Birth
Soraya was the eldest child and only daughter of Khalil Esfandiary, a Bakhtiari nobleman and Iranian ambassador to West Germany in the 1950s, and his Russian-born German wife Eva Karl. She had one sibling, a younger brother, Bijan. She was born in the English Missionary Hospital in Isfahan on 22 June 1932.
Her family had long been involved in the Iranian government and diplomatic corps. An uncle, Sardar Assad, was a leader in the Iranian constitutional movement of the early 20th century.
Read more about this topic: Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari
Famous quotes containing the word birth:
“At birth man is offered only one choice—the choice of his death. But if this choice is governed by distaste for his own existence, his life will never have been more than meaningless.”
—Jean-Pierre Melville (1917–1973)
“I wouldn’t put it past God to arrange a virgin birth if He wanted, but I very much doubt if He would.”
—David Jenkins (b. 1925)
“The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind—the mind of a fighter—in which the virtues of tribal cohesion and fierceness and infantile credulity and malleability are paramount. Thus every new beginning recapitulates in some degree man’s first beginning.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)