Not Without My Daughter

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and she convinced him to move in with different relatives. Betty started helping around the house and preparing dinner. Moody accompanied her on all her errands. Eventually, he claimed to not have the time and told her to go herself. On one of these occasions, she befriended the owner of a menswear store named Hamid. Hamid sympathized with Betty, and offered her use of his telephone if she needed it. When she eventually got to spend time alone with Ellen, Betty learned Ellen had stayed in Iran because her parents were too old to support her and she had two children. She learned that Hormoz regularly beat her and the children. But her life depended on him, so she stayed. Betty asked Ellen if she could help her by creating excuses for her to leave the house alone. Ellen agreed, and they devised plans on how they would get Betty out by herself. Betty landed in Iran at the turning point of this transition. The country had just ousted the Shah and gone to war with Iraq. As with any war, nationalist and religious sentiment was at its height. Another sentiment that reigned the mood of the day was hostility towards the United States for supplying arms to both sides. It can be incredibly difficult to separate the two, especially for someone hailing from small towns. Lost Without My Daughter suffers from its own version of classism. Where Not Without My Daughter seeks fault in Iran and Islam, Lost Without My Daughter does so in social status and affluence. Moody repeatedly claims he bought Betty expensive things to calm her temper and nerves. In the States, it was a lavish house, furniture, etc., and in Iran it was gold, Persian carpets, and other luxuries. One has to wonder why he never questioned the need to repeatedly calm her using material objects.

Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody sold 120 million copies worldwide, and that number grows every day. In 2013, Betty’s husband wrote Lost Without My Daughter, which was closely followed by their daughter’s book, My Name is Mahtob. These three books have unintentionally formed a fascinating trilogy, the same story from three different points of view. This news turned Moody into a doting husband again. He showered Betty with gifts and attention until the baby arrived. He was hoping for a boy, but Mahtob arrived in all her glory. He left them alone the first night and returned the next day to announce he had decided to call her Mahtob. Betty had wanted to name her Maryam, as it was more American, but she gave in to Maryam being her middle name. The next day, another strange woman showed up at the house asking for Moody. She said she was diabetic and her family didn’t believeher. Her husband was fighting the war, and she desperately needed Moody’s help. He told her he couldn’t help, but he strongly suspected she was a CIA agent. This brought another dimension to Betty’s understanding of her own sheltered experience. Had her cries for help reached as far as the States? The sentiment of man versus country is possibly the most difficult question the reader will be left with after reading this trilogy. Iran, the first true global superpower, underwent an unrecognizable transition in the 21st Century, opening it up to all manner of conjecture and commentary. We all know Iran has its problems. You can't base a whole culture on one crazy family. Remember also, the people are just like us, but it's their government that has the guns and unfortunately, the fanatical people run the government.At the party, Judy took Betty into a room on the pretext of having her type a letter for a medical visa validated by Moody. In that room, Rasheed shared his details with Betty and told her they would try to get her and Mahtob out in two weeks. Betty then gave Judy letters for her parents and sons. She also typed up Moody’s letter and spent time reminiscing about life in the States. Moody was equally happy with the outcome of the party. Rasheed had offered him a job at his clinic, and he was ecstatic about the employment he was about to have. On a trip to the market, Betty called Helen and found out Moody’s green card had expired. He now needed Betty’s permission to enter the United States and was in his own way a hostage in Iran. A moving and inspiring story of of one woman’s courage and determination to get her and her daughter to safety and escape from an abusive and tyrannical Iranian husband and father. Such a harrowing story! After years of marriage and a beautiful child together, Betty agrees to travel with her husband to Iran to visit his family. There he becomes a completely different person, and refuses to let her and their daughter leave. At one point she is literally held prisoner by her husband, and her journey out of Iran with her daughter actually turned her hair gray.

In mid January 1986, Betty learned that her father was dying. Moody insisted that Betty return to the U.S., but demanded that Mahtob remain in Iran. Despite her refusal to leave without Mahtob, Moody booked her a flight on January 31. On January 29, 1986, Moody, an anesthesiologist, was unexpectedly called to the hospital. Knowing that this was her last chance before she was forced to leave Iran without her daughter, Betty called Amahl, asking for instructions. He directed them to an apartment where they remained for three days as Amahl completed their travel arrangements. They were to travel through Turkey; the smugglers would take them from Tehran to Tabriz and then to Van. From there, Betty and Mahtob would need to find a way to Ankara and get to the U.S. Embassy. I went to Iran, became completely sure that the book and the film are nonsense. So much so that it’s even not polite to mention it before Iranians. Like, say, stories about brown bears playing in the middle of a Red Square and dining on unfortunate tourists. Not Without My Daughter claims they were led over the Zagros mountains into Turkey. Lost Without My Daughter points out the treacherous nature of those mountains. With steep drops and unfriendly climate, only one tribe dares to traverse them, and they only do so twice a year. The Bakhtiari tribe, also called People of the Wind, have been the subject of many articles and documentaries. Bakhtiari migration takes about five weeks, and it’s never during the height of winter as the book claimed. There is no chance she could have made it with a six-year-old and without extensive altitude training.

ALFRED MOLINA: (As Moody) I know it seems harsh but it's the best thing for all of us. Mahtob could learn real values here. This is Betty’s Mahmoody’s account and its a terrifying account and ordeal for any woman and child to have gone through. On my second reading I couldn’t help wondering how damaging a book like this is/was to Iranian society. Of course you cannot tar a country and its people with the one brush but I am sure this caused quite a stir at the time.

That being said, my favorite part of the book was her willingness to comfort and assist other parents whose children had been abducted and taken to various countries by an estranged spouse. She dedicates a large part of the book to relating the cases that most affected her; not all of them had happy endings. With this book you have to keep in mind the time in which it takes place. It's a time of turmoil and war. Things were chaotic. It was also written before things like the Internet. In September, while Moody was away, Betty and Mahtob traveled to the Swiss Embassy and spoke to Helen. Helen informed them that, since Betty's husband was an Iranian, Iran's laws dictated that she, too, had become an Iranian citizen. When Betty and Mahtob returned to the house, Moody threatened to kill her if she left again and commanded the rest of the family to prevent her from leaving. Betty's every move was being watched. Betty realized that she and Mahtob could not escape with the surveillance. She reasoned that the only way that Moody would stop watching her was for her to convince him that she was willing to stay in Iran. Her attitude improved, Parting from Amahl turned out to be harder than she expected. They were both in tears, and Betty promised to let him know when she made it to Turkey. She was shuffled from car to car and driven towards the city of Tabriz. Moody’s laziness also increased as Betty had expected it to. He no longer bothered to go on the school run with Betty. Khanum Shaheen noticed this and told Betty she could not allow her to use the phone or leave the building, but if she was ever late, they could overlook that.As the revolution unfolded in Iran, Moody grew more patriotic. He threw away his entire stash of alcohol and started talking about how the American media was biased. Their home became a meeting place for students, and together they drafted a letter to send to American media outlets asking them to reconsider how they spoke of Iran. Betty rose to the defense of her country and called a truce by drawing the line at political conversations. Betty’s father was overjoyed to see her. Their return gave him the strength to carry on for a few more months. Bett resumed life with her family and was reunited with her sons. She wrote this book to help other women be informed of the risks in traveling to certain countries. Betty sent money to Amahl and wrote to Hamid to let him know of her escape. She learned Amahl’s escape had not worked out yet, and Hamid had lost his store to the government. She was forwarded a letter from Ellen telling her Moody had moved without notice, and the snowman she and Mahtob had built on their last day in Tehran had vanished like them.

Life was pretty unbearable, but Betty had to do something to help themselves. She decided to stop taking the medication Moody was giving her and to speak to him about their living conditions. She insisted they move in with Ameh Bozorg’s son Reza, who had offered his place to them multiple times. Moody explained his offers had merely been taraf, which are vacant polite promises. Another air raid at the market caused Betty and Mahtob to run home. The bombing coincided with the Friday prayer, and Baba Hajji had font to pray in the area that came under fire. When he didn’t return at his usual time, Ameh Bozog assumed he had been killed and began mourning. She began wailing and tearing at her hair. It was all for naught as he walked home in a few hours. He was covered in blood and flesh, but he was unharmed, albeit disappointed. He wanted to be a martyr like his brother. Moody denied many of the claims made by his wife in "Not Without my Daughter". He collaborated with Alexis Kouros to create a documentary, Without My Daughter, to counter the claims in Betty's book.My Name is Mahtob is in a league of its own. It exists beyond the glaring stereotypes in Betty’s book but goes on endlessly about everything American. It even manages to find patriotism in a Toblerone bar! And it helps to remember that her book was published in 2015, which, combined with cultural advancements within the States and Mahtob’s travel around the world to promote her mother’s book, should have progressed beyond the stereotypes in Not Without My Daughter. Sadly, nothing of that sort is forthcoming.