It could be the eternal wisdom of Persia's great poets, an unforgettable bond to Iran and an everlasting love for a ruler the world shunned in his last days in exile that have kept Farah Pahlavi anchored.

She has suffered in her 25 years since the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, piloted his family out of Iran. At 66, she remains philosophical about her losses, the dizzying highs and lows her journey has involved.

"There are days where I find myself depressed and tired . . . people write to me and they want me to give them courage," she said. "Life is a struggle, for everyone at every level, but you should not lose your dignity. To go on is the struggle of life."

"There are so many answers in Persian poetry. A blue sky, love of family and nature. All this gives me positive energy," she said. "At the end, it is in yourself that you have to find the way to go on."

The account of her life as a glamorous and stunning empress who had to give it all up in the face of historical upheaval is narrated in her memoir, "An Enduring Love: My Life With the Shah," published in English by Miramax Books. The book, which was translated from French, topped bestseller lists for weeks last fall in France.

In the book, she chronicles Iran's plunge into chaos and arbitrary executions in the early days of the revolution, and her husband's battle with cancer. She describes the humiliation of becoming a diplomatic burden in search of a haven and medical care at the height of the U.S. hostage crisis in Tehran.

She details the political maneuvering she and her husband faced as they jetted from Egypt to the United States, the Bahamas, Mexico and Panama before finally returning to reside in Egypt. It is a retelling of events based on her own diary entries as well as accounts from the shah's doctors, the former first lady of Egypt, Jehan Sadat, and others.

Pahlavi talked about her life and work Wednesday in an interview at her home in Potomac. The afternoon sun flooded her living room, decorated with kilim carpets, modern Iranian paintings and a bronze bust of the shah.

She follows every newscast and development in Iran as if still there, and she devotes time each day to answering e-mail from students in Iran who ask her to call them, parents worried about their children or disillusioned expatriates who need her moral support.

Pahlavi began writing her book three years ago, when she was overcome with grief as her youngest daughter was losing a battle with depression, eating disorders and a dependence on sleeping pills. Leila, 31, died in a hotel room in London in 2001.

"I felt so miserable, I started then," she said of beginning the memoir.

Pahlavi said that if she has one regret, it is that she did not spend more private time with her husband and children. Her happiest memories are of giving birth to a boy, a girl, a boy, a girl, and of traveling around the Iranian countryside, where she said she met ordinary people. "I always wanted to travel with nomads, or cross the Iranian desert on camel back. Apparently, it is an unbelievable experience," she said longingly.

Pahlavi was born Farah Diba, an only child. She lost her father and was brought up by her mother in her uncle's house.

In the summer of 1959 in France, while trying to obtain a scholarship to continue her architecture studies in Paris, a chance encounter with the shah developed into a romance. They married later that year.

A longtime acquaintance, Haleh Esfandiari, who served as deputy director of one of her many cultural foundations, said that "she never lost that popular touch. She was genuine. While the shah gave the impression of being distant, she allowed people to rush and embrace her while visiting the provinces." Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center here, attended the same girls school in Tehran as Pahlavi.

Pahlavi describes the forced separation from her children when they needed their parents the most, the final scene of tearful farewells with palace personnel throwing themselves at the shah's feet, and the cook who grabbed his copper pots and bags of lentils and beans to take with him on the plane.

"When we look back, we all had a part in this revolution," she said of her countrymen. "They all, in a sort of hysteria, thought religious men could bring freedom and democracy.

"Khomeini used them all," she said of the grand ayatollah who led the 1979 Islamic revolution. "Maybe we should have handled or addressed problems differently," she conceded, noting that there were shortcomings in her husband's rule. He died in 1980.

The political jockeying by some members of the royal entourage after the death of her husband still stings. "It's very hard to have seen one side of human beings, then have to see the other side, their actions and words, coming from people who were close to you," she said.

But, she added, "I have tried to put myself above it."

"If you have to cross the desert to reach your goal, go," she said, borrowing from the words of Hafiz, one of Iran's most celebrated poets, "pay no heed to the wounding thorns."