When terror found me
WHILE my experience does not mirror today’s horror of Israeli hostages being taken, it triggered my own terrifying time. And why I’m with the New York Post.
I knew the shah. When his majesty came here I was in his company. When visiting Iran, I was received in Saadabad Palace.
Now, as far as my memory can take me:
August 1978. Tehran. Shah Reza Pahlavi’s twin sister HRH Princess Ashraf invites me to her quiet upcountry hotel in Isfahan. While there, come sudden messages, madness, couriers, telexes, hysteria, calls. An uprising. Riots. A cinema set afire. Hundreds killed. Cars destroyed. Crowds surging. Ayatollah Khomeini’s name shouted. An uprising.
Someone packed me up. Midnight, alone, I’m whisked into a black car. At one point our car was shaken. Rocked side to side. The assigned royal driver spoke no English. Not knowing what’s happening, I’m terrified. Told I’m in danger and no plane can land in Isfahan to rescue me — orders were to get me out of there. In Tehran my belongings are crushed together. I’m raced out of my hotel, told Pan Am is standing by and I was literally thrown onto that aircraft.
Escape room
Then. 1979. It happened. The coup. The nail-biting hostage drama. Diplomatic lives in peril. Terror, horror, when Islamic militia took hostages from our American Embassy. Ben Affleck’s 2012 Oscar-winning “Argo” was an exotic cinematic version of this great drama in US history and was later called “The Canadian Caper.”
The story briefly. Six of our American diplomats took refuge in my forever longtime great friend — now gone — Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor’s embassy. And remained locked in there three months. For a theatrical take on this most audacious rescue in America’s history — see the film.
Later that year the toppled, ailing shah arrives here on a private jet. He is in New York Hospital under an assumed name but everyone knows. Nobody allowed to see him. Security circles the block. Reporters, cameras, crowds outside. My phone rings. His sister HRH Princess Ashraf — who had a townhouse on Beekman Place — calls me. She says, “His majesty wishes to see you. He requests you come to the hospital.”
Well-placed source
I wrote for magazines then. I was not on this newspaper. My husband’s “Strictly for Laughs” column of jokes was already a staple in The Post. That night was to have been dinner with Roger Wood, a Brit and first editor of Rupert Murdoch’s latest acquisition: the New York Post. Why I was canceling brought a thud on the other end of the line.
I spent two hours with the shah. Alone. Just we two. Nobody else allowed. In white pajamas and robe he sat on the edge of his bed, feet dangling in slippers. His suite, two rooms. One entire wall was a huge paper mural. A picture of an angry gorilla, claws up, teeth bared. The words beneath: “Don’t worry. Things will get better.”
Dec. 3, 1979, this front page NY Post story — his lone interview — was accompanied with my photo alongside her imperial majesty Empress Farah Diba. The front page read “The Post’s Cindy Adams talks to the Shah.” My story was reprinted throughout the planet. And sole payment for such a world exclusive? Roger Wood, editor of this newspaper I wasn’t even on, sent me a clump of flowers fastened with a rubber band, as glorious and lavish as a handful of soup greens.
1981, I officially joined the New York Post.
Where else could such happen? Only in New York, kids, only in New York.