“Not Without My Daughter.”
“Yes, Not Without My Daughter. That’s it. Have you read it?”
“No.” I chuckled. “I lived it!”
CHAPTER 2
The tapestry of my life began in Texas in 1979, on the cusp of the Iranian Revolution and in the midst of a hurricane. On the day I was born, September 4, the front page of the Houston Chronicle announced, “David Smashes Central Fla. Coast.” The barometric pressure drop from a tropical storm that made landfall more than a thousand miles away was enough to bring me into the world a month ahead of schedule.
Hurricane David was minor compared to the storm brewing even farther away in my father’s homeland. A good part of the Chronicle’s seventh page that day was dedicated to Iran’s ongoing military skirmish—“Iranian Troops Breach Kurdish Defense Lines.” From the article it was clear the secular democrats were crumbling under the lethal force of the rising Islamic regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The eye of the revolution’s storm may have hit seventy-five hundred miles away, but it dealt a catastrophic blow in my family’s home.
My dad, Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody, had left his country at the age of eighteen to study English in London. From there he moved to the United States to attend university. Enjoying the world of academia, he became a university math professor, then an engineer. He worked for NASA in the 1960s. Then he went to medical school. Apparently still thirsting for knowledge, he went on to complete his residency in anesthesia.
My parents met in Michigan in 1974 while he was doing an internship at Carson City Hospital. Mom worked nearby in the administrative side of the automotive industry that at that time was thriving in the state. They married and moved to Texas in the summer of 1977.
At the time of the Iranian Revolution, my dad changed. His mild-mannered, charismatic charm was instantly replaced with a violent shade of political extremism. Once a lover of “the West” and the opportunities it offered, he now vehemently condemned the United States and everything for which it stood.
Mom had known him only as a nonpracticing Muslim. That, too, changed with the revolution. She was shocked when he came home one day and threw out all the alcohol in the house. He was the one who was accustomed to imbibing it, yet she was the one he castigated because of the evils of these spirits. From that day on he insisted she buy only kosher food, as it was as close to halal (food sanctioned by Islamic law) as was available, and his fervent anti-American rants became commonplace.
There’s a picture of me as an infant—one of the many images bearing the mark of the fox. I’m cradled in the arms of a young man whose head is wrapped in a white gauze bandage. He was one of the dozens of Iranian men who brought the Iranian Revolution to the streets of Texas. My dad was their leader.
While taking full advantage of the US Constitution’s assurance of the freedom of speech, my father helped organize demonstrations that lambasted the United States, which he saw as having a Westernizing and immoralizing influence on his country. The irony is confounding. The man holding me in the picture had been stabbed in the head while marching in an anti-American protest my father had helped facilitate.
My parents and I moved to Michigan when I was six months old. My mother, fed up with my father’s fanaticism, had threatened divorce. In an effort to salvage the marriage, he promised to leave the cause of revolution behind and to make a fresh start in Mom’s home state. That would prove to be just another promise he neglected to keep.
Michigan looks like a mitten. Ask anyone from Michigan where they live and, as if compelled by an innate reflex, they’ll lift their hand and point to the precise freckle or knuckle or hangnail that represents their location. I’ve lived all over the mitten, but from the time I was six months old until I was four, I lived near the uppermost joint of the pointer finger, in Alpena.
The east side of my state is fondly referred to as the sunrise side. It is practical, spartan, and built on industry, as opposed to the sunset side of the state, where the coastline has been commercialized and the economy built on tourism. It would be many years before I would learn that what smelled like home to me as a child was really the saccharine odor of pollution escaping the massive smokestacks of the Abitibi-Price mill, which manufactured wall paneling.
My family’s house was on Thunder Bay River. The water that flowed through our backyard wound its way along the banks of my favorite park, past Alpena General Hospital, where my dad worked as an anesthesiologist, through town, and over the Ninth Street Dam before emptying into Thunder Bay. From the pier at the marina, you could gaze out over the open water and watch the giant freighters inch their way toward the horizon, loaded down with the stuff of industry. Somewhere out there on the water was an invisible border where Thunder Bay washed into Lake Huron. And beyond the line where the sky and the water met was Canada.
The park at the bend of the river was one of my favorite spots. Mom took me there to feed the birds, and it was through such experiences that she passed on her love of ornithology. Whereas some parents would draw a young child’s attention to “the pretty birdie,” my parents, both eager to impart their wisdom, taught me the proper names of each species. We saw Canada geese, swans, herons, and all kinds of ducks. When the weather warmed, we watched robins pull worms from the soil to eat. The spotting of the first robin of the year was pure joy, signaling the close of northern Michigan’s seemingly endless winter and the birth of spring, which would give way to an all-too-brief summer.
The first babysitter I remember was Patty, a teenager who lived across the street. She was one of a host of family friends who liked to polish my fingernails. I loved having my nails painted. Though young, I happily sat still and soaked up their pampering. There are photos where I’m barely big enough to stand beside the coffee table, yet I have glittery red fingernails and gold stud earrings. My parents had pierced my ears when I was just six weeks old. Mom marked my earlobes and Dad pulled the trigger on the piercing gun. Mom cried more than I did.
Besides painting my nails, Patty took me to a ceramics studio to paint pottery. She chose a bud vase for me to decorate. She worked in shimmery pastels appropriate for the decade, while I went for one of my two favorite colors, grape purple. My other favorite, of course, was ballerina pink.
The kitchen is the heart of the home, and that truth has been one of the few constants in my life. Many of my earliest recollections revolve around the kitchen. At two or three, I sat on the linoleum floor with a wooden spoon, stirring orange juice in an avocado green Rubbermaid pitcher, chasing the frozen chunk of concentrate around until it dissolved. All the while, Mom fluttered to and fro flipping eggs, frying hash browns, buttering toast as it popped out of the toaster, and not minding one bit that I had sloshed juice on the floor. Making messes is how children learn to cook, and it was important to her that I felt at home in the kitchen.
Another time I remember giggling with Mom over my dad and his silly, self-imposed misery. He loved spicy food, the kind that cleans out your sinuses and makes you sweat. On this particular occasion he sat at our kitchen table crunching raw hot peppers until his mouth was afire and his face flushed. He mopped the perspiration off the top of his bald head with a handkerchief, huffing and puffing, yet clearly exhilarated by the experience. He wore a pale blue Lacoste shirt with the signature green alligator appliqué on the chest.
Both of my parents were talented epicureans and masters of the art of hospitality. They made a dynamic pair in that regard. Our home was frequently filled with friends, and when there were friends, there was sure to be an abundance of food. They taught me that it is over food that friends adopt each other as family.
And so it was that there came to be an Armenian branch on my family tree. I’m not sure how our families first met. Maybe it was through John, who was my parents’ eye doctor, or through his sister-in-law, Annie, who was our seamstress. But from my infancy to the day shortly before my fifth birthday when my dad put his evil plan into action, our families happily fell into the habit of
feasting with one another. We didn’t need a special occasion to gather together around a table.
Sometimes John and his wife, Vergine, hosted. On such occasions Vergine, along with her sister, Annie, and their mom, affectionately known as Nana, would spend hours preparing mouthwatering Armenian delicacies. Other times my parents hosted, and they would work side by side to whip up the most delectable Persian fare.
My dad, especially, took pride in making the food look beautiful. Sometimes he would set up an extravagant display of fruit, every morsel of which he had painstakingly arranged. With the precision of a surgeon, he would carve a watermelon lengthwise into a basket, leaving a handle of rind in the middle. He would let me help scoop out its flesh with a melon baller. But we couldn’t just put the watermelon balls back into the rind and serve it. That wouldn’t be nearly colorful enough. We had to add matching orbs of cantaloupe along with red and green grapes and Alpena strawberries or blueberries depending on the season. Only then would the fruit be ladled back into the watermelon-rind basket. The table would be filled with cascading mountains of fresh fruit. My dad didn’t know the meaning of moderation.
Regardless of where we gathered or what we ate, grown-ups and children alike sat together and enjoyed each other’s company. The varied personalities, ages, interests, and cultures all added to the charm of the interaction. Those meals were loud and boisterous, and they lasted for hours. When I think of my childhood, those are the sounds, smells, tastes, and images that flood my mind.
Food was not about necessity. It was a means to nurture, to teach, to care for—to love. The process of making the meal was as important, if not more important, than the actual eating of the meal. I learned this not only from my parents, but from Nana and Annie, who passed on to me their tradition of rolling kibbe.
I sat atop the table. One of them reached into the mixing bowl filled with a dough of ground beef and bulgur. Pinching off just the right amount, they plopped the mixture into my hand. Nana, who didn’t speak English, motioned for me to follow her lead. Giving the dough a couple of squeezes to make it stick together, she began to roll it around the tip of her index finger, twisting her finger with each roll.
Deftly she dipped her hand into the dish of cold water that sat between us. “Just a little,” she instructed in Armenian. Once the precise shape had been achieved and a sufficient cavity had been formed, it was stuffed with a concoction of spiced meat and pine nuts. Another tiny dip in the water bowl, and it was time to pinch the opening closed, sealing in the filling. Then Nana cupped her hands, one atop the other, and circled them in opposite directions, forming a roughly circular shape that came to a gentle point on each end.
I did every step along with her, then held my kibbe out for inspection. Tenderly taking it from my palm, Nana would look it over with a keen eye. Deciding it was just right, she would bring her closed fingers to the center of her mouth. Then, with a smack of her lips, she would pull her hand away from her face, fingers exploding with the sound of her kiss. It was her way of telling me I had done a beautiful job.
Every step of the way, they inundated me with praise. Failure did not exist in their kitchen. If something didn’t go exactly as planned, it was simply an opportunity to discover a new and perhaps improved way.
As we cooked, Annie would lead me in song. “God is so gooood,” she would sing with a lovely accent. “God is so gooood.” In between songs, she would drive home the message. “Mahtob”—I loved the way she pronounced my name—“God is verrry good to us—very, very good. He loves us very much. Don’t ever forget.”
That Annie and Nana could see God’s goodness was a true testament to the power of faith. They had endured this world’s cruelty at its worst. Nana was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. She was orphaned by barbaric violence in the early decades of the twentieth century, when the Turkish government massacred the people of her village. No one knew her exact age. To me, she seemed ancient. In spite of the inane brutality that had marked her early life, Nana exuded warmth and kindness, and she had passed on that same grace to her daughters.
Annie, before moving to Alpena, had lived in Beirut, Lebanon, with her husband and three young sons. When a civil war broke out in 1975, they filed papers seeking permission to immigrate to the United States. They wanted to protect their children from the ugly realities of war. Her family was eventually granted permission to flee the country, but not before Annie’s husband had joined the ranks of the more than 150,000 civilians who lost their lives in the battle that raged for the next fifteen years. He had nothing to do with the conflict. He had merely been at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Her husband’s needless death solidified Annie’s resolve to move her boys to a land where they could grow to know peace. She packed up her sons, moved to America, and didn’t look back. No matter what life threw at her, Annie, following in her mother’s footsteps, remained full of faith and abounding in joy. And just as Nana had passed those seeds of resiliency on to her, Annie took great care to plant and nurture those seeds in me.
In the summer of 1984, when I was four and a half, my parents and I moved south to the Detroit area—also on the sunrise side of the state, at the joint where the thumb connects to the palm. It was just weeks before my parents and I were to leave for our “two-week vacation” in my father’s homeland and one month before I was to begin kindergarten.
Looking back, I can see that move as a stroke of evil genius on my dad’s part. Convincing Mom that they would begin building their dream home together once we returned from our trip, he managed to manipulate her into leaving most of our family’s belongings neatly packed for easy transport to our future prison.
At the time, though, I was completely oblivious to his schemes. I was engrossed in the carefree details of childhood, like the Strawberry Shortcake sheets Mom had bought for my new bedroom and my Care Bear bouncy ball, which had a picture of my favorite Care Bear—Funshine Bear, the yellow one with a cheerful smiling sun on his belly—and made a hollow vibrating ting when I bounced it in the driveway. Above all, I was happy to have made a new friend, a girl about my age who lived next door. Her name was Stacey, and she introduced me to wondrous delicacies like Kraft macaroni and cheese and Kool-Aid.
The Iranian Revolution, which began around the time I was born, had left the country in shambles. The shah, Iran’s ruler, had been overthrown. The hostage crisis at the American embassy in Tehran was still recent history. The country was rife with religious and political unrest. The Ayatollah Khomeini and the radical extremists who made up his party had ushered in a much stricter way of life for everyone. In the new Islamic Republic of Iran, even non-Muslims were forced to live by the edicts of the ayatollah. On top of all the bloodshed suffered during the revolution, Iraq had invaded Iran, and the skirmish had erupted into an all-out war between the two countries.
While I spent sunny afternoons splashing through the sprinkler with Stacey, my mom’s mind was occupied with the infinitely darker reality of dangers I had not yet come to know. As she packed for the upcoming visit to my father’s homeland, she couldn’t shake the nagging question, “Why on earth would we take our daughter into a war zone?”
CHAPTER 3
When my family left our home on August 1, 1984, I had no reason to suspect our trip would be anything other than a two-week vacation with my father’s relatives in Iran. Had I possessed the wisdom that comes with age, perhaps I, like my mother, would have had a hunch my father was setting in motion a much more sinister plan.
As my parents busied themselves with their final preparations for our departure, Mr. Bunny and I danced around the living room, joined together by elastic straps that held his hands and feet to mine. He was a handsome stuffed bunny, kelly green with white polka dots, whose height surpassed mine by a tall ear’s length. He wore a red felt bow tie that looked like two triangles turned on their sides, points overlapping in the middle. Mom’s many attempts at keeping his bow tie in place had only succeeded in leaving it stif
f with glue.
A viscous air of tension had descended on our house. I could hear the whispers of a squabble blowing in from the hallway as suitcases accumulated alongside the door. My dad stormed into the room and grabbed his Koran from the table beside the blue paisley wingback chair.
Paisley, my parents had taught me, was a Persian design. Our home clearly reflected my father’s heritage. The stand that had held his Koran was home to a forest-green lamp made of camel’s skin that had been intricately painted with a yellow and white geometric pattern. Our friends had brought it for us as a gift from Pakistan. On the neck of the lamp, up under the shade, was an ornate brassy key-shaped switch that, when turned, sparked the bulb to life. I loved to watch the light shine through the shade, casting intriguing shapes on the wall as I twisted the switch on and off.
Beneath my toes, the plush Persian carpet magically changed hues as Mr. Bunny and I twirled about the room. My dad said that was how you could tell it was authentic. From one end the colors looked deep and rich; from the other they looked lighter, more vibrant.
My parents and I arrived in Tehran, Iran’s capital city, on August 3, a month and a day before my fifth birthday. The first thing I remember about my father’s homeland is the stench of the bathroom at the Tehran International Airport. Like most of my memories of our time in Iran, it is a brief, disjointed flash. As Mom and I neared the entrance of the restroom, we were struck by an overwhelming cloud of foulness. I protested. I did not want to enter. We went in anyway. It smelled putrid. I had to go so badly I was in pain, but I refused.
Some of my memories of that time are like photographs that I can “see.” Others are facts, details, or emotions, things I know but can’t quite visualize in my mind’s eye. My memory of the airport’s bathroom falls into the latter category. I don’t remember exactly what it looked like, but I do remember there were no toilets. That was my introduction to the traditional Iranian bathroom. Where a Western bathroom would have a toilet and a roll of toilet paper, in Iran there was a hole in the floor and a hose on the wall. The result was nauseatingly wretched.
My Name Is Mahtob Page 2