A EGENDARY LIFE

MARY GHARAGOZLOU LIVED A

LIFE OF THE STUFF OF WHICH .... ROMANTIC NOVELS ARE CREATED,

A LIFE REM]NISCENT OF THE

ADVENTURES AND DARING OF

VICTORIAN LADIES WHO

VENTURED INTO THE MIDDLE

EAST IN SEARCH OF NEW VISTAS

AND NEW LOVES. MARY'S

PATERNAL FAMILY LINES GO BACK

TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY IN

PERSIA, AND SHE ]S THE PRODUCT

OF THE MARRIAGE OF A

DESCENDANT OF PERSIAN

LANDLORDS AND MINISTERS AND

AN AMERICAN LIBRARIAN. MARY

DIED LAST FALL, AFTER MANY

YEARS ASSOCIATED WITH THE

WELFARE OF ARAB]AN HORSES IN

THE MIDDLE EAST.

ARABIAN HORSE WORLD'S TRIBUTE

TO MARY IS PRESENTED HERE IN

THREE PARTS: HER OBITUARY,

WRITTEN BY ANTONY WYNN FOR

THE INDEPENDENT, A LONDON

NEWSPAPER; MARY'S FABLE BASED

ON THE LORE OF THE ARABIAN

HORSES OF KHUZISTAN; AND

MARY'S ACCOUNT OF HER

STRUGGLE, IN THE EARLY 1980s,

TO MAINTAIN HER ARABIANS. On a summer's evening in 1975, in a mountain village of northwest , the by Antony Wynn tribesmen put away the remains of dinner and brought out the opium pipe. Mary Gharagozlou began to tell us a wistful story. Some years before, she said, she had been driving down the dusty road from to when her ancient Buick broke down. Coming towards her was a Land Rover with a Baluchi driver and what appeared to be a dashing English officer beside him. Unsure that they would stop to help, s~e hitched up her skirt and stuck her leg out of the door. While the Baluchi driver mended her car the Englishman eXplained that he was on leave from the Trucial and Oman Scouts and heading for Khorasan, where he hoped to get some sandgrouse shooting. Mary told him that she was bound for Shiraz, but that if he cared to break his journey at her house in she would entertain him on her return. Three days later she came back to Tehran and whirled him round the nightclubs MEHRI LEILA GHARAGOZLOU, for a week, but the call of the sandgrouse was too strong and the officer went on his FARMER AND HORSE BREEDER: BORN TEHRAN 1927; MARRIED 1947 way to Khorasan. JACQUES DE BOUVIER (ONE Some 10 years later, at a dinner party in London, I was astonished to hear a once DAUGHTER; MARRIAGE DISSOLVED), dashing ex-army officer, now a diplomat, embark on a wistful story of a journey he had 1952 MAJID KHAN BAKHTIAR made many years before to Iran when he was on leave from the Trucial States. When I (MARRIAGE DISSOLVED); DIED told him that I was able to complete his tale for him the evening turned into an TEHRAN 14 SEPTEMBER 2001. exchange of legends about Mary Gharagozlou, each one more extraordinary than the last. OPPOSITE PAGE: MARY LEADING HER Mary Gharagozlou came from a long line of Persian landlords and statesmen. Her HORSE WHILE STAYING WITH THE father was Naqi Khan, son of Amir Tuman, who was Persian Minister to Washington TRIBE IN KHUZISTAN. and the brother of Nasser ol-Molk, a Balliol man and a friend of Curzon, who in 1910 was appointed Regent. The Gharagozlou tribe had been brought from Central Asia to norm-west Persia by Tamerlane in the late 14th century and the family owned hundreds of villages around Hamadan. Mary's mother was an American librarian at Johns Hopkins University, nee Katherine Ladd, whom Naqi Khan swept off her feet. He brought her back to live in Varkaneh, a village in the mountains outside Hamadan most of which disappeared under snow in winter, and where there was no running water. He died when Mary was about four and she and her sister were educated by the Presbyterians in Tehran. Mary was the man of the family. A spirited girl, at the age of 10 she came to the attention of Reza Shah when her horse bolted and nearly knocked him off his horse as he was watching cavalry manoeuvres. Later, she became the foremost expert of Iran on dry farming. In 1945 the Soviet-backed Tudeh party established collectives in north Persia but Mary, although only 18 at the time, enjoyed such respect from her village headmen that they refused to accept forced sequestration of her estates. She was a great beauty in her youth and retained a lasting glamour all her life. She married Jacques de Bouvier, the son of the Swiss ambassador, but the marriage did not last long. She then married Majid Khan Bakhtiar, the rather louche chief of the Bakhtiari tribe, who had met de Bouvier's father in a Tehran nightclub. Mary and

337· ARABIAN HORSE WORLD· MARCH 2002 Majid Khan led a dual life. In the spring they migrated with the tribe from the plains at the head of the Persian Gulf up ovet the mountains to theit summet pastures near Isfahan. Maty persuaded Majid Khan, a man of flocks and herds to whom a plough was anathema, to start dty farming on his winter quarters. They were very successful and prospered greatly. They hunted gazelle with salukis on the plains and mouflon and ibex in the hills, while in the winter they went to the nightclubs of Paris. On one occasion she was asked to entertain Sir John Russell, the British ambassador, who wished to shoot francolin. He told the Bakhtiari khans, who prided themselves on their marksmanship, that he was only a Top: MARY'S GREAT, GREAT, moderate shot. He missed not a single GREAT, GREAT-GRANDFATHER, bird and shot more than his host, who THE HEAD OF THE GHARAGOZLOU TRIBE, THIRD was much put out of countenance. In FROM LEFT. the evening, as the men of the tribe BOTTOM: AT FAR LEFT, AMIR were engaged in stick-dancing, the TOUMAN GHARAGOZLOU, khan challenged him to a bout. Mary, MARY'S GRANDFATHER. THE who had heard that the khan intended OTHER TWO ARE COUSINS OF to break Russell's leg, showed him how AMIR. to parry and saved the ambassador from a thrashing. At the time of the Persian land reforms in the early 1960s Mary Gharagozlou was put in charge of tribal affairs, reporting directly to General Hosain Pakravan, the new head of Savak, the security service. The government wished to settle the nomad tribes, who were seen as too independent and destabilising to central authority. Mary did her best to

338· ARABIAN HORSE WORLD· MARCH 2002 resist this policy, pointing out that the nomads provided the country with its meat and that, if they were forced to settle, their sheep would die. To be able to do this job she divorced Majid Khan, who did not wish her to be involved. She traveled by jeep, horse and camel in regions that no educated official would contemplate visiting. During a tribal famine she was instrumental in saving the Bakhtiari by supplying them with wheat and flour. At the time of the earthquake in 1962 General Pakravan put her in charge of an astonished army battalion, with instructions to arrange relief. Secretly fortifying herself with benzedrine, she ran them all into the ground, thus gaining their respect and unquestioning obedience. In 1974 Majid Khan took a bet that he could not land his aeroplane by night on the beach near the Shah's palace on the Caspian coast. He was killed in the attempt. Shortly afterwards there was a misunderstanding that Mary might have been inciting a tribal revolt against the Shah's policy of settling the tribes. During the famine she had ordered an enormous quantity of flour and animal feed without waiting for government authority. The ministry refused to pay and she had to sell her house in Tehran to meet the bill. She was removed from her post and forbidden to enter tribal territory. Left with no money, she retreated to Majid Khan's home near the Gulf and concentrated on his stud of Khersan Arabs, which was all that she had left. One of these horses she sent to the Tehran races, where it ill-advisedly beat the Shah's horse. Fortunately for her, the Shah was in a good mood and decided to take over her stud and put her in charge of it. This she agreed to, on condition that she could take the horses up to the cool of her old home at Varkaneh in the summer.

Top: THE KHERSAN STALLION NASSRAN.

ABOVE: THE STALLION NESMAN WITH A BACHTIARI RIDER.

339· ARABIAN HORSE WORLD· MARCH 2002 Top AND BOTTOM: THE SAGLAWI

STALLION BASCHIR (MOBIARAL X LOTUS) OF THE KHUZISTAN.

OPPOSITE PAGE: ASIL KHUZISTAN MARES GRAZING IN A DATE ORCHARD IN BAM.

She then dedicated herself to persuading the World Arab Horse Organisation (WAHO) to give official recognition to the Persian Arab. They required her to compile a detailed stud book of all these horses, whose lines were printed in the minds of their owners seven generations back but had never been recorded in writing. Sixteen years after she had been banned from the Bakhtiari country she felt that it would be safe to return. In the hills near the old oil-wells of Masjed-i-Soleiman she stopped a 14-year-old boy to ask directions. The boy, who could not even have been born when she was last there, gradually realised who this strange, authoritative woman must be, who knew the names of all his uncles. He shouted out that Mary Khanom had arrived, and the tribe, which she had saved during the famine, held her as a guest for three days, as they poured down from the hills to pay their respects to her. Immediately after Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution in 1979 Mary Gharagozlou was arrested and put into the Qasr prison in Tehran. The new regime had found the file concerning her supposed plot to arrange a tribal revolt. She was due for immediate execution but the tribes rallied and protested, pointing out that she had in fact saved them from famine. Her life was spared but she remained under arrest for some months in the women's section of the prison, which she soon ended up effectively running, through sheer force of character. She satisfied the new regime of her loyalty by translating an early Shiite text into English. Mter her release she was forbidden to leave the country but was eventually allowed to come to England, accompanied by a minder, to present her case to WAHO, who were meeting to consider the Iranian application to have the Persian Arab horse recognised internationally. She was successful and the horses found much demand among breeders in Europe. Thereafter she regularly attended WAHO conferences all over the world. Mary had lost all her money and for the rest of her life lived on air and windfalls from occasional benefactors. In her final years she built a traditional arched house at the foot of the mountains to the west of Tehran, where she lived, surrounded by her horses. There she was looked after by old tribal retainers. Hundreds of them came to her funeral and they brought her horses, fully caparisoned, to her graveside. Although half American, Mary Gharagozlou felt herself to be thoroughly Iranian. It never occurred to her to flee the country at the time of the revolution and, in spite of her months in prison at their hands, she remained on good terms with the new regime. The daughter of a khan, she treated people of every degree with the greatest respect, and was respected in return. She had no interest in marerial possessions, other than having sufficient feed for her horses and for her people. She was a true patriot, full of a commanding dignity, but when it was fitting to do so she would have all around her in stitches of laughter at her stories, most of which involved poking fun at the pompous. Top: TOOFAN (BI NAZIRE-E• ABDAN) (ROGIN TAN X NAZY KOHEILE), A PURE PERSIAN KOHEILAN STALLION.

MIDDLE LEFT: AL HELAL

(SHAMEKH) (EHSAN X BINT MOKHEIBELEH), A PURE PERSIAN WAD NAN KHERSAN STALLION.

BOTTOM LEFT: A 22-YEAR-OLD KERSAN MIR MARE. or small, in accordance with his status and wealth. On such a day, Khalled and Adnan, though young, had separate settlements and were sheikhs in their own right and found themselves riding together: After the traditional greetings and exchange of news, Khalled looked over the mare ridden by Adnan. The mare was magnificent, of a dark bay color known as komeit, a favorite among many breeders of the Asil Arabian. The more Khalled inspected the mare, the more he fell in love with her who, moreovel was a Hamdanieh, better than anything Khalled had been able to breed. He emitted a deep sigr and said, first, "Mahshallah! Mashallah! God preserve her for you!" (This is to avoid giving her the evil eye.) "I breed and breed and every time a filly is born I hope I will have produced the perfect Hamdanieh. But you, you who care for camels and sheep, God has given her to you!" Adnan laughed and shrugged. "As long as she is comfortable and strong, it makes no difference to me what she looks like. If it does to you, we can make an exchange. Give me 50 camels and 100 ewes and you can have her." Adnan was surprised when Khalled accepted his offer without hesitation. Adnan not only possessed this fine mare, he had as wife Leila, the daughter of sheikh of all Kassir, who was famed for her gentility and beauty. Several days later, toward evening, Adnan and his wife were busy with the sheep when she looked up to see a swirl of dust and several riders. "What is that?" she asked her husband. He squinted his eyes, lifted his hand to shade his eyes from the glare of rhe setting sun and replied, "It must be the sheep and camels Khalled is sending me." "You did not tell me you had bought sheep and camels from Khalled." "I did not buy them. I exchanged them for the komeit Hamdanieh. "You did what?" she exclaimed. Since he looked sheepish and did not reply and the cavalcade was now fast approaching, she mumbled about going in to prepare sherbet for the riders, and she disappeared. Shortly the sheep and camels arrived. After the confusion of putting them in their respecti\ enclosures, the men settled down in the moziff where sherbet, then coffee, was served to them. Meanwhile, Adnan spied his wife putting a silver chain halter and a hand-embroidered blanket on the mare. Adnan excused himself from the group and asked, "What are you doing, Leila?" "Do you intend to so dishonor her as to send her naked? These belong to her and with these she will go." Later, as the moon started to come up, the men, having eaten, insisted that they must leave for Khalled had said he would wait for their arrival. As they left the mozif£, Leila appeared from the women's section. She greeted the men, explaining that since she had raised this mare, she would be the one to hand her over. She untied the mare and led her toward the waiting men. What no one noticed was that she carried a bundle. As she came close to the men, she suddenly vaulted onto the mare's back. While the men looked at her in astonishment, she turned toward Adnan and said quietly, "Since you do not value the breeding and beauty of your mare, likewise you cannot value me, fe we are similar in our assets. So where she goes, I go!" Having made this announcement, she rod, off, taking the mare to Khalled. What happened later is not part of the story, but, if true, must have made a dreadful fuss. TALES, TALL AND TRUE, OF THE ASIL HORSE FROM KHUZISTAN

It is said that some one hundred years ago, there were rwo cousins of the Al Kassir tribe, a tribe known then and now for the horses of the Hamdani Semi strain. To avoid confusion I give the cousins names - Khalled and Adnan • which may not have been their true names. Khalled was passionate about horses. He owned a herd of mares of the Hamdani, Seglawi, and Wadnan strains, but his ambition was to breed a superior Hamdanieh mare, the pride of his tribe. Adnan had little interest in horses and was more interested in material gain; therefore, since trade in horses was taboo among any Arab of standing, he concentrated on increasing his numbers of sheep and camels. Naturally, he did own mares and did produce horses, but only to the extent that he needed them for transport for himself and his retinue. Among the Moslems, the Festivity of Fetr, which marks the end of the month of fasting of Ramadan, is an important occasion for celebration, particularly among the Arabs of Khuzistan. It is the custom for relatives to visit one another, tribes to visit neighboring tribes, but first and foremost, it is a time everyone, includin@ all she