DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — For Googoosh, Iran's most-famous singer, life always has been balancing act of one kind or another.

It began as a child, performing with her acrobat father who balanced her on a chair atop another chair resting only on his chin. Then later, as an icon of stage and screen during the last years of the shah, her looks and hairstyles were copied by Iranian women who wanted to look more “Googooshi," a Farsi adjective all her own.

Then came the decades of silence after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution , barred from performing, only to return to the stage abroad in 2000. And now, embarking on a farewell tour, she's adding author as her latest reinvention as her homeland undergoes a societal change yet again .

“I did not realize that all these challenges and

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