The Queen and I

A look at the last Shahbanou of Iran and the first woman to bear the title since the fall of the Sasanian Empire thirteen hundred years before.

From The European Conservative

By Rafael Pinto Borges

It’s no wonder that those still loyal to the House of Pahlavi call her mādar Eran—Mother of Iran.

There are times in life when things just happen. I could hardly believe myself when, one January morning, I opened my email inbox. It was Farah, Empress of Iran, widow of the late Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and she was writing to accept my request for a one-on-one, personal interview. I was awed. All that I had revealed about myself and my intentions was, of course, true: that I was reaching out on behalf of The European Conservative; that I was a lifelong, enthusiastic, often insufferable Iranophile; and that I regarded the opportunity to talk to her as an extraordinary honour. On other matters, I was a bit more circumspect: I dared not disclose my embarrassing inexperience, or the sorry fact that I had never interviewed anyone in my life. Most interviewers start small and climb their way up, launching their careers with lowly mayors or modest MPs. And yet, there I was, getting into the business of journalism by interviewing one of the previous century’s most remarkable women. The impertinence was too outrageous. I kept mum about it.

The idea of interviewing the Shahbanou had first crossed my mind only days before, while watching the 2008 Swedish documentary The Queen and I with my mother. The film features the Empress and Nahid Persson Sarvestani, an Iranian-born filmmaker who fled to Sweden after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Sarvestani had been a communist in her youth; her first involvement in politics, as a university student still in Iran, was in opposition to the Shah’s decades-long, authoritarian-developmentalist régime. Yet, when revolution did come, it didn’t bring progress—neither of the liberal-democratic nor of the Marxist kind. Instead, Sarvestani witnessed her brother’s death at the hands of the newly installed Islamic regime. She found herself in Europe, far from her native land and the dreams she had for it. The Queen and I deals with the twists of fate: two Iranian women who, though coming from opposing camps, had been directed by life through similar ordeals. Both had seen their families ripped apart by the bitter wind of history. And both had been thrown into the solitude and uprootedness of exile, in Stockholm and Paris.

As a lifelong monarchist and admirer of Iranian civilisation, the Pahlavis had always been firmly on my radar. Like the imperial Portugal I had never been able to experience myself, Pahlavi Iran seemed to my younger self like a lost world, fascinating and hopeful: its stunning pre-revolutionary economic rise, the rightful return of a great people to the vanguard of human history. A CIA memo from the 1970’s famously described the Shah as a ‘dangerous megalomaniac.’ For me, rather, he seemed like a leader of restless ambition, a man entirely captivated by his grand goal of a renewed, reforged ‘Great Civilisation’—a prosperous, powerful Iran respected by the world as a leading power in its own right. I was probably 12 when I first read the Shah’s 1980 memoir, Answer to History. But that was about the Pahlavis as political agents, men and women of action, facing the daunting task of modernising humanity’s oldest nation while navigating the convoluted geopolitics of the Cold War era. It was about Iran’s trials, not theirs. 

What impressed me about the Farah Pahlavi of The Queen and I was not simply that it was a personal portrait of a remarkable woman—it was her overwhelming strength. This is someone who has endured more than the majority would find imaginable. Born into an upper-class Tehran family, her grandfather had served the Qajar kings of Iran as an envoy to the imperial court of Saint Petersburg, then Persia’s chief geopolitical rival. The young Farah wanted a career in architecture, hoping to dedicate her years and talent to the modernisation of a still backwards country. Her life changed dramatically when, while still studying in Paris, she first met Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. 

The Shah had recently divorced his second wife, Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary, after she proved unable to give him an heir. Farah married Mohammad Reza soon after. Her four children with the Shah would assure the imperial succession. By 1967, she became the first woman since the bygone days of Sasanian Persia to be crowned Shahbanou, or Empress—previous wives of sovereigns had been known by the lesser Arabic title of Malika, or queen. For decades, she led a vibrant empire in rapid ascendency, meeting with the world’s leading men. And yet, by 1979, she had lost her throne, her home, and her country. She saw her beloved husband die in ignominy, forsaken by a cowardly Jimmy Carter eager to appease the triumphant mullahs. Two of her children met similarly tragic ends. Princess Leila died in 2001, following years of depression, at the young age of 31. Prince Ali Reza took his own life in 2011. 

How can one suffer such heavy blows without giving in to hate? Iran’s Shahbanou seems oddly invulnerable to its intoxicating power. The woman she reveals herself to be in The Queen and I is the queen I was eventually honoured to meet: she exudes lightness and kindness; her eyes have a discrete, tranquil sadness to them, the sense of peace and composure the Ancient Greeks knew as ataraxia. It’s as if, through the many shocks of her life, she had been made immune to woe, acquiring instead the calmly confident demeanour of a captain who had seen many seas and had faced off against even the harshest of storms.

The Queen and I met at her Paris residence, a supremely tasteful apartment overlooking the Seine. The house is hardly luxurious; the rooms, in finely carved wood, are elegant rather than pompous. It’s a home and a reliquary: dedicated photographs of the world’s royals and leaders abound, a testament of respect for the now-elderly monarch. Family portraits and busts of the late Shah leave us no doubt as to where we are; Qajar-era paintings, with their voluptuous forms and strong, vivid colours, transport the visitor to faraway Iran. As our team waited for Farah, a dutiful maid treated us to some tea and a generous array of delicious Persian sweets. I had the audacity of asking for a cup of coffee, too—excitement had denied me a proper night of sleep, and I wanted to be as sharp as I could for the Empress.

Her Majesty appeared after a short while, alone and opening a large, wooden door. Neither age nor worry appeared to weigh on the Shabanou as she came to greet us, laughed, and indulged in small—but always meaningful—talk. The interview, I think, went well—despite my fears and, indeed, my emotions. There was more I had thought of asking, only to recoil in fear: What had been Jimmy Carter’s role in the implosion of the monarchy? Did she blame the West’s final betrayal of her husband in Guadeloupe as the reason for her family’s downfall? What were her recollections of the Shah’s tragic last year of life, when the cancer-ridden Mohammad Reza had found himself abandoned by all, forced to jump from Mexico to the U.S., and then from the U.S. to Panama and Egypt, fearing for his life and left without the most basic medical care? But I couldn’t force myself to do it. Why spoil a beautiful day with such ugliness?

Fatherland, family, beauty—such is the trinity that has governed the Shahbanou’s life. Iran’s Queen still seems more eager to discuss the arts than politics. That has been—and remains—Farah’s true, lifelong passion. At one point, as I asked her about her involvement in the workings of Iranian diplomacy, she interrupted me, rightly putting me in my place: “Before answering this, I wanted to tell you about my cultural activities.” Her footprint there is enviable, indeed. From universities to thousands of libraries, the once-famed Shiraz Arts Festival, the Reza Abbasi Museum, the National Carpet Gallery, and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, the Shahbanou can count herself among the greatest benefactors of the arts in Iran’s 2,500 year-long history. This is a legacy that no amount of hate will succeed in erasing.

It is also a legacy the Empress is determined to build on—even now, and even after an entire life of service to high culture in Iran. As I prepared to close our interview, the Shahbanu once again interrupted me: “Thank you, but I wanted to add that …” It was joyful news, indeed. Now 85, the Queen has a new and ambitious project: a new foundation, now being launched in Portugal, where the Shahbanou’s art collections may be kept and cherished. Portugal may sound like an odd choice for the Queen’s dreamed ‘embassy of Persian civilisation.’ It’s anything but: it is, in fact, particularly fitting that it should now be Portugal—the first European nation to establish regular, continuous diplomatic relations with Iran, back in the days of King Manuel I and Ismail Shah—to serve, like in the past, as a great door to the glories of a millenary culture that is, today, too often besmirched by the vagaries and cruelties of contemporary politics. 

Does Farah Diba Pahlavi long to return to her beloved Iran? She does, and that is the Queen’s sole request to her people. But she asks it as an Iranian patriot, not as a sovereign eager to reclaim throne, wealth, or prominence. There’s no vanity in her. As we spoke, I felt, at times, like an even more committed advocate of a renewed Persian monarchy than the Queen herself. For her, Iran is about the lush, green landscapes of the Elburz mountains, the merciless deserts of the Baluchistan, and the almost superhuman grandeur of shining Persepolis, where, millenia ago, envoys of distant peoples would bring offerings of earth and salt as a token of loyalty and submission. It’s home—her home—and Iran’s Queen loves it still, her eyes trembling at the touch of anything Iranian. As for politics and the role history might yet have in store for her and the royal family at large, she asks only that the people of Iran be free to choose. That sense of selflessness struck me. It’s no wonder, I thought, that those still loyal to the House of Pahlavi call her mādar Eran—Mother of Iran.