The Shah Takes a Bride

On the floor in front of the couple lay the ritual symbols of the Moslem wedding--a Koran resting on gold brocade, a golden mirror to symbolize brightness and joy, bowls fashioned out of crystal candy to symbolize the sweetness of marriage. But the most significant of the objects before the 40-year-old Shahanshah of Iran and his third bride, Farah Diba, 21, was the Symbol of Plenty, a ten-foot-long loaf of plain bread on which were written the words: "May Allah give you a male heir."

For all its publicized glitter and the Cinderella prose of 200 correspondents--mostly French and Italian--who flew in from the Continent to give breathless coverage of the wedding, the need to provide a male successor to the Peacock Throne was the overriding consideration in the marriage. It was the Shah's own grown daughter, Princess Shahnaz, who spotted Farah as a likely candidate--an aristocratic young Iranian beauty who was studying art in Paris (TIME, Nov. 2). When the Shah took Farah up in his private jet plane over Teheran, the French press eagerly told of how he whispered "Je t'aime," but the Shah, the court, and the Iranians themselves, having gone through all this twice before, gave no hint that this was in any way a romantic marriage. Last week, when the police checked to see whether Teheran's shops were displaying a portrait of the Shah, some merchants thriftily dug out a picture of the Shah with his beautiful ex-Queen, the childless Soraya, and at least one found a photograph of him with his first wife, Fawzia (sister of Egypt's King Farouk), who had borne him only a daughter.

Long Day's Journey. At 3:20 p.m., Farah, dressed in her 33-lb., jewel-encrusted, mink-hemmed Dior wedding gown, descended the staircase of her home for the last time, stepped to a cage and set free 150 nightingales, a ritual she preferred to the usual symbolic slaughter of lambs all over the countryside. As she walked through the front door, her mother held over her head a mirror and the Koran as a symbol of the long journey she was about to take. Finally, escorted by a troop of Imperial Lancers, Farah was driven in a Rolls-Royce to the palace.

When she arrived at the Hall of Mirrors, the Shah, resplendent in his commander in chief's uniform, had already passed through the main archway seven times, repeating, "Allah be praised." Three times the black-turbaned Imam of Teheran asked Farah the question, "Are you prepared to marry the Shahanshah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi?" Only the third time was Farah supposed to answer "Yes," lest she appear too eager. When the answer was given, the Queen Mother placed a diamond necklace around Farah's neck, and the Minister of Court brought the couple two gold rings upon a golden tray. The Queen Mother and Farah's mother showered the couple with handfuls of pearls, gold coins and candied almonds, and outside, the cannons boomed a 21-gun salute for the new Queen of Iran.

Delayed Honeymoon. Next morning the Shah was back at his desk. He was worried over reports of Iraqi troop movements near the great oil refinery of Abadan in Shatt-al-Arab, an area the two nations have been squabbling over for generations. The Shah's armed forces, heavily concentrated along the Iraqi border, were put on the alert. Finally, after a week of such watching, the Shah got set to quit his capital with his bride for his villa on the Caspian Sea, and the honeymoon he had been postponing from day to day.

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