The Fall of Heaven

by Andrew Scott Cooper

  * * *

  TIME WAS ALSO running out for Soraya.

  General Zahedi’s son Ardeshir had not followed his father into exile in 1955 but chose to stay behind in Iran to continue his service to the crown. His romance the next year with sixteen-year-old Princess Shahnaz brought the Shah’s insecurities into painful relief. The Shah had fired General Zahedi because he feared his talents and his ambitions. Now his daughter’s wish to marry Ardeshir raised the nightmare possibility that a grandson of the general would one day inherit the throne. The Princess, barely on speaking terms with her stepmother, made no effort to dispel the rumors. “If I have a son before my stepmother [Queen Soraya], he would inherit the Iranian crown,” said the Princess. “There is no special law on this issue, but when I was getting married there was an understanding in my family that if I gave birth to a boy, the problem of the inheritance would be solved.” Though the Shah finally consented to his daughter’s engagement, others in the Imperial Family weren’t prepared to let the matter drop. Princess Ashraf was likely behind an effort to smear the Zahedi name in the popular press and portray Ardeshir as unworthy of marriage to the Shah’s daughter. More drama followed at the couple’s engagement party when Soraya and Taj ol-Moluk exchanged insults and stormed out on each other. Soraya had already hurt her mother-in-law’s feelings by refusing to visit her in the hospital after foot surgery, and now she snubbed the old lady’s reciprocal engagement party. The intrigue and gossip created such a poisonous atmosphere that Ardeshir Zahedi considered breaking off his engagement to the princess. The Shah felt compelled to invite a senior clergyman to the palace to counsel his embittered relatives.

  Still, by July 1957 the truth could no longer be avoided: Soraya could not bear children and provide the dynasty with the long-awaited male heir. Nothing could be done after medical tests revealed she had the womb of a twelve-year-old girl. Ali Reza’s premature death meant there was no insurance policy for the dynasty and that in the event of the Shah’s sudden demise the Pahlavi line would expire. Legally, his surviving half-blood brothers were ineligible to succeed because of their Qajar lineage, though the idea of a constitutional amendment to legitimize them was briefly mooted. One other possibility remained open to the couple. In Shia Islam temporary contract marriages called siqeh allowed men to marry women for periods ranging from a few hours to a few months. These marriages of convenience removed the stigma attached to brothel visits, premarital sex, casual sexual encounters, and affairs. The Shah told Soraya that he was prepared to enter into such a temporary arrangement, promising to divorce the woman as soon as she provided him with a son. The Queen, however, expressed revulsion. “How could you envisage such a thing?” she asked him sadly. He looked away and said nothing. “Then all we can do is separate,” she said.

  Desperate to keep his wife but also resolve the succession, in February 1958 the Shah threw himself on the mercy of a council of respected elder statesmen, who agreed to study the issue of an amendment to the Constitution. They failed in their task. Though they expressed sympathy for his plight, former prime minister Hossein Ala made it clear that he for one preferred to see Soraya go. He did not regard her as a particularly suitable consort or a positive influence on her husband. The Shah was devastated but understood their decision. Three emissaries were dispatched to Geneva to negotiate the terms of a handsome divorce settlement with the embittered Soraya and her father, who expressed his frank relief that his daughter was now free from the machinations of the Pahlavi Court.

  On March 14, 1958, Iranians listened as the Shah announced over national radio his decision to divorce, his voice barely audible over the sobs. Surely his listeners knew that in Persian the name Soraya was taken from the constellation of stars that guided lovers.

  4

  FARAH DIBA

  She was the woman I had been waiting for so long,

  as well as the Queen my country needed.

  —THE SHAH

  But he was my king—how could I possibly have refused?

  —QUEEN FARAH

  On July 3, 1958, photographers, newspapermen, and hundreds of spectators crowded Manhattan’s West Side docks as the Shah, accompanied by his sister Princess Fatemeh, boarded the Atlantic liner Independence at the end of a three-day trip to Washington and New York. Though billed as informal, few doubted the symbolism behind the Shah’s visit to obtain a $40 million loan with promises of additional investment and military assistance. His schedule included luncheon followed by a two-hour talk with President Eisenhower, conferences with the secretaries of state and defense, and a dinner hosted by Vice President Richard Nixon that featured twenty pounds of Iranian caviar served on gold plates—the days when world leaders could take the Shah of Iran for granted were over. The mood aboard the Independence was lighthearted until reporters asked the Shah to comment on his recent divorce from Soraya. Their breakup, he lamented, was “the hardest decision I have ever taken.… No one can carry a torch more than myself.” The crowd fell silent as the Shah, “his head in his hands and his voice broken by emotion,” reminded them that he had taken a coronation oath “to serve my country.… I did that and when you do that you have to forget yourself and dedicate yourself entirely to the country and to the people.” Steeling himself, he reiterated that he would not hand over the throne to anyone other than his own male heir: “The next king must be my son.”

  The Independence barely made landfall in Europe when news broke that the Iraqi royal family and government officials had been slaughtered in a coup carried out by leftist army officers. Alarmed at the prospect of a Russian ally on Iran’s western border, and fearful that left-wing republicans had him in their sights, the Shah panicked and sent word to General Zahedi in Switzerland that he was welcome to return home to resume the post of prime minister. Zahedi agreed, but only on the condition that Iran invade Iraq with the help of its Western allies to overthrow the new regime in Baghdad. “He said he would accept personal responsibility and that, if anything untoward were to result, His Majesty could dismiss him and put him on trial on charges of acting without official backing,” wrote his son. “He went so far as to say that His Majesty could hang him were this to happen.” Although Zahedi’s offer was not taken up, the Shah’s panicked response to the Baghdad coup suggested his continuing need for an older, more seasoned personality to provide a guiding hand. In reaching out to the same man he had so recently dispatched into exile, the Shah revealed a striking weakness of character.

  This latest Middle East crisis added urgency to American fears about Iran’s stability. In the five years since Operation Ajax had ended Iran’s messy postwar experiment with parliamentary democracy, Washington had pumped more than $500 million into the kingdom to develop its economy; the Defense Department had approved hundreds of millions of dollars in arms sales; and the CIA, working in collaboration with Israel’s Mossad, had established the Organization of Intelligence and National Security, the secret police known by its Persian acronym as Savak. The 1953 coup and its aftermath had bought time for the Pahlavis but also tainted the Shah’s legitimacy amid charges he ruled as an American puppet. Pro-Mossadeq intellectuals driven out of politics retreated to the universities, where they influenced a generation of educated Iranian youth to view the Shah as a traitor and stooge. They accused the Shah of abrogating the 1906 Constitution and concentrating power in his own hands.

  The Shah made no excuses for his decision to involve himself in the nation’s political affairs. His ambitions were bolstered by his skeptical attitude toward the 1906 Constitution, which he regarded as a European invention imposed on Iran by former colonial powers. He made clear his intention to “Iranize” a document he believed had been foisted on the Iranian people by sly foreigners. “His Imperial Majesty is above everything,” observed one Iranian newspaper. “Constitutionally, he can appoint or dismiss the Premier as he sees fit. He can also dissolve parliament if he so chooses. He decides on which projects his country needs, bills that should be presented for passage
by the legislature, and on the conduct generally of home and foreign policy.” The Shah lavished aid and attention on the armed forces, expanded the role of the state, and involved government in affairs that had once been the realm of the mosques. “The Shah used the military, bureaucracy, and court patronage to pack the cabinet and parliament with his own placemen,” wrote one historian. “He amended the constitution, giving himself the authority to appoint prime ministers.… To make it doubly clear, the Shah announced that he personally would preside over weekly cabinet meetings.”

  U.S. officials were ambivalent about the Shah’s leadership abilities and believed he had only a tenuous grasp of political realities. Fearing a socialist revolution, they urged him to implement far-reaching social, economic, and political reforms that would bring a measure of hope to the poor and deprived. The Americans saw the Pahlavi elite as wealthy and out of touch with the needs of an impoverished country. “Even yet, the Iranian economy remains primitive enough that a whole family can make a living off a single walnut tree,” reported Time. “In the rug shops of Tabriz, tiny children work at the looms all day for 20 cents or less.” The threat of a Communist takeover was real. Along Iran’s northern border the Soviet Union hosted Persian-language radio stations that gleefully denounced the Shah as a “cold war criminal” and called for him to be “dumped in the garbage bin.” For Washington, the survival of the Shah was a matter of national interest. “Should the Shah lose his fight, for his dynasty and his nation,” observed one American journal, “the Soviets would at last be free to dominate the Middle East.” But while the Americans agreed with the Shah that Iran was threatened by communism, they disagreed on the symptoms. Where they argued that the threat came from within and that Iran’s economy and society needed restructuring, the Shah countered that the solution was to build up Iran’s armed forces as a bulwark against the Soviet Union’s predatory intentions. President Eisenhower visited Iran in December 1959 and indirectly chided the Shah when he reminded parliamentarians that weapons alone could not ensure security and that “military strength alone” could not guarantee freedom and security.

  Iran’s political and economic malaise gave a renewed sense of urgency to the Shah’s top priority, which was to settle the question of the Imperial succession once and for all. His initial preference was for a European princess who could provide the House of Pahlavi with the luster of dynastic legitimacy. He soon ran into trouble. The Windsors rebuffed his interest in Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin Princess Alexandra of Kent, while his favorite, Princess Maria Gabriella, the Catholic daughter of the deposed King Umberto of Italy, was ruled out owing to opposition from the Vatican and Iran’s ulama. Iran’s most influential religious figure, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, passed on a message to the Imperial Court: “I hope this rumor is baseless, but if true, it must be pointed out to His Majesty that he is the king of a Shia country and must not do such a thing.” A second message followed in short order: “If His Majesty were to go ahead, he would be jeopardizing his throne; we cannot remain silent either.”

  During the Shah’s state visit to France in the spring of 1959 he was guest of honor at a reception for Iranian students studying in Paris. At a time when his mother and sisters were selecting and inspecting candidates for marriage, the girls were particularly anxious to make a good impression. Only Farah Diba, a young student of architecture, politely stood back to avoid the crush. When she was introduced in the receiving line His Majesty observed that her choice of profession was unusual—at the time Iran boasted only one other female architect. Farah excitedly wrote her mother back in Tehran to tell of her encounter and provided a vivid description of the Shah’s “sad eyes.” Few could have predicted that by year’s end Farah Diba would take her vows as the Shah of Iran’s consort and Queen-Empress over twenty-one million subjects.

  * * *

  THE NAME FARAH means “joy” in Persian, and Sohrab and Farideh Diba were overwhelmed with happiness at the birth of their daughter and only child on October 14, 1938, in the American Mission Hospital in Tehran. Even as a child, Farah exuded a sense of destiny. At the communal baths where she was bathed once a week, the washerwoman would comfort her with a lullaby:

  To whom shall we give this girl?

  No ordinary man shall she wed!

  Should the King come with his army, his Minister in his train,

  Perhaps she will not be wed.

  Sohrab Diba hailed from a prominent line of courtiers, politicians, and generals who had served the Qajar shahs. He was a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammad, and as such was allowed to style himself a seyyed, a title considered a great mark of respect in the Muslim world. Destined to enter royal service, Sohrab began his training as an army cadet in St. Petersburg and escaped to France during the Russian Revolution to continue his studies at the elite St. Cyr military academy. He returned to Iran with a law degree and married Farideh Ghotbi, “considered one of the prettiest, most delightful girls in Tehran,” and the daughter of a well-to-do family from the northern Caspian province of Gilan. Farah retained a lifelong pride in her Diba lineage. “I don’t usually talk about this,” she once said, “because everybody is his own person and it’s not who your family is that’s important, but what you are. But my ancestors were ambassadors to Turkey and Russia. My grandfather was an art collector and my father studied at St. Cyr, the French military academy. He also studied law and was a cadet in a Russian school.”

  Newlyweds Sohrab and Farideh moved into a comfortable walled villa in Tehran with Farideh’s brother, Mohammad Ali; his wife, Louise; and their son, Reza, who became Farah’s closest childhood friend and confidant in adulthood. Despite the rigors of the war and Allied occupation, the future Queen’s earliest years were quite carefree. Each summer, to escape the blazing heat, the Dibas, the Ghotbis, and their friends and servants moved the household north to Shemiran, a popular district in the foothills of the Alborz Mountains. “The days were entirely given up to games and excursions,” Farah remembered. “We went climbing, rode donkeys among the hills, wandered through the valleys. Being something of a tomboy, always climbing trees, I preferred to play with my boy cousins.” She was only eight years old when her beloved father fell ill with an ailment that at first was diagnosed as hepatitis. “I would not say she loved her father more than myself—we were a deeply united trio—but Farah was completely fascinated by her father; the way he would talk to her in French, and the stories he told her of other lands, all enthralled her,” said Madame Diba. Even after the doctors diagnosed pancreatic cancer, Farah was told her father was on the road to recovery. Then one day he disappeared from her life. Her mother explained that Sohrab had been sent to France to continue his medical treatment. As the months passed with no news, the little girl suspected a deception. When she walked into a room she noticed the adults looked away or fell silent. Other times, she caught her mother and aunts stifling sobs. “A pall of melancholy, created by my feelings of emptiness and endless waiting, fell over my existence at that time,” she remembered of those sad days. “The unbearable had happened, without my being able to shed a tear.” She learned the truth that her father was dead only on the day she left Tehran for Paris on her eighteenth birthday.

  Her father’s mysterious disappearance matured Farah beyond her years. She grew up to be confident and outgoing but also studious, dutiful, and conscientious, graduating at the top of her class at Tehran’s Jeanne d’Arc School for Girls, where she received instruction in French. She led the girls’ basketball team to a string of victories and earned two medals at the first national championships for women’s athletics. After her picture appeared in the newspapers she became something of a teenage celebrity for middle-class Tehranis. “Look, there’s Farah!” the children would tell their parents when they saw her pass by in the streets. The attention did not go to her head. She was active in the Girl Scout movement and spent the summer of 1956 with her friend Elli Antoniades, leading a troupe of teenagers to France to participate in an
international scouting jamboree. The trip turned out to be a revelation, and, like her father, Farah developed a lifelong passion for French art, culture, and literature.

  Religion played only a peripheral role in her life. Madame Diba observed the rituals of faith, but like so many women in Tehran’s upper-middle-class society she refused to wear a chador and would not think of veiling her daughter. Farah did not fast during the holiday month of Ramadan and “learned to read the [Quran] without any explanation of what it meant.” As an adult she recalled an unpleasant childhood encounter with a clergyman who angrily berated her for not covering her hair. From that moment on she associated organized religion with anger and intolerance. Nor was there any question of an arranged marriage. Encouraged to pursue a career, Farah Diba had the instincts and temperament of a builder. “Architecture is an act of creation,” she once said. “I always wanted to create.” For the rest of her life she remained grateful to her mother for breaking with tradition and allowing her daughter and only child to travel to Europe to study.