The Third Wife of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Farah, During the Time When She Lived a Poor Life With Her Mother, Farideh Qotbi / + Unseen Childhood Photo of Farah.

Quoted from Faradeed: Farah's father was a young officer, a graduate of the Sinsir School in France, who passed away due to tuberculosis. I believe he was from Tabriz. Farah’s mother, Farideh Diba, did not remarry after her husband’s death and lived with her brother, Engineer Mohammad Ali Qotbi. This brother and sister were from Rasht. Since Farideh was poor, she worked in her brother's house, and Qotbi supported her. Farideh had only one child, Farah, whom Qotbi also financially supported, though they lived very modestly.

At the age of 15 (during the time when she lived in her uncle's house):

Qotbi's wife, Louise, was from the Bakhtiari tribe, and they had a son named Reza. After Farideh’s husband's death and before Farah’s marriage to Mohammad Reza, they all lived together, forming a family: Qotbi (the only breadwinner, a civil engineer with occasional work that paid little, but he still managed with limited income), Louise Bakhtiari (Qotbi’s wife), Farideh Diba, Qotbi’s son Reza, and Farah Diba (Farideh’s daughter). Qotbi sent his son to Paris for higher education, and despite the financial hardships, Reza managed to finish his studies at the École Polytechnique in Paris.

Qotbi also sent Farah to Paris, where she studied at the School of Fine Arts. At that time, Farah, being a poor girl, had leftist and communist tendencies and befriended several students, one of whom was Leila Amir Arjamand. I myself encountered some of these students in Paris, and they all had communist ideas. Later, I saw one of them—whose name I have forgotten—at Fereydoun Jam's house. He was a skilled painter, famous for his paintings, and before the revolution, he had a workshop where he would paint portraits of women and make statues of them for large sums of money.

I asked him about the students from his school. He said, “All of them, to varying degrees, leaned left, and if anyone did not, they would be boycotted.” Therefore, both Farah and Leila Amir Arjamand had such tendencies. In Farah’s case, considering her living conditions and material poverty, such a tendency was also understandable. In any case, Farah preserved this leftist culture during her life with Mohammad Reza, turning her office into a center for promoting this type of culture, gathering a number of individuals with communist leanings there.