SHAHBANU Farah Diba Pahlavi hopes that the Egyptians will read her memoirs, because of its portrayal of her personal life before the Islamic Revolution that swept the Shah out of power in 1979 and ushered in a strict theocracy. Her autobiographical work The Memoirs of Farah Pahlavi, which appeared in Arabic last week in Cairo, is a good source for Egyptian readers seeking a female perspective on Iran's turbulent modern history. They will enjoy this candid, straightforward work, because Shahbanu Farah gives a detailed account of her life in pre-Revolution Iran and the tumultuous years leading up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and its aftermath. With this autobiographical tale written by Farah Diba, some of the blanks are being filled in on the life of the Shah as a man, husband, father and leader, who ruled a powerful country. The Shah's family is put under the spotlight in her book The Memoirs of Farah Pahlavi, which describes an authoritarian father who shunned the luxury his wealth could buy. She recalls that the Shah loved his country more than he loved his family. Farah Diba, who was 21 when she married the Shah, writes that she immersed herself, as Iran's new queen, in cultural programmes and social works for the betterment of her fellow Iranians. Pahlavi explains that the real differences emerged in 1963 when the Shah began his ‘White Revolution' to modernise Iran by instituting land reform, women's rights and workers' rights. However, the communists and fundamentalist clerics vehemently opposed these changes. "In the Shah's eyes, the monarchy stood for liberalisation, even if its enforcement agencies were harshly criticised by the world community," Farah Diba writes in her book, which has been translated into Arabic and published by the Cairo-based Dar el-Shorouk. She writes that criticism of the monarchy only encouraged Khomeini's Islamic fundamentalist opposition. As the revolutionaries gained strength and the royal family weighed exit strategies, Farah Diba shouldered a new, personal burden: the Shah's concealed battle with cancer. "Asylum offers were few. Late Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat welcomed us to Egypt, because our stay in the Bahamas, Mexico, the United States and Panama was politically difficult," she recalls. She ends her account with the Shah's death in 1980, their youngest daughter's death and the Iran-Iraq War, while her life has continued in Paris and US. Although many books have been written about the 1979 overthrow of the Shah, The Memoirs of Farah Pahlavi will appeal mostly to those readers whose interests run more to personal than political history. Although there is politics in the book, it is primarily the story of a young architecture student who, in the late 1950s, wandered into what looked like a fairytale. It's the story of a girl who becomes a queen and who embraces all the sophisticated lifestyle that comes with the position, but who also worked to retain her own personality. The book is a loving portrait of a country the Shah loved and lost. It offers a fascinating look at a remarkable woman and contributes a new perspective on the history of a troubled nation today.
