Another Country (Page 2)

The lesson from these experiences was clear: Better not talk too much about Iran. But what were the consequences? I asked myself this question one night a few months ago, while sitting in a hall in Flushing, Queens, with several hundred Iranian-Americans. We were there to welcome Farah Pahlavi, who fled the country with her husband, the Shah, in January 1979, just before Khomeini returned and took over. She couldn't have hoped for a better reception. The event was part gospel meeting call-and-response, part "Next year in Tehran," merging the exiled Queen's hope of return with that of her listeners.

The audience's warm embrace of the Queen contrasts markedly, of course, with the official story in Iran about the decades leading up to the Pahlavis' fall from grace. According to this narrative, the Shah's corrupt and tyrannical regime hoarded money and power, squandered public resources on private indulgence, tortured and killed critics, and planted agents from the Savak (Iran's secret service) throughout Iranian society, stifling even the pettiest expressions of dissent. Like any account of the past, this history comes in some variations, but the basic outline is clear: Popular discontent with the Shah eventually boiled over into revolution.

But as I watched the audience members dab their eyes and clutch one another's arms at Queen Farah's entrance, I wondered about the difference between history and memory--and remembered that what was for some Iranians a reign of terror was, for others, a lost paradise. The assembled were mostly Long Island Iranians, members of what one might call the '78 generation: those who came just before, during or immediately after the revolution. Above the stage hung a pre-revolution flag: green, white and red, with a lion and sun in the center.

Farah talked about life with her husband ("a dream"), about her new book ("for my people") and, finally, about the pain of twenty-six years in exile. Everybody in the room, whether genuine royalty or shoe-shiner to the Shah, had experienced the same separation, and tears flowed freely as the Queen spoke. The only thing worse than exile, she said, was to see the image that the rest of the world now has of Iran. "This is even harder to bear than our own life." When she confessed her hope that one day Iranian-American youth could return and serve their country, the audience let loose a pent-up gale of "Enshallah!"--God willing--and somebody cried out, "You will do it, Your Majesty!"

A spectator asked Farah how history would judge His Majesty. Solemnly, she replied that it already had, and the judgment was not kind. But she added that every time she meets a compatriot--even twenty-five years after the Shah's death--they say to her, "Khoda biamorzeh," may God bless his soul. Her voice cracked, and the audience applauded for twenty seconds.

Before the party was over, a master of ceremonies stood up and said there was a problem. To kick off the evening, the band had played a song--Iran's pre-revolution national anthem--but no one had recognized it because it was a "modern arrangement"; nobody had stood up. Laughing awkwardly, the Queen admitted that she herself hadn't recognized the tune until halfway through. To remedy the misstep, the MC took the microphone and led the entire room in a rousing, a cappella take two of their old anthem. As it ended, the audience clapped a steady beat and chanted in unison, "Javid Shah"--"Long live the King."

It would be easy--and misleading--to assume that the Queen's admirers at this unlikely affair were simply devout royalists displaced by the revolution. It's true that most came from the educated middle class; that's how they got out when they did. But these were nonetheless typical, nonpolitical émigrés who remembered (or imagined, depending on their age) the Pahlavi years--their Iran--with fondness.

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