Farah: The Working Empress

Being the Empress of Iran is more than glittering tiaras, palatial residences, dazzling receptions and state visits. For Farah Pahlavi, 36, the first Empress in Iran's 2,500-year history to be officially designated regent (she will assume power in the event that the Shah dies before Crown Prince Reza turns 20 in 1980), life involves long days of official work--including answering about 50,000 letters a year. "My husband is interested in Iran's G.N.P.," she says. "I am interested in its G.N.H.

--Gross National Happiness."

Intelligent, sensitive and elegant, Farah calls herself "a working Empress." She is patron of 26 social, educational and cultural organizations, and has been active in everything from advising women of their legal rights to promoting young Iranian painters and sculptors. Although Farah's role in the Shah's "white revolution" has been somewhat overshadowed by more dramatic political and economic developments, she has traveled widely about the country, visiting villages and talking to peasants about their problems.

Some observers believe that the current popularity of the Shah with Iran's people is due in part to the unaffected, natural style of the Empress. On one trip to the interior, a peasant woman who did not want to bare her face impulsively pulled Farah under her chador (veil) to kiss her. "Many problems touch me, and I can be a good advocate," says Farah, who meets once a week with Premier Hoveida and does not hesitate to take up what she considers urgent problems with the Shah.

One of her principal tasks these days is administering a $5 million budget and a staff of 40 workers, who handle the avalanche of requests for help that flood her office. Though financial assistance is sometimes given, Farah prefers whenever possible to find long-range solutions such as jobs, better housing or scholarships. "We will have to continue to do this," she says of her role as the Shah's principal adviser on social and cultural problems, "until our welfare system is more spread out." Appropriately, her main concern at present is to broaden Iran's social security program.

The daughter of a well-to-do army officer who died when she was a child, Farah was a bright young architecture student in Paris in 1959 when she happened to meet the Shah's son-in-law, Ardeshir Zahedi, who is now Ambassador to Washington. Captivated by Farah, Zahedi arranged for her to meet the Shah, whose previous marriages* had ended in divorce because of their failure to produce a male heir. After an eight-month courtship, Farah found herself, at 21, in the storybook role of the Queen on the Peacock Throne.

Despite her large staff and extraordinary prerogatives as Empress, Farah shares one problem with a lot of other working wives: how to find enough time for both job and home. To give their four children, Crown Prince Reza, 14, Princess Fahranaz, 11, Prince All Reza, 8, and Princess Leila, 4, "as much of a normal, natural life as we can," Farah and the Shah set up a special palace school with 45 other children. She has no great love for protocol, often eludes palace security and slips out for a walk in a nearby park, inadequately disguised in scarf and sunglasses. Although her wardrobe formerly came from European couturiers, she now mostly buys clothes made in Iran from local fabrics. She has also donated her choicest jewels to Iranian museums. "In the world today, the way I live and the way I work," she says, "I don't feel like wearing those jewels."

As the Empress of a predominantly Moslem nation, Farah is proud of the strides that Iran is making in establishing equal rights for women. One of her proudest moments came when the Shah dispatched her on an official trip to Peking two years ago at a time when Iran was moving to strengthen diplomatic relations. Farah interpreted the Shah's entrustment of such a sensitive mission to her as evidence of his commitment to a new role for women outside the home. What about becoming regent? "I don't want to think about it, but sometimes I do," she told Correspondent Prager. "Then I say to myself: 'I'll do what I can and see what happens.' "

* To Egypt's Princess Fawzia. King Farouk's sister, Who is now married to an Egypitian busniessman, and to Iran's Esfandiari, who lives in Europe and has never remarried.

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