Echoes of pain

The sudden death of Iran's Princess Leila Pahlavi on Sunday evening did not make headlines in Tehran, but to expatriate Iranians in the UAE her woes echo their own. Discovered in a London hotel room, the circumstances surrounding her death remain dubious, even after a post-mortem.

Her mother, the former Empress Farah, who lives in Paris, said that Leila died in her sleep after a long bout of depression. She said her 31-year-old daughter "could not stand living far from Iran and shared wholeheartedly the suffering of her countrymen".

Others, possibly spiteful of the royals' Dolce Vita lifestyle, shuttling between Europe and the U.S., are quick to draw conclusions; rumours of a suicide note and a drug overdose are already circulating. A source at the Iranian Embassy in Abu Dhabi commented only that the news was "not important – neither positive, nor negative."

"We saw it in the newspaper like everybody else, and we don't know anything more about the matter," he said. Born in Tehran in 1970, Leila was only nine when the Islamic Revolution overthrew Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi who ruled Iran from 1941 to 1979. The family was forced to flee to Egypt, Morocco, the Bahamas and Mexico, before entering the United States for treatment of the Shah's lymphatic cancer.

It was then that Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and demanded the extradition of the Shah. Following her father's death in Cairo in 1980, Leila eventually settled in the United States. In a magazine interview last year, the Shah's youngest daughter with his third wife Farah Diba, expressed nostalgia for her native land.

"I have lived almost all my life abroad, but I remain today as Iranian as I would have been had I never left my country," she said. The princess is expected to be buried in Paris next to her grandmother, Farideh Diba, who died last November, and to whom she was "very close".

Her 41-year-old brother, former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, harbours hopes of returning to Iran one day as Shah. He has pitched himself as a liberal leader, one who would aggrandise the role of women in society and the workplace, and institute a "separation of religion and state."

Said one Iranian, who has lived in Dubai for the past 20 years: "Many of the royal family members, along with average Iranian families, want to come back to Iran and live there happily ever after. It's where they were born. No matter what happens, it is their homeland and they get homesick."

A 35-year-old Iranian expatriate who has lived in Dubai for 18 years, expressed her "love and respect" for the royal family. "Lots of people like them. They did not do anything wrong to us. Why shouldn't Reza return to Iran? If he did, I think many Iranians would go back too," she said.

In large part, particularly among the younger generations, the news of Leila's death has been received with a degree of apathy. "It just doesn't mean anything to them. They are too young to understand the political nuances. They were born outside Iran, and the royal family, to them, is a fairytale with a not-so-happy ending," suggested an Iranian expatriate who lives both in Dubai and the United States.