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When she was 16 her father arranged her marriage to Colonel Abasali Esfandiary, an aristocrat, a graduate of Saint-Cyr, the French military academy, and son of the speaker of the parliament. The marriage lasted 10 years and they had two daughters. Out of respect for her father, the couple waited until his death before their amicable divorce. By then it was the 1940s, and Maryam, embarking on an intellectual quest that was to have a lasting impact on her life, began to move towards communism, to the dismay of much of her family. Her conviction led her to disown the family name, Farman Farmayan, as too aristocratic for her Marxist ideals, and she adopted her grandfather’s name, Firouz, as her surname.
