I Want to Cry Like Soraya... In Solitudes Ex-Empress of Iran Died Soraya Esfandiari Bakhtiari, the ex-Empress of Iran died in Paris on October 24, 2001. Soraya's body, who was once the second wife of the late Shah of Iran, was found in her apartment by someone close to her, who called the police. "She apparently died of natural causes," a spokesman said. Police gave her age as 69, although some biographies say she was born on June 22, 1934, making her 67. They say two years were added to her reported age when she became the teenage bride of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, 17 years her senior, in 1951 to make their difference in years more acceptable. Soraya spent seven years at the Iranian Imperial Court, where she was famed for keeping a pet seal in a fountain, until the marriage ended in March 1958 after she remained childless. A commoner, Soraya hailed from a prominent family of the powerful Bakhtiar tribe. Born to an educated Iranian Muslim and a German Protestant mother in Isfahan, she spent the first two years of her life in Berlin and later attended school in Switzerland. Biographies say that the late shah, who had divorced his first wife Fawzia in 1948 after she failed to produce him a son, fell in love with Soraya through a photograph. She first met the Shah in Tehran in 1950 after his elder sister Princess Shams had chaperoned her around London and Paris to test her suitability. The couple wed in February 1951 with Soraya decked in a jewel-encrusted wedding gown. Still without an heir in 1958, the shah wept as he announced the divorce to Iranians and insisted Soraya should bear the courtesy title Her Imperial Highness, Princess Soraya. The shah, his third wife Farah and their four children, fled Iran in 1979 after the Islamic revolution. He died of cancer in 1980 in Egypt. Soraya never remarried. In the 1960s, she was a close companion to Italian film director Franco Indovina, who died in a plane crash in 1972. The story of Soraya's divorce inspired French songwriter Francoise Mallet-Jorris to write "Je Veux Pleurer Comme Soraya" (I Want to Cry Like Soraya). The ex-empress published an autobiography in 1991, "Le Palais des Solitude" (The Palace of Solitudes). (end) © 2001 - Khorsheed.com - Nov 2001