Hosted by:
Dr. Vartan Gregorian 12th President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York,
Mr. David Rockefeller and Mrs. Barbara Walters
March 24, 2004
Farah Pahlavi Book Party in New York
Hosted by:
Dr. Vartan Gregorian 12th President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York,
Mr. David Rockefeller and Mrs. Barbara Walters
March 24, 2004
Ms. Barbara Walters Remarks:
Imagine a 19-year old commoner, a young architecture student in Paris, meeting the King of Kings, the Shah of Shahs. Amazingly, fantastically, dramatically, romantically becoming his wife and Queen. The Shah said he chose her because of her even disposition, her modesty and her charm - qualities she has never lost. And it didn't hurt that she was and is so beautiful.
(The birth of her child, bells ringing.) As Queen, Empress Farah traveled the country, visiting the smallest villages to help communicate the problems of women to her husband and try to achieve what her husband wanted - to bring Third World Persia into 20th Century Iran. I first met Empress Farah all those years ago in Teheran and was struck by her intelligence and sense of balance. God knows, she needed it. I will not retrace the agonizing events that preceded the revolution in Iran, a revolution we now know was a catastrophe.
The Queen has now written an extraordinary book about her extraordinary life. It is called "An Enduring Love," and you will not be able to put it down. It is her fascinating and, yes, heartbreaking account of the years in Iran and the years after. Many of us have forgotten what those years after were like for the Shah and Empress - the taking of American hostages, the death warrants on the Shah's life, the odyssey of the Shah and his Queen, traveling from country to country to find refuge - Morocco, Mexico, Panama, a brief visit to New York - and this, only because he was so ill. And with this, there was the growing knowledge on the part of Her Majesty that her husband had cancer, a secret he had kept from her for many years. Finally, there was refuge offered by only one man, President Anwar Sadat.
And the Shah and his Empress arrived in Egypt, where the King died six months later, and where President Sadat gave him a funeral fit for a king, to which few other royals or dignitaries attended. And what of those years after for the Queen and her family? Her adjustment to life in a small town in Massachusetts, if you can call it an adjustment. The joys and tragedies endured along the way, the death of her beloved daughter, her pride in her son, the Shah, and his children, including a new baby girl, named Farah after Her Majesty. With it all, this is a love story of
a magnificent woman who feels so deeply that her husband was a magnificent and misunderstood leader. This is a book that is history, but also the very personal story of the woman we are honoring tonight. It has been my honor and pleasure to have known Her Majesty all these years, to have interviewed her and to have shared some of the most poignant times in her life.
I ask those of you with glasses in your hand to raise them and toast the dignity, grace and accomplishments of this superb woman.
Empress Farah Pahlavi smiles at the book-signing party. Photo: KA
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Dr. Vartan Gregorian
President Carnegie Corporation