My Name Is Mahtob: The Story That Began the Global Phenomenon Not Without My Daughter Continues

by Mahtob Mahmoody

  One day Mom managed to get her hands on some peanuts. Food, water, and electricity were rationed due to the war, and luxuries like peanuts didn’t exist in our world. Somehow she found some, and she labored all afternoon to fashion her thrilling find into something that resembled the peanut butter we missed so much from home. The end product wasn’t exactly the same, but it was close enough. We were elated.

  I was especially overjoyed when she packed one of my favorite snacks for me to take to school. My mouth watered as I dreamed of the celery stuffed with peanut butter that was waiting for me in my lunch bag. But when mealtime came, I found myself embarrassed to eat something so foreign in the presence of the other children. I nervously eyed them as I took a bite of my wonderful treat. I could see girls staring, looking perplexed. Some sniggered and pointed. Others seemed genuinely curious. Mom nudged me. “Mahtob, why don’t you share some with your friends?”

  Obediently, I held a piece out for the closest onlooker to sample. She took it from me and tasted it. The other students watched for her reaction. When she smiled, others found their courage and wanted to taste this strange culinary concoction. I handed out every last piece and in return I was warmed for the first time by their smiles of acceptance.

  Outside of school, my father still forced me to play with my cousins. I preferred to sit quietly with the adults, but he was harshly insistent. Playing with the other kids, I would stick to the periphery, watching silently more than participating. They pretended to be grown-ups. Pretend men barking orders to their pretend wives. Pretend wives jumping at the command of their pretend husbands.

  The walled courtyard behind Ameh Bozorg’s house was our make-believe house, and the stacks of rolled Persian carpets served to separate one imaginary room from the next. The girls would don chadors like the older sisters and aunts they admired. They would squeal with delight as they mischievously let the fabric slip from their heads and then off their shoulders before hesitantly dropping to the floor. Set free from the weight of the government mandated garments, they would bound about their “house,” giggling at the thrill of their rebelliousness. That’s when one of the boys would pound on the wall as if someone were rapping at the door. The girls would gasp, their eyes wide with feigned fear, hands instinctively covering their exposed hair, as they ran for the chadors they had so jubilantly shed.

  When we tired of playing house, my cousins and I would camp out on the living-room floor, coloring pictures while we watched cartoons. They were as quick as the adults to reprimand me when I chose my own colors. The government’s brainwashing was so pervasive that it even dictated which shades children were allowed to use when coloring in their own homes. The facing pages in our coloring books were identical except that one was in color and the opposite was in black and white. If the flower in the colored picture was red, then the flower on the opposite page had to be colored red. It didn’t matter if purple was my favorite color or if my grandma’s favorite color was yellow. Bolstered by a campaign of terror, Khomeini’s regime was going to great lengths to raise a generation of submissive, mindless followers.

  All around me, grown-ups talked about the trucks that pulled up at school gates to take children off to war. Young boys would gather to listen as uniformed men stood in the backs of pickup trucks and shouted over megaphones, giving rousing pep talks about martyrdom. Children were told that they would make their parents proud by sacrificing their lives for Allah and that dying in this holy war ensured their souls would be immediately welcomed into paradise. To drive the message home, the men gave each boy who volunteered a plastic key—a key to paradise—to wear on a chain around his neck. Rumor had it that those young boys, seen as expendable pieces of military equipment, were sent ahead of the soldiers and artillery vehicles to walk for landmines. The Iranian government knowingly murdered its own children.

  CHAPTER 7

  Why is it that hardworking women often end up with lazy men? Whatever the reason, I thank God for that dynamic in my family. I shudder to think what my life would be like had things been reversed.

  In Iran, shopping was done on a daily basis, and the markets were specialized. When we needed bread, we had to wait in line at the bread market. If we needed cheese, that was a different market and a different line. The same was true for produce, meat, spices and so on. My dad, afraid Mom would try to escape with me, let us out of his sight only when there was a suitable guard to stand in for him. When it was time to do the day’s shopping, he went along to keep watchful eye.

  Mom knew that eventually the day would come when he would grow weary of this menial task that he saw as beneath his station in life. She prayed for that day, hoping that then he would let her go to the markets on her own. Perhaps then she could finally find a way out of our prison.

  Mom was right. She knew my father well. He was arrogant, self-important, and above all lazy. He despised wasting his valuable time fetching basic necessities. He was more of a luxury-item shopper. He liked expensive cars, original artwork, fine jewelry, designer clothes. Whatever he bought had to be the biggest and the best, and he bought in excess. If he purchased a Lacoste shirt, he didn’t buy just one—he bought one in every color. To be demoted to a common errand boy, waiting his turn in countless lines filled with common folk to buy soap or cheese or tomatoes was insufferable to him.

  Driven by his pride and his laziness, he eventually acquiesced and began loosening the reins. But he did so by degrees—very small degrees. He began by sending Mom to the markets with a shopping list and no money. She was to return with the precise cost of each item. While she was out gathering prices, he timed her to ensure she didn’t have a moment for any unauthorized stops along the way. When Mom returned, he would give her the exact change and restart the timer. Again she would make her rounds, this time gathering the items for which she had been sent.

  She had gained an ounce of freedom. Still, it was absolutely out of the question for her to leave the house, unsupervised, with me. My dad knew my mom well too. He knew that even if she managed to find a way to escape, she would never leave without me. He could set her loose on the unfamiliar streets of Tehran, confident that as long as he held me as ransom she would do exactly as told.

  He judged her loyalty accurately. What he underestimated was Mom’s resourcefulness and determination, both learned from her father. When she was growing up in central Michigan, my grandpa, a warmhearted lumberjack of a man, used to take her for walks in the woods. Once they were deep in the heart of the forest, he would turn to her and say, “Okay, show me the way. How do we get out of here?” Mom says he would follow her down one wrong path after another until she got her bearings and figured out how to lead them home.

  That real-world instruction had honed her sense of direction and taught her perseverance. Wandering through the trees, my grandpa had infused his philosophy of life into his little girl. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Don’t ever give up. If you want something badly enough, keep working. There’s always a way.”

  I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe in miracles. And so it was that a stranger, an Iranian man no less, made it his mission to help Mom and me escape. On one of Mom’s early solo shopping trips, she asked around like a beggar for the special coin required to use a payphone. Holding her hand out, she pleaded with passersby, “Dozari? Dozari?” She stepped into a shop and asked again, “Dozari?” The shopkeeper, recognizing her accent, said with enthusiasm, “You’re American! Please come in. Use my phone.” In awe, Mom accepted his compassionate offer.

  Since the Iranian rebels had ensured there was no American embassy in Tehran, she called the Swiss Embassy, which housed the American-interest section, in the hope that they would find a way to free us. Though they knew of our situation, they could offer no assistance. When Mom hung up, the shopkeeper, who had listened to the conversation, said to her, “You’re in trouble. I want to help you.” He didn’t want her to think all Iranians were like my dad and his family. He said that he knew peo
ple and would do some checking to see what arrangements could be made. We couldn’t have known it then, but that chance meeting would be a pivotal step on our journey toward freedom.

  Our shopkeeper truly was a godsend. In an environment where it seemed that everyone spied for someone and no one could be trusted, he remained faithful to his word. As often as Mom was able, she stopped by to check in with him. Sometimes weeks would pass between her visits as my father’s paranoia waxed and waned. But each time, the kind shopkeeper offered hope. He had mobilized a grassroots network to help us. He talked secretly with people, and they talked with people, and he remained steadfast in his mission to free us from my father’s oppression.

  Over time, my dad began to believe that Mom had become a broken woman, accepting life under his rule in Iran. Only then did he permit me to leave the house with her. Mom made the most of every opportunity to touch base with her underground network of angels. We raced to see the shopkeeper for his latest update. We rushed to meet with others whom Mom had come to know through the shopkeeper. We sped to the embassy to swap messages and beg them to intervene on our behalf.

  The Swiss embassy was enormously intimidating, with its heavily armed sentries and the weighty metal bars that clanged shut behind us with finality. No matter how many times Mom and I entered that gate, no matter how prepared I was for the chilling sound, it always made me quiver with fear.

  Once inside the stately building, we were taken by an armed guard to a small room where we were searched before finally being led into the tangle of offices. Our case had been assigned to a woman named Helen. She was gentle and sympathetic, and she desperately wanted to help us. At the same time, her hands were tied. In America we were considered dual nationals, but Iran recognized only our Iranian citizenship. We were outside her jurisdiction and considered the legal property of my father. If anything should happen to him, we would become the property of his family.

  There was a man working at the embassy who kept a drawer of his desk stocked with Toblerone chocolate bars. Passing by, I always shot a glance in his direction, hoping to see him sitting there. If he was, he would surely invite me to sit with him and share a chocolate bar while Mom talked with Helen. I would carefully break off one alpine chunk at a time and drink in its every detail—its aroma, its glistening angles, the letter etched onto its side in the alphabet of my homeland. Only then would I slip a bite into my mouth.

  I would savor every bit of the experience as I cautioned myself not to ever tell anyone but Mom of this secret joy. If my dad found out, he would never let me see her again. His constant threats to kill her had not lessened. Mom was doing everything in her power to find a way to take me home, and I had to do everything in my power to protect us from my dad. So with every splendid, creamy bite I took of the Toblerone, I reminded myself this never happened.

  Our excursions were rife with danger. The Pasdar, or morality police, roamed the streets armed with machine guns, specifically looking for wardrobe offenses. Their job was to make sure women were dressed in a way that protected them from the lustful glances of men. Women were required to cover all flesh except for their faces and hands. No hair was allowed to be visible. No nail polish was permissible, and absolutely no makeup was tolerated . . . for the woman’s protection, of course.

  Mom had several run-ins with the Pasdar. One day when we had just left a store and were waiting to cross the street, a woman wearing a black chador and carrying an automatic rifle jumped from the back of a truck. My heart caught in my throat as she charged at us. Mom’s grip tightened on my hand. The woman was shouting at Mom because her socks had sagged below the hem of her montoe, revealing a sliver of skin on her shin. Mom, in an uncharacteristic and foolhardy show of boldness, yelled right back at her about the worthless elastic in the socks available to her in Iran. If she could find decent socks, she would gladly wear them. The guard, in an astounding act of kindness, agreed and let us go.

  It was, without a doubt, the grace of God that saved us that day. That little display of flesh would have been cause enough to warrant Mom’s arrest or execution, and arguing with the Pasdar, by all accounts, should have had grave consequences.

  The teachers at my school, once they had learned of our plight, also showed us unexpected benevolence, even at the risk of jeopardizing their own safety. They wouldn’t let us leave once we had arrived at school, but they did allow us to come late to class, giving us even more opportunity to focus on our top-secret quest.

  One morning Mom and I went to check in with the shopkeeper on our way to school. As the months elapsed and one escape plan after another fell apart, our pleas had become more urgent. We cut through an alleyway and happened upon a flock of birds pecking at the dirt along the road. I was happy to see them because they reminded me of the birds I loved so much at home. We took a moment to enjoy them before scurrying to meet the shopkeeper and then heading to school.

  That evening my dad walked with us to the market to buy bread for dinner. The bakers worked in an open pit. They wore sandals and hats that were flat on the top. They crouched on the floor kneading dough in mounds of flour and passing the loaf from one person to the next at different stages of production. The last man in the assembly line placed the flat loaf of dough on a long-handled wooden paddle and poked it with his fingers, lining its surface with divots. Then it was thrust into the fire, where it baked on a bed of tiny pebbles. Another man tended the bread with a long stick, flipping it as the edges singed from the intense heat. When the bread was golden, it was retrieved from the oven with one deft twist of the stick, bringing with it a sprinkling of renegade stones that had baked into the bottom of the massive loaf. This was sangyak, my favorite Persian bread. Its loaves were oblong and almost as big as I was.

  Mom tore off big hunks of steaming bread for us to eat on our way home. She carefully picked out the hot stones from my piece before handing it over. After our treat, my parents each took one of my hands in theirs and swung me between them as we walked. “One, two, three,” we would count in unison and then, “Whee!” Their arms lifted me from the ground, and my feet swung out in front of me.

  “Do it again,” I begged.

  “One, two, three . . . whee!”

  “Again,” I giggled.

  We were still walking hand in hand as we turned down the alley that would lead us back to our apartment. There before us were the birds, the same birds Mom and I had enjoyed that morning. In my excitement, I forgot to forget that I had seen them. “Look,” I said with glee, “The birds are still here!”

  “What birds?” my dad asked suspiciously.

  “Those birds. We saw them this morning on our way to school. They’re still here. This must be their home.” Mom squeezed my hand. I looked at her, confused, as my dad continued his interrogation.

  “You passed these birds on your way to school this morning?”

  “Yes,” I announced cheerfully, “Aren’t they pretty?” Mom squeezed my hand again, harder this time. “Ouch!” I cried, turning my head sharply toward her, not understanding her signal, “Why did you squeeze my hand?”

  “What were you doing on this street this morning?” my dad interrupted. “Where were you going? You weren’t going to school. This is not on your way to school.” He was using his angry voice. His footsteps were his angry footsteps.

  I recognized my mistake, but it was too late. I stared anxiously at my feet while Mom tried to run interference. I can’t remember now if she told him I had mixed up the times or if she said we had gotten lost. I do remember that he was furious and that I was even more furious with myself for making such a devastating blunder. I had worked so hard at remembering what I could and couldn’t say. Mom had trained me well, and I knew that if I wanted to go home, I could never make a mistake like this.

  Not a day passed without my begging Mom to take me home and her promising that she would. We prayed continually for God to open a door for us and trusted that somehow he would. Now I was certain that I had destroyed an
y chance of escape. Even worse than not being able to go home was the fear that now my dad was going to kill Mom because I had forgotten to forget and had said something I wasn’t supposed to say.

  I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I seethed in my heart. I loathed my dad for doing this to us.

  I wasn’t the only one infected with hatred. Back home in Michigan, my brothers, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and family friends kept a bitter and agonizing vigil. The messages we got from them were disheartening. My grandpa’s long battle with colon cancer was claiming his life, and we were trapped in Iran as his last days were slipping away.

  Family members called my dad, pleading with him to send us to see my grandpa before it was too late. Standing at my father’s side in our living room, Mom begged with utter desperation. “Let’s all go as a family to see him, and then Mahtob and I will come back to Iran with you. Just let us go see him one last time before he dies.”

  I watched silently from the floor.

  “You’re right. You should be with your family right now. They need you. You will go to see him,” he announced.

  “What?” Mom asked, breathless. “Really, we can go? We can go see him? Thank you, Moody!”

  He cut her thanks short. “I said you can go. Mahtob will stay here with me.”

  “What?” she whispered, timidly staring at the ground and bracing for his fist. “Moody, I can’t go without Mahtob. I won’t leave her.”

  Thus began a confusing time. My dad threw himself headlong into making preparations for Mom’s departure. All the while, Mom promised that she wasn’t leaving me. But I saw the preparations being made. How could she say she wasn’t leaving?

  My dad said she was. He told me she was going home because she wanted to see my grandparents and brothers. I knew that was true. I knew she wanted to see them as much as I did. I also knew that what my dad said was the law. If he said Mom was going to America, then she had no choice. The more she protested that she wasn’t abandoning me, that she would find a way out of this mess, the more I pulled away from her. I was angry with her for leaving me and even angrier that she had the nerve to lie to me about it.