Not Without My Daughter

Product Information

On my second reading I couldn’t help wondering how damaging a book like this is/was to Iranian society. I think it’s quite short-sighted for anyone to delude themselves into thinking that she portrays all Iranians as bad people.

It was a scary time to be a six-year-old, so my mom taught us how to memorize landmarks and phone numbers, even directions on how to get back to the international bridge, and what to tell authorities if my dad ever got a fit of the crazies. One day, an unnamed individual instructed Betty to go to an address and ask for the manager Amahl, who would find a way for both Betty and Mahtob to escape. It's troubling that in this day and age, women are treated with such disdain - and other women support it!

It is entirely plausible that everything that Betty is recounting is true, depending on her husband’s social-economic-cultural-religious background.

He collaborated with Alexis Kouros to create a documentary, Without My Daughter, to counter the claims in Betty's book. On January 31, the smugglers drove Betty and Mahtob to a small village beyond Tabriz, where they spent the night.But the reader soon sees that it’s not Islam that she has a problem with, more so the way it was enforced in that oppressive regime. They also faced familial challenges: Moody's sister, Ameh Bozorg, (literally "great aunt"), who was their host, viewed Betty with contempt, simply for being an American and holding to American ideals. Betty Mahmoudy recounts her experiences as a captive , with her daughter Mahtob, of her increasingly violent husband who keeps her a prisoner to stop her leaving the Islamic Republic.

There are many things the author wrote about that are very typical of Iranian behavior, things that I have grown to love about the culture (the best food, the love of tea, the strong family unit, the way they seem like they're arguing when they're talking). im sick of these western women authors writing about arab, persian and pakistani men who take them back to their country and abuse them. I felt she was very brave but I also appreciated the bravery of the men and women who helped her through such a dangerous experience. My other, more urgent questions are, does Mahmoody even have the responsibility to avoid perpetuating such notions and images, most especially if, in her case, they happen to be the truth? When did you finally stop looking over your shoulder, living with the fear that someone working for your dad or your dad would come to get you?

Her sister-in-law had no redeeming quality at all and I have to think there was one or two good things about her.