The letter reached him while he lay dying of cancer, more than two decades after their divorce. In it, Sariah confessed a secret she had carried for twenty years: she had never stopped loving him. She asked to see him one last time. He wrote back that he had never stopped loving her either, and that he wanted to say goodbye in person.
But there was an obstacle. He was still married to Farah, who rarely left his bedside. Unable to get away, the Shah made a scandalous suggestion. He proposed meeting Sariah secretly, alone, in Cairo.
It was a plan that would never happen. Muhammad Reza died before they could see each other again. Their story began more than half a century earlier, when Sariah was just a teenager. She was the only daughter of an Iranian nobleman, Khalil Esfandiari, and his German wife, Eva Karl, and she had grown up between Berlin and Isfahan, surrounded by luxury.
In 1948, the Queen Mother of Iran, Taj al-Moluk, was looking for a wife for her son, Shah Muhammad Reza. She happened to see a photograph of Sariah and decided immediately that the girl looked like the ideal queen. Sariah was sixteen at the time, but the Queen Mother pressed forward. One of her daughters was sent to inspect the girl, and returned with enthusiastic approval.
Soon afterward, Sariah was invited to the royal palace. It seemed like a casual invitation, but it was actually an audition for the role of queen. When Sariah saw Muhammad Reza in his military uniform, she was swept off her feet. She later described him as magnificent, and he was equally taken with her.
The very next day her father was told that the Shah wanted to propose. He asked his daughter a single question: was she ready to marry him? She said yes. There were warning signs from the start.
Muhammad Reza was in his mid-thirties, more than a decade older than his bride. His family was famously dysfunctional. His father had been cold and physically harsh with him, and his mother was possessive and jealous. The Shah had also been married before, to Princess Fawzia of Egypt, and that marriage had ended badly, marked by his open infidelity and her misery in Iran.
But Sariah had already agreed, and backing out would have been difficult. The wedding was scheduled for December 27, 1950, but Sariah fell violently ill with typhoid the night before. The ceremony was postponed on short notice. Legend says the Shah visited her every day and placed a jewel on her pillow.
A new date was set just six weeks later, February 12, 1951, far too soon for the young bride. She was still weak and shivering on her wedding day. The gown, designed by Christian Dior, was a pearl-studded, feather-trimmed creation that weighed sixty-six pounds. Sariah nearly collapsed under its weight.
Minutes before the ceremony, the Shah cut off the train so she could walk down the aisle. The early years of their marriage were filled with genuine love, but Sariah was only eighteen when she became queen, and the court soon learned what it was like to live with a volatile teenager. She could be charming when happy, but when upset, she could be explosive. After a public quarrel, she smashed a priceless vase against the wall.
After another argument, she forced the Shah to sleep on a cot outside her door. When a courtier delicately suggested she let him back into the room, she pointed to a corner and said he could put his bed there. Her beauty and elegance made her an icon, but she disliked almost everything about being queen. She disdained royal customs, refused formal clothes, and avoided her duties.
The court, already suspicious of her European background, began calling her “the German woman. ” A photograph of her water skiing in Miami in a bikini was banned in Iran and deepened the hostility of the royal family. Her relationship with her in-laws was toxic. They treated her cruelly and saw every gesture of affection from the Shah as a threat.
Sariah had her own jealousies. She resented her stepdaughter, Princess Shahnaz, who was only eight years younger than her, and sent the girl off to boarding school almost immediately after the wedding. The central crisis of the marriage was the question of an heir. Three years in, Sariah had not become pregnant.
The Shah sent her to America for a medical examination. The first doctor offered good news, saying stress had made it difficult for her to conceive, but that there was no fertility problem. Wanting certainty, the couple sought a second opinion in Boston. That doctor confirmed their worst fears.
Sariah was infertile and would never bear an heir. The journey home was devastating. What followed was a harrowing period of tests and treatments, none of which helped. Her in-laws offered no support.
Instead, the Queen Mother and the princesses spread gossip about her barrenness, had courtiers spy on her, and monitored her eating habits. On one occasion, her mother-in-law asked her directly when she would give her son a boy. In desperation, Sariah hoped her stepdaughter might provide a solution. Shahnaz had married Ardeshir Zahedi, and if she produced a male grandson, perhaps the pressure would end.
But the Shah despised his son-in-law and swore he would never accept such a grandson as his heir. The Shah proposed another solution. He could take a second wife in order to secure the dynasty. This was not uncommon in the Iranian royal family, but Sariah, jealous and volatile, rejected the plan outright.
She instead begged her husband to change the constitution to allow one of his half-brothers to succeed him. He agreed but said he had to consult a council of wise men before making such a change. There was no council. He simply did not want to be the one to refuse her.
Around that time, the Queen Mother, who had chosen Sariah in the first place, began urging her son to divorce the young queen. Sariah also clashed with the Shah’s closest friend, the courtier Nasser Piran, who lived in the palace and was trusted with the Shah’s deepest secrets. Sariah publicly called him cunning and Machiavellian. It was Piran who revealed her husband’s betrayal, apparently sharing intimate details of the marriage, and Sariah demanded he be removed.
It was too late. On March 14, 1958, Iran officially announced that the royal couple was divorcing. The Shah wept openly as he addressed the nation. Sariah was in Europe at the time and claimed the announcement had blindsided her.
According to her account, nine days earlier the Shah had called and begged her to allow him a second wife, warning that otherwise he would have no choice but to divorce her. She refused again, believing they still had time. The divorce might have ended their story, but it did not. The Shah gave her a luxurious penthouse in Paris, a generous monthly allowance, and lavish presents, including a Rolls-Royce and a ruby.
The gifts were meant as farewells, but he reportedly continued to see her in private. A year later, he married Farah Diba, who quickly became pregnant. In October 1960, nearly nine months after the wedding, she gave birth to a son, Crown Prince Reza. Sariah moved on.
She appeared in a film, The Three Faces, using only her first name. She began an affair with the Italian director Franco Indovina, whom she called the second love of her life, although he was already married. On February 18, 1972, Indovina died when an Alitalia flight crashed into Mount Longa. The shock left Sariah severely depressed, and her career stalled.
She retreated to Paris and planned to live quietly, until she learned in 1979 that the Shah was dying. She wrote him that letter, confessing she still loved him. She received a reply expressing the same feelings and a wish to say goodbye. The Shah proposed the secret meeting in Cairo, but death came first.
After his death, Sariah lived out the rest of her life in Paris among European nobility and celebrities, largely out of the spotlight. She died on October 26, 2001, found dead in her Paris apartment. The cause of death was never disclosed, and questions remain about what happened to her.
Her turbulent life came to be remembered under the name she had earned over the years: the sad-eyed princess, a woman whose beauty was impossible to separate from the sorrow visible behind her eyes.