Memories

The story of the empress, wife of the last Shah of Iran. A story that began like a romantic fairytale… Twenty-one-year-old Farah Diba marries Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the young girl's life changes fundamentally over the course of just a few months. The world's press writes about her, she is considered a fashion icon and one of the most beautiful women on the planet, and later the young queen is crowned Empress of Iran. She gives birth to four children while fulfilling the duties expected of a monarch: she devotes herself to culture and charity, meets the people of her country, and represents it abroad. Twenty years later, fame turns into a nightmare: demonstrations, bloody riots, the hasty departure of the now seriously ill Shah, and exile with no possibility of finding permanent refuge, because all the countries of the world want to stay on good terms with the new Iranian regime, the regime of the ayatollahs. The USA admits the Shah for a necessary operation, but the Islamists want to force his extradition to Iran and take the diplomats of the American embassy in Tehran hostage. The family moves to Panama, but they are not safe there either, and finally find refuge in Egypt, where the Shah soon dies. Life goes on, the children grow up, the world changes – and the name Reza Pahlavi appears once again in the headlines of the world's media. Farah Pahlavi has supplemented the new edition of her Memoirs with a current introduction and afterword. Both these supplementary texts and the book itself are a purely personal testimony of a woman who was once at the centre of events in a country that still has the potential to change the entire world. By their very nature, memoirs can never be objective, but they are an important part of the whole picture and often the basis for a deeper understanding of a region or an era.