The Execution of Amir-Abbas Hoveyda enters the diary first as news from Iran, then as a memorial in New York where the absent body shaped the gathering. The account links a political execution to the intimate gestures of mourning: shoes removed, Iranian music, and a rug no one would step on.

News from Iran

On April 9, 1979, the diary records that Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, identified as Fereydoun Hoveyda’s brother and the prime minister under the Shah, had been hanged in Iran over the weekend. The entry gives no account of the execution’s circumstances; its starkness lies in the compressed announcement, which brings a distant death into the day’s New York social and cultural life.

The memorial service

Ten days later, on April 19, the diarist attended a memorial service for the executed man, described there as Ambassador Hoveyda’s brother. The gathering was on Riverside Drive, and everyone removed their shoes. A rug lay in the middle of the floor, but no one wanted to step on it: with no body present, crossing it seemed like stepping on the body that was missing. Iranian music accompanied the service.

Ritual and remembrance

The diary compares the gathering to a cocktail party, while stressing that there were no drinks. That contrast preserves the service’s social form without making it ordinary: people assembled together, but the empty rug and music oriented the gathering around death and absence. The execution thus appears in two sharply different registers—first as a terse report from Iran, then as a New York memorial whose central object made the absent body impossible to ignore.