Marlene Wagman-Geller

   If the Western world played “I Spy,” no doubt it would register Disney princesses holding Little Mermaid lunchboxes, wearing Cinderella couture, sporting Snow White backpacks. Girls have long fantasized about an alternate reality with bragging rights to royal roots where they hung out in a castle until the arrival of Prince Charming. The dark side of the fantasy appeared with a Persian princess, testimony to a tiara is not a panacea for pain.

       The woman who, in appearance, ethnicity, and wealth, could have served as the model for Princess Jasmine was Leila, though the similarities ended with their respective sultan fathers. The ruler of Agrabah was affable and beloved; his only flaw gullibility regarding his vizier, Jafar. In contrast, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi II, was an absolute autocrat, known as “HIM” short for “His Imperial Majesty.” While he was the family’s beloved patriarch, he was a dreaded dictator who used Savak, his secret police, to torture and murder dissidents. Shabana Farah, his third wife, was beautiful and accomplished, and the foreign press referred to her as the Jacqueline Kennedy of the Middle East. Leila was the youngest sister of Crown Prince Reza, Prince Ali-Reza, and Princess Farahnaz. The baby’s birth in the military hospital in Tehran was such an honor that it subsequently assumed her name. The year of Leila’s birth coincided with the release of a Simon and Garfunkel album whose title could serve as a metaphor for her life, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” 

     The first couple of Iran brought Leila home, which in their case was the Niavaran Palace that displayed Persian carpets, mammoth chandeliers, and paintings by Chagall, Modigliani, and Calder. The vast compound made bunking with her sister unnecessary as Leila had the run of six rooms. On one wall hung a photograph of First Lady Rosalynn Carter and her daughter, Amy. President Carter was a firm supporter of the shah as his oil rich kingdom was pro-American.

       The Pahlavi princess enjoyed an enchanted childhood in which she lived in unimaginable splendor with her close-knit family. Even when the shah was in a palace meeting with a foreign head of state, Leila was always welcome to sit on his lap, even if doing so rumpled his $6,000 custom-made suits. While Princess Jasmine had her pet tiger, Rajah, Leila and her siblings had a private zoo on the grounds of the palace that included a lion, monkeys, deer, antelope, and an elephant from India, a present from Indira Gandhi.

   A modern-day King Midas, the shah threw memorable parties. In 1971, to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of the Peacock Throne, (one of the world’s first empires), Mohammad and Farah hosted a sixty million gala at Persepolis, the ancient seat of the Persian dynasty. For the occasion, the hostess with the mostest arranged for 165 chefs to arrive from Paris, and the menu consisted of Imperial Caspian caviar, partridge stuffed with foie gras, and truffles from Maxim’s de Paris. Mohammad and Farah made quite the entrance; they arrived forty-five minutes late in their blue-and-white helicopter, piloted by the shah. Mohammad, in full military uniform awash with medals and gold braid, greeted his guests, switching easily from German to French, English to Persian. His shabana wore a green-and-white silk ball gown and long white gloves; the emeralds in her ten-pound crown were the size of golf balls, her diamonds only slightly smaller. While the opulence of the ruling family might have awed the assembled dignitaries, the over-the-top conspicuous consumption infuriated Iran’s communists and religious fundamentalists. In the late 1970s, the country’s discontent with the ruling elite was evident: tens of thousands of black-clad protestors marched down the streets of Tehran, led by mullahs, shouting, “Marg bar shah!” “Death to the Shah!” By the close of the decade, Iran was caught in the crosshairs of civil war. As the Empress wrote in a letter, “The storm clouds are gathering:” in 1979, the storm clouds broke. The shah, gravely ill with leukemia, was desperate to find a safe haven. 

       The outbreak of the Iranian Revolution sounded the death knell of the Peacock throne. Mohammad, accompanied by his wife, flew his personal Boeing 70 into exile in Egypt. Nine-year-old Leila, along with her grandmother and other family members, boarded a military jet bound for a Texan air-force base to unite with eldest brother, Reza, where he was training to be a pilot.

       Whenever possible, they flew to visit their parents. Often, for security reasons, Mohammad and Farah had to take off in the middle of the night while their children slept. In a stopover in Panama, during a family reunion, Leila was so traumatized that if her parents left the room, she became hysterical. The Pahlavis were destined to live as royal refugees as the new Iranian government had ordered the execution of the shah and the shabana. HIM had become a king without a kingdom, yet he still possessed a king’s ransom of wealth. Although the Pahlavis had left behind an art collection valued at three billion, jaw-dropping crown jewels, and opulent palaces, they had secured a fortune of hundreds of millions-some estimates place it at ten billion- in offshore accounts. Princess Leila was relieved their governess had brought along a photo album, her family frozen forever in images of the enchanted years.

      After fleeing Iran, the Pahlavis embarked on a desperate odyssey for sanctuary; however, country after country rescinded their invitations under a barrage of threats from enraged Islamic radicals. Mohammad offered the Bahamas government $425 million to purchase Paradise Island; fearful of terrorist retaliation, they declined. The following year, the increasingly desperate family arrived in the United States for treatment for Mohammad’s cancer. In fury for receiving the shah, thirteen days later, militant Muslims invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran where they took hostages to demand Pahlavi’s extradition, as well as the return of plundered wealth. Upon his release from the hospital, the Pahlavis left for Cairo where Mohammad passed away at age sixty. After his death, President Sadat granted the widow asylum and a residence in the Koubbeh palace; however, the presidential assassination destroyed this hope. Ultimately, with the shah’s death, President Reagan offered sanctuary, and the family settled in Williamstown, Massachusetts, to be near Reza’s college. In 1984, home was in upscale Greenwich Village, Connecticut.

      The Pahlavi 1,001 tales were not yet at an end. Leila attended Brown University where she studied literature, anthropology, and German philosophy. The raven-haired beauty modeled for Valentino on the catwalk of Paris. However, the princess, never able to find a meaningful career, spent her time hanging out in the fashionable haunts of Manhattan and London; she also spent time in Paris where her mother lived in a lavish home overlooking the River Seine. With unlimited leisure and funds, the princess was a presence at ambassador parties, Swiss skiing trips, and Parisian dinners. In London, she frequented the Tramp, a nightclub favored by wealthy Middle Easterners. As part of the international jet set, she had friends with Ferraris and surnames that bespoke royal lineage.

     Nevertheless, beneath the lavish lifestyle, the princess was desperately unhappy. She was unable to recover from her childhood trauma of the family’s exodus from their homeland and their desperate quest for stability. Leila also never got over her feeling of being a stranger in a strange land. On one occasion she stated, “There’s one dream as scary as hell. I’m in the palace and I’m not supposed to be there. If someone catches me I could have my head cut off.” Another permanent scar was the loss of her father and the final chapter of his once charmed life. A bust of Mohammad dominated her living room, and every year she made a pilgrimage to Cairo for his memorial service. Lonely, Leila never found her Aladdin.

      The princess suffered from depression, mood swings, insomnia, anorexia, and bulimia. To blunt the edge of despair, she self-medicated with painkillers, anti-depressants, and illegal drugs. In an attempt at regaining control of her life, Leila checked in to rehabilitation clinics in London’s the Priory, the rehab of celebrities, which provided only temporary respite. Ever more reliant on opiates, Leila stole prescriptions from the desk of her doctor.

     When in London, Leila stayed at the exclusive eighteenth century Leonard Hotel, Marble Arch in a £1,300 a week suite. The manager said the princess was always unaccompanied and told staff she came “to chill out.”  Empress Farah, extremely anxious about her daughter, asked her friend, Hourieh Dallas, to check on Leila. When there was no answer from room 15, the manager opened the door. Thirty-one-year-old Leila had died from an overdose of prescription drugs and cocaine, her body emaciated from years of anorexia and bulimia. In the room was an undated scrap of paper with some words of scribbled poetry. In the drawer of the nightstand was a photograph of her family-Leila sitting on her father’s lap- watching television in their Tehran palace. On Farah Pahlavi’s website is a tribute to the Peacock Princess:

In the garden

By the roses,

Is written

“Please don’t pick up the flowers”

But…

The wind doesn’t know how to read