Lesson in generosity
Reflections on Farah Pahlavi’s memoirs
May 14, 2004
iranian.com
The memoirs of the Iranian Empress -- An
Enduring Love -- was an immediate
best-seller in Europe and has received plenty of attention in
the United States. The release of this book has presented a fresh
opportunity for those interested in modern Iranian history to revaluate
the record of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the challenges
he faced during his reign. While on the one hand he was pushing
incessantly for the advancement of Iran, on the other hand he had
to recreate his own role as a modern king of an ancient monarchy.
The roots of his tragic fate are to be found in the relentless
tension between these two competing exigencies. Farah Pahlavi's
memoirs provide the reader with the opportunity to grasp the immensity
of this challenge.
In a poverty-stricken country beset by ignorance, insecurity
and disease, the Shah mobilized all the resources at his disposal
to
address the most urgent issues of health care, education and territorial
security. Ironically it was the brilliant success of his objectives
that prepared the ground for his violent downfall. The unremitting
speed of development led to the burgeoning of a nation located
in the backward Middle East with a high standard of living and
the most advanced political expectations.
Although the revolution eventually fell into the hands of the
most fanatical and retrograde forces in society, one cannot forget
that
it was initially fuelled by a desire for greater political freedom
that itself was an inevitable outgrowth of the overall modernization
and development programme avidly pursued by the government. Political
reform that would mirror the rise in the standard of living was
energetically demanded by an ambitious, restless and educated young
population that had no remembrance of the rampant disease, poverty
and illiteracy gripping the country just few decades previously.
Farah Pahlavi herself belonged to a generation that still had
vivid memories of the humiliating backwardness of the country.
When the
reins of power were delivered into the hands of the young Mohammad
Reza, although thanks to the great efforts of the first Pahlavi
king the country was pulling itself out of its wretched medieval
conditions, Iranians still lived under the constant threat of foreign
intervention, disease and insecurity. In An
Enduring Love, Empress
Farah recounts the dire conditions of the country at the time when
even the capital was deprived of the most basic necessities like
clean water:
"Every district had its day for receiving this muddy running
water. Directed by small dams, it flowed for a few hours into a
tank under
the house or a reservoir usually dug in the courtyard or the garden.
We had both tank and reservoir, and I remember watching with great
curiosity as all the water with rubbish collected further up the
channel flowed into them: watermelon peel, dead leaves, cigarette
butts, bits of wood. The water settled after a day or two and could
be pumped up into a tank in the attic, which supplied the kitchen
and the bathrooms. In spite of the quicklime added to the water
in the tank, little worms proliferated there; our parents were
forever telling us never to drink water from the faucet." (p.
19)
Farah Pahlavi grew up in a family that valued and revered education.
A watchful and anxious mother vigorously monitored her progress
at school. Although early on she became familiar with French language
and literature, her cultural references remained Iranian. She mentions
Ferdowsi, Hafez, Sa'adi and Khayyam as the staple intellectual
repast of her family at the time when she was growing up. This
was the case for the majority of the Iranians. Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (Book
of Kings) was the favorite of the poor and the rich. Even illiterate
Iranians could recite the stories of Shahnameh by
heart. Empress Farah calls this book 'the incarnation of Iranian
identity and pride' (ibid. p. 33). The superhuman expectations
the Iranian people invested in their monarchs had its roots in
that literary tradition. The patterns and paradigms available to
the Shah himself also came from within that tradition.
Those students, who thanks to the Shah's modernization programme
received government grants and travelled to the Europe and the
United States, acquired new cultural references. Some of them failed
to see the real depth behind these new cerebral encounters. One
of these students was the French-educated Ali Shariati who according
to Dr. Ehsan Naraghi was more responsible for the success of the
Islamic Revolution than the mullahs themselves. Naraghi in a book
entitled Kheshte Kham indicates how Shariati lampooned
Iranian literature and dismissed the great classical poets of his
country:
"Shariati went as far as ridiculing the whole Iranian literature
and its great poets and writers. Go and read his Kavir book (Hoboot
dar Kavir - Falling in Desert), he calls Ferdowsi a theoretician
and a feudal literary figure. Denouncing Sa'adi and Hafez, he refers
to them as disseminators of dissipation". (p. 129)
Similarly the Islamic Revolution tried to jettison many of the
icons and traditions of Iranian heritage. Its success was a great
setback for Iranian nationalism and a tremendous gain for Arab
and international extremism. Ebrahim Nabavi the prominent Iranian
satirist in a recent article about Ali Shariati highlights the
irreparable damage done by him and his followers to the country's
hopes and aspirations. In his clear-cut style Nabavi contends that
the logical corollary of all Shariati's teachings is incitement
of endless violence, tyranny and terrorism.
The Shah as a head of state who had sworn to preserve his country's
sovereignty walked a thin line in staying within his remit as a
constitutional monarch and at the same time protecting his homeland
from the likes of Mr. Shariati, the Tudeh communist party and terrorist
organizations such as Mojaheddin Khalgh. Reading Farah Pahlavi's
memoirs we are reminded again of how the king 'could forgive those
who had designs on his life, but not those who threatened the security
and unity of the country' (p. 136). There is bitter irony in the
fact that the king forgave a man called Parviz Nickhah -- the
brain behind a leftist group who sent a hit man to assassinate
the shah - and provided him with an important position in Iranian
television, but this same person was later executed by the Islamic
revolutionaries for this sin of being forgiven by the man they
hated so much.
As it was proven after the revolution when the Iraqis took advantage
of the Iranian military weakness and internal chaos by attacking
the border province of Khuzestan, the foreign military threat
was not a figment of the Shah's imagination. He had learned from
painful
lessons of history that the weakness of the central government
had always whetted the appetite of the Iranian neighbours to
invade the country and take over part of its territory.
In Iran, Islamic
terrorism and communism or as the Shah used to call them 'the accursed
alliance of the red and the black’ (ibid p. 128) have time
and again done duty as the fifth column of the enemy. In 1946 the
Soviets with the help of the Iranian Communist Party tried to secede
Azerbaijan and break up the country. Empress Farah recounts the
relief and jubilation of Iranians when the Shah was finally able
to bring order to that northern province and restore the unity
of the country. In 1979 however the forces of ‘black reaction’ defeated
him and Arab and Islamic obscurantism swallowed up Iranian nationalism. Those critics today who, after the end of the cold war sit in
their ivory towers and complacently criticize the Shah's human
rights
records according to the most up to date democratic standards should
remember that the geopolitical landmarks of the Shah's era were
Gulag prison camps in the north, and the headquarter of the Ba'ath
Party in the south. Surrounded on both sides by those infernal
waters, the Shah was battling against all odds to navigate his
country towards modernization and progress.
If the Shah's removal from power was the magic formula many people
claimed it would be, today, a quarter of a century after his death,
Iran should not be experiencing one of the darkest and most oppressive
times in its history. What held the country back from political
development in the time of the Shah was rooted in those backward
forces that have gained considerable ground since the victory of
1979 revolution. Those forces raised formidable obstacles in front
of the Shah's reform programme every step of the way. Some powerful
segments of the Shiite clergy fought tooth and nail against the
granting of voting rights to women and the agrarian reform.
Elaine Sciolino, The New York Times Paris bureau chief who in
1979 accompanied Ayatollah Khomeini on that fateful journey from
Paris
to Tehran, and Abbas Milani the author of several books on Iran
accuse Farah Pahlavi of attempting in her memoirs to gloss over
her husband's authoritarianism and rehabilitate his place in history.
If looking at modern Iranian politics unencumbered by the too common
sectarian animus leads to the rehabilitation of the Shah's place
in the history, Farah Pahlavi by no means can be accused of being
the only person who has made such an attempt. The following quote
from Desafíos a la libertad (1994) by Mario Vargas Llosa,
the celebrated Peruvian writer more than corroborates Empress Farah's
account of the great achievements and the tragic fall of the Iranian
monarch:
"When the Shah was overthrown and the Ayatollahs took over,
the world heaved a sigh of satisfaction: a tyrant had fallen and
a
popular government was born. Very few were then aware of the awful
truth, that the real reason for the uprising of the Iranian people
against Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was not his megalomania and his wild
spending, neither corruption, nor the crimes of the SAVAK his sinister
secret police, but the agrarian reform destined to put an end to
feudalism and transfer land belonging to the clergy to the mass
of new landowners, as well as his efforts to westernize Iran by
emancipating women and secularization of the government. It was
these measures that aggravated the imams who then converted all
mosques into centers of rebellion against "sacrilege" and "impiety".
The Shah did not fall because of the many evils he caused his people,
but for the good things he tried to do."
In her book review (2 May 2004), Sciolino states: ‘Farah
Diba is so full of anger and bitterness that her memoir distorts
more than it enlightens’. Nothing can be further from the
truth. Her memoirs abound with affection and sympathy for her countrymen.
Even a prime minister like Mohammad Mossadeq who nearly caused
the shah’s overthrow in 1953 is treated with fairness and
praised for his ‘courage’ and ‘firmness’ (p.
46). The book takes pains to convey the message that today, more
than anything, Iranians should stop dwelling on the past. They
should move beyond the stage of bitter recriminations in order
to make a joint effort in reconstructing their country. Concerning
the divisive interpretations of events that led to Mossadeq’s
ouster and still morbidly occupy many Iranians, she writes: ‘My wish today is that all Iranians put an end to this fifty-year-old
quarrel. It has no place in the Iran of tomorrow, which all of
us should build together’. (p.51)
Empress Farah's Enduring Love very aptly starts with the quotation
of a verse by Forough Farrokhzad, the famous modern Iranian poet:
"Remember its flight
The bird is mortal."
Remembrance of the best they have been
able to achieve, relying on the excellence and humanity of their
culture is essential for
Iranians in their effort to pull the country out of its present
quagmire. An
Enduring Love is a forward-looking document and
a valuable lesson in generosity, forgiveness and reconciliation.
It helps Iranians to recognize the true sources of their strength
and opt for a future worthy of their great heritage.
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