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FIFTY YEARS AGO her marriage made headlines all over the world. Twenty years later the couple’s departure from their homeland opened a new and tragic page in the history of the Middle East and the world.
She met the Kennedys and de Gaulle, and countless other personalities who made history. In 1971 together with her husband she entertained dozens of kings, queens, presidents and prime ministers during the celebrations marking 2,500 years of monarchy in her native land.
Empress Farah of Iran, wife of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, has lived in exile for 30 years. She divides her time between her Paris home and Washington, where her elder son Prince Reza Pahlavi lives with his family. For years he has been trying to unite the fractured and notoriously inflexible Iranian emigrants in order to create a united front against the clerical regime in Tehran. Some of the émigrés call Prince Reza ‘the Shah’, since after his father’s death he has assumed the title and functions of the head of the imperial house of Iran.
The Empress, Shahbanou in Persian, supports her son in his struggle and maintains a wide web of contacts with Iranians — both outside and inside Iran — but she lets him do most of the talking. The Empress received Majesty in her elegant but far from ostentatious Paris apartment, where lots of mementos (photos, sculptures and paintings) testify to the enduring love of her life, the late Shah.
Enduring Love i... >>>