morocco, the Bahamas, Mexico, New York — where the first of the two botched operations was performed, and demonstrators daily screamed, “death to the Shah!” outside the hospital. On to Panama, with the insincere welcoming smiles preceding the threat of the king’s extradition as sacrificial lamb for the hostages in the Tehran American Embassy, and the final exhibition of American perfidy.
The funeral in Egypt was described by Jehan Sadat as “the most spectacular... that any of us in Egypt had ever seen... Egypt, at least, had not turned her back on a friend”. Did Giscard d’Estaing absent that day himself and later writing, “...deep inside of me — in the place where one’s self-esteem is made or broken — I still cannot forgive myself”, reflect the feelings of other absent heads of state?
This dignified, moving book, with its striking cover, is the testament of one who has loved deeply, who has experienced ultimate elation and blinding despair, the candid chronicle of a king and queen working for the betterment of the country and its people, yet foiled by time, tide and fatal decisions. Will those who now contact Farah from Iran, “disillusioned with the Islamic Revolution”, read Firdausi in the future? Will his promised monarchical renaissance reappear in the young, carefully prepared king, who has declared that, “Light will follow darkness”?
An Enduring Love — My Life with the Shah
By Farah Pahlavi
Miramax Books. Available with Liberty Books (Pvt) Ltd, 3 Rafiq Plaza, M.R. Kayani Road,
Saddar, Karachi. Tel: 021-5683026 Email: libooks@cyber.net.pk Website: www.libertybooks.com
ISBN 140135209-X
447pp. Rs1,125
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