Farah was the only woman ever to be crowned in the history of Iran. As she lived in royal splendour, she was also overseeing the transformation of Iran's women into a modern life. Today, as she continues her life in exile, and lives under police protection, she faces a death sentence in her own country if ever she dared to return.

Tragedies followed tragedies in her life. Her father had died when she was barely nine. The Islamic Revolution overtook Iran and exiled Shah and his family in 1979 in a most humiliating way. He passed away almost alone in Cairo in 1980. Then came the death of her mother Madame Farideh Didba, to whom she was emotionally attached, in Paris in 1999. Two years later, came the death of her youngest daughter, Leila, at the tender age of 31. Farah lived to see and experience it all, and yet gathered enough of her spirits to release her memoirs, marking the still beautiful lady's 65th birthday.

The book is a documentation of her love for her man and the country. She had written it many years ago, and was keeping it tucked in her drawer. It unfolds the happenings in Iran in the last two decades of the past century and some of the most intimate moments of the Shah, his family, the Pahlavis and the Shahbanou, meaning the Lady of the King -Shah being Shahinshah, the King of Kings.

Such, of course, was the way they lived and ruled, endearing large sections of the progressive segments of Iran's population, and at the same time alienating the conservative sections, by their modern outlook and partly-western ways.

By the end of 1945, when the allies pulled out of Iran, the job of reuniting the country was left to the vanquished army. The emerging face of that army was Muhammed Riza Pahlavi, who was just 26. Farah remembers how ordinary Iranian families looked to the young, smart Shah with awe and admiration. Farah's father was himself an officer in the army.

Farah's memoirs gives us a peek into the early marriages of the Shah. Not many knew at that time that Shah's private life was a terrible mess, despite his high stature. He was "forced", it is said, to marry an Egyptian princess, Fawziyya, by his father as part of some political deal. The marriage did not proceed well, but to them was born princess Shahinaz. Later Shah entered into wedlock with a beautiful German woman of Iranian origin, Thriyya Asfandiyari. Farah says Shah loved both the wives, but the second marriage too did not go well.

Fawziyya hated to live in Iran and wanted to get away. Thriyya did not conceive and her failure to give birth to a crown prince upset Shah. However, it was with "great reluctance," we're told, that he agreed to divorce Thuriyya under "promptings" from the people that surrounded him.

Then began the search for a new wife, and it continued for over 10 years. Several teenage girls were nominated to marry him, but Shah did not show any keenness. They included an Italian princess Gabriella, a Hollywood actress Grace Kelly and six beautiful Iranian women from aristocratic families. Shah was nearing 40.

Farah was not aware of Shah's personal life when she married him. When he married first, she was seven, and had just begun her education in a school run by Roman Catholic nuns in Teheran. Her marriage came at the age of 19.This was the first time Shah picked his partner by himself. Farah, apart from her beauty, was charecterised by her independent thinking, sense of responsibility and discipline. She belonged to a middle class family, and yet Shah fell for her charms. They met while she was still a student - studying architecture in Paris.

Memoirs speaks of the bitter experiences she and her husband had after he was overthrown from power, and their eventual migration to the US. So many people, she says, are of the mistaken belief that the super power would sacrifice its interests for the sake of what is conceived as friendship. Shah had maintained good relations with the US since the mid 1950s. He "generously" helped his friends by financing their presidential election funds; and helps went for several congressmen as well. There were times when he gave precious gifts and expensive Persian carpets, as also rugs and gold-plated watches to Americans in Teheran, says she.

In his last phase of life, when nations after nations refused to give him residence, the Shah turned to late President Anwar Sadat, with whom he had a close friendship, and enjoyed his hospitality. Farah remembers this with gratitude.

She writes about her childhood: of the house on Sezavar Avenue, with all its "brilliant sounds" and "nice smells". "Downstairs, there was a private salon... I slept in the same room as my parents and when they went out at night, the following morning, I would discover bonbons and chocolates and sweets under my pillow. On the first floor, there was my father's office, the large dining and reception rooms".

Credit goes to her mother, Farideh Diba, for raising Farah as an independent and modern woman, which in later years helped Iran in as much that it was Farah who played a major role in the emancipation of women in the country. Leila is portrayed as a girl who symbolized all the hopes of the future. She had a passionate love for her father, who she lost at the age of 10. All through the rest of her life, she nursed a pain, of not being able to see her father in his deathbed for one last time. "I absolutely wanted to enter his room for one last time", she was quoted as saying, and adding, it was her old valet who stopped her, saying, "No, princess, it is better this way".

Farah gives vent to her concern over the course Iran has taken. "We have about $30 billion of external debt...We are threatened by overpopulation. In 1979, we were 35 million and today 65 million. Women are considered as second class citizens. They are insulted and ..."  It goes on.