Empress Farah Diba, mother of the late Leila Pahlavi, has issued a statement expressing her profound grief over the loss of her daughter, and acknowledging Leila's prolonged struggle with depression over the loss of her father.
Leila, the youngest daughter of the late Shah of Iran, was found dead in a hotel room in London on Monday. There were no suspicious circumstances and Scotland Yard was treating the tragedy as an “unexplained death”. However, there is speculation that the Persian princess' depression was compounded by a possible food disorder.
"Time had not healed her wounds," said the Empress in a statement on her website. "Exiled at the age of nine, she never surmounted the death of her father, His Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, to whom she was particularly close. She was never able to forget the injustice and the dramatic conditions of our departure and the erring which was to follow. She could not stand living far from Iran and shared wholeheartedly the suffering of her countrymen."
Born on March 27, 1970, Leila, whose name means “night” in Arabian, fled her homeland in the arms of her nanny in 1979 for the United States. Her father followed three days later –when the mullahs overturned the Peacock throne – and died in exile in Cairo the following year. Leila, however, was not with him when he succumbed to cancer and, in an interview last year, said that she felt guilty for a long time afterwards. “But I think that my father would have preferred me to remember the best moments,” she recalled. “His last words to my mother were: ‘Look after the children'.”
Leila often spoke fondly of her father's memory. "Sometimes I visited him in his office after school," she recounted. "Even if he had an important meeting, he would greet me with an enormous smile. My father, who had an amazing presence and dignity, was in reality a timid and honest man. His only passion was for his country and its progress."
Though Leila clearly inherited her mother's beauty and gestures, the legacy of that passion in her father was evident when she said, "I remain as Iranian as if I'd never left home."
Upon learning of his sister's death, Reza Pahlavi, the Shah-in-exile, issued a statement from his home in Virginia. “It brings me enormous pain and deep sorrow to announce the tragic passing away of my beloved sister Princess Leila Pahlavi after a lengthy illness.”
It is thought the princess had spent her last two weeks on her own in the hotel, having previously been there with her boyfriend, who is said to have “royal connections” overseas.
A fragile girl, Leila studied Comparative Literature at Brown University in America, where she was based. Intensely likeable, and described by one friend as "a very sweet, sensitive girl with a heart of gold", she was a fixture on the New York social scene, and had an apartment in Manhattan. She travelled extensively in Europe, notably to Paris and London. She worked with many charitable organisations, including the Iran Heritage Foundation and the Mihan Foundation.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
