Princess Leila; A Tribute by Peter Khan Zendran

If she were alive today she would be 35. How her life would be today is anyone’s guess, even mine. Would her life be better or would it be worse we will never know and would hurt her memory to ask. What is definite is that Princess Leila’s murder on June 10, 2001 affected the lives of many Iranians. One of those affected is myself. Every time her name is mentioned, her murder is discussed it is like a knife in my heart.

Her making contact with me through a friend of hers in France in early June 2001 came as a surprise and shock to myself. A mutual friend of ours had shown her while she was in Paris parts of an article I had written about how her father, Mohammed Reza Shah, was murdered. He had told me that she was impressed by what I had written and was making travel plans to come to the New England region where I lived and that she wanted to meet me.

That was on June 8, 2001. That news had me excited. Even I did not know her I was excited by what my friend had told me. Four days later that same friend of ours broke the news to me that she was murdered in a London hotel room, even sending me the BBC article covering her death. I was shocked just reading from my friend what had happened. I knew the BBC was not telling the full story. If she had committed suicide by drug overdose she would never have made travel plans to come out my way to meet up with me and have told her friend to tell me about it. Especially after she had read how I described how her own father was deposed with the backing of the CIA and MI6 and was murdered by his own doctors. That she would die so soon after making contact with me under those circumstances was too coincidental, since incidents like that kind had happened to many contacts of mine who were either killed or had something happen to them after making contact with me to disclose information similar to the kind I had recently published. I knew it was murder.

In the years since her death as I learned more about Princess Leila, her life, and the circumstances surrounding her death the more her murder had made an impact on me, especially once I realized that she could have easily been saved. When I noticed in the BBC article she had lived in Connecticut and had went to Brown University it sparked my mind as never before. In June 1998 when I was living in Providence, Rhode Island’s Fox Point neighborhood a friend of mine who was a fugitive had introduced me to someone who had once worked for Brown University as a maintenance worker. That man who had worked for Brown had told me about a woman who called herself “The Princess of Iran” who he described as a “mental patient with a moustache” who he said would hang around the Superior Courthouse on Benefit St., where the lawyers and cops would pick on her, and around the East Side of Providence whenever she was in Rhode Island.

When I asked him for more details and he wouldn’t give me any I thought he was making up stories to see how I would react. Hearing the news of Leila’s death three years later hit home hard for me once I remembered that meeting with that man. Two years after her death I was talking with one of her professors who had told me she told him in June 2001 that she was making a trip to the New England area, she usually told him when she was coming for safety reasons. For all I know I could have passed by Leila while walking on Thayer St. Maybe I had bumped into her at Meeting St. Café or World’s Fair Buffet. Maybe she had walked by my apartment on East Transit St., seen the Shir-o-Korshid flag through the window of my study as everyone did who walked down East Transit St., had been curious as to the person who lived in that apartment and had been scared away by the 100-pound Pit Bull in the yard or the weight set and punching bag which I had in the yard as well. Maybe I had passed by her when visiting my father’s relatives and stepfamily in Greenwich, Connecticut or Rye, New York, or somewhere in Fairfield County, Connecticut or White Plains, New York. Just the thought that we probably passed by each other not knowing who the other was sent a lot of “what if” questions in my mind.

Many questions still plague my mind since Leila’s death, yet most of them have the same theme, what could I have done to have helped her if we had met? Could I have helped her overcome her health problems? Most likely, having overcome similar eating disorders like the ones she experienced. Leila also needed the intervention of someone like myself with a minimal tolerance for drugs, prescription or other, to help her get her health together. Plus what objection would her friends and family have had to someone considered one of the top medical specialists in the world. Could I have put a stop to the harassment she was receiving? Probably, since many of the lawyers and cops in Rhode Island in June 2001 were reluctant to harass a friend of “Mister Zendran’s”, though if it were to have a lasting effect in today’s homeland security America would be in question seeing how many of my former political allies have turned enemies. There also remains the question of if Leila could have helped me as well. That she definitely could have done. Considering in June 2001 I was some 275 pound former Advocate and Powerlifter who had just quit two jobs I had had for a while and had stopped Powerlifting and had nothing but free time on my hands. Plus she definitely would have been able to help me in getting back in touch with my heritage, considering at the time I spoke little and could read no Farsi and the number of Iranians in Rhode Island can be counted on your hands. All in all these questions are just that, questions which because of her murder would never be answered.

The issue of how others see her being murdered instead of dying from an overdose needs to be addressed as well. The press at the time of her death treated it as if she was just another spoiled rich person who had popped one to many rocks. They never looked at the reasons for her eating disorders and drug addiction in the first place. They never considered that what she experienced during the revolution and in her exile, being forced out of Iran, being sent to strange lands with strange people who were mostly nice to her because of her money, being a royal in a society challenging class values and expected to act in certain ways which stressed her out. They never learned to see through the eyes of others, for if they had they would have had a different perspective.

The fact that she was an Iranian royal is another consideration in the problems she faced. In today’s world there is little sympathy for and much suspicion of people who have royal ancestors, especially non-Western royal ancestors. People from this background are always assumed to be stuck-up, filthy rich, extremely influential yet when something happens to them almost everyone they thought was their friend turns on them and leave them to fend for themselves. Plus there is always the fact that everyone always is suspicious of what your true motives are. Coming from such a background I can attest to this personally. In dealing with groups organizing protests and independent media outlets this is something that I get reminded of too often. Never mind that I put these people in touch with resources which they would otherwise never know of, they’re concerned that being related to Uzun Hasan and Genghis Khan I would sell them out just to throw a few more Ducats in my stash. In such a way are those who’s ancestors are royals treated. When Princess Leila and Queen Soraya were murdered in 2001 there was hardly any outpouring of mass sympathy that some goldbricking whore like Diana Spencer received in 1997. By the same token the heirs of Genghis Khan, Qianlong, Babur, Haile Selassie and King Farouk have had to sell their valuables and in some cases live on the street and hardly anyone cares yet when Willem of Holland gets robbed in New York City the public picks up the bill for his trip. Even in such publications as the September 2003 issue of Vanity Fair the only non-Western royals mentioned are the Hashemites of Jordan, so marginalized and maligned are non-Western royals treated. Such attitudes towards non-Western royals is shameful and hypocritical.

Princess Leila, may those who wronged you be brought down justly and may nobody ever wrongly suffer what you did.