My Name Is Mahtob

by Mahtob Mahmoody

  “No.”

  “And things with your dad?”

  “The same. I’ve been praying for him, though, and you’re right, it helps. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. That should have been the first thing I thought of. Guess I was just so caught up in being miserable that I needed someone to point it out to me.”

  “I’m glad it’s helping, dear. How’s your appetite?”

  “Normal.”

  “Exercise?”

  “None. The police gave me a key card to get in to the faculty parking lots, so now I don’t walk nearly as much as I did. But it’s nice that I get to park right outside the building when I go to class. It does make me feel a bit safer. So the drama with my dad has had at least one perk,” I joked.

  “Now there’s the Mahtob I know, finding the silver lining to every cloud. Hop up on the exam table. Let’s check you out.”

  As Dr. Beals examined me, I told her more about Dr. Kaufman’s theories. “Dr. Kaufman says we carry our memories of life experiences almost like photographs in our minds and that we can choose which snapshots we take with us from the event. Like the whole parking situation thing. I could be upset that I’m afraid for my safety because my dad’s hounding me or because some backstabbing fellow-Spartan is working for him or because there’s not a whole lot the police can do to protect me. Those things are all true.

  “Or I could focus my attention on the good that’s coming from the bad. If my dad weren’t causing these problems, then the police wouldn’t have given me the special parking permit. If they hadn’t given me the parking permit, I would have missed out on the great bumper sticker I saw the other day. I parked next to this old beater of a car that was completely covered in bumper stickers. It was so tacky. But I couldn’t help but stop and read a few, and one of them said something like, ‘It’s not our differences that divide us. It’s our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.’ I like that.”

  “Say, ‘ah,’ ” Dr. Beals got in as I took a breath.

  “Ah.”

  “Good.”

  “And there’s this other car that’s always parked outside of my philosophy class. All semester I’ve been trying to figure out what the license plate means. It says, ‘B-U-G-U-Y.’ I usually go in the side door because it’s closer to my classroom, but the other day I used the front door of the building. It turns out the department of entomology is housed in that hall. All of a sudden, the lightbulb went on. The department of entomology—the study of insects. B-U-G-U-Y . . . bug guy. Isn’t that clever? And guess what? The car is a Volkswagen Beetle.”

  Dr. Beals smiled appreciating a fellow scientist with a sense of humor.

  “Anyway,” I went on, “these are the photographs I’m choosing to carry with me. The good is no less real than the bad, so why not focus on it?”

  Dr. Beals listened with genuine interest as she checked for swollen glands, examined the color of my nail beds, and noted the temperature and texture of my skin. She tested my reflexes, muscle strength, and range of motion. She listened to my heart and breathing, tapped on my stomach to measure my spleen, pressed on my abdomen to check for tenderness.

  “Hmm, you certainly are looking and sounding great. Whatever it is you’re doing, keep it up. You’re on the right track. I want to run some labs to confirm that things really are improving as they appear to be.” She helped me down from the table and pointed me toward the comfortable chair.

  I braced myself. This was the point in our appointment when we usually played the bargaining game. She would propose different meds, and I would make the case for abstaining from them. In the end we would find a compromise we could both feel good about.

  “I’m going to be honest with you,” she said. “I’m encouraged to see you doing so well, but I still have some concerns. I don’t think you’re out of the woods yet.” She looked over her shoulder at me as she washed her hands at the sink across the room. “You need to pay very close attention to the messages your body sends you. At the very first hint of an increase in symptoms, I want you to get back in here.”

  She turned and looked me in the eye. “This is serious stuff we’re dealing with. We’re not just talking about your health today; we’ve got to think about the future too. The decisions you make now could have consequences down the road.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Good. I’ll call you with the lab results as soon as I get them. Until then, keep doing what you’re doing. It seems to be making a significant difference.”

  The labs confirmed that my health had indeed improved. Spurred on by the noticeable progress I had experienced by changing my attitude, I immersed myself in research on nutrition and wellness.

  Early on, my father had planted in me the seeds of a holistic approach to health care. He was an osteopath who believed the body was designed to heal itself given the proper conditions. I was beginning to believe this could be true for me. I just had to figure out how to create the right conditions.

  There was surprisingly little literature available about diet and lupus. The closest I could find was a small book, little more than an extended pamphlet, on nutrition and fibromyalgia. It was a place to start.

  I carefully tracked how I felt after eating different foods. Noticing that meat seemed to take a toll on my body, I became a vegetarian. Milk made me bloat, and sometimes, after just one sip, I had shooting pains in my abdomen. After reading up on the subject, however, I decided that my problem was likely not the milk itself but perhaps the pesticides in animal feed and growth hormones and the antibiotics the cows were routinely given to boost milk production. I discovered I could drink organic milk by the gallon with no discomfort.

  Pleased by my findings, I ate as much organic produce as possible. I tried yoga and explored deep-breathing exercises, visualization, and guided imagery. Above all, I wholeheartedly embraced Dr. Kaufman’s tools. Within three months, for the first time since my diagnosis, my lupus was in full remission. Even DSG hadn’t accomplished that.

  William James, one of the founding fathers of psychology, has been credited with saying, “The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.” Dr. Kaufman’s class gave me that gift, teaching me to alter my attitude in ways that would forever alter my life.

  One other class exercise in particular impacted me. Dr. Kaufman asked us to pair up with someone we didn’t know and arrange our desks to face each other. Our instructions were simply to gaze into each other’s eyes until he signaled us to stop—no talking, no making faces, no communicating in any way. This was not a staring contest. There would be no winner or loser. We were simply to gaze into each other’s eyes and take in the experience.

  Rising from our chairs and stepping from the comfort of our small groups, anxiety levels soared filling the room with nervous laughter. Even though MSU wasn’t an unfriendly place, looking others in the eye was somehow outside of the norm. Week after week I passed the same people on my way to class. We rode the same buses. We sat beside each other in lectures. We almost never made eye contact.

  I partnered with a girl from the other side of the room. She looked as uneasy as I felt. “Okay, I’m starting the timer,” Dr. Kaufman announced. “Make eye contact and don’t break it until I tell you to. You may feel the urge to giggle, blink repeatedly, stare at your partner’s nose, or alternate your gaze from one eye to the other. Those are learned responses. Resist them. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the present. Focus on simply gazing into your partner’s eyes. Let everything else pass away.”

  As he let his voice trail off I felt immensely uncomfortable. And apparently I wasn’t alone;; the room was atwitter with anxious chuckles.

  “Shh,” Dr. Kaufman whispered gently. “Focus on your partner’s eyes.” I could feel my body tensing, my shoulders rising toward my ears and hunching forward. This was a feeling I knew well. It transported me back to high school. I was a freshman sitting in morning chapel
. I felt intensely self-conscious, as if everyone in the room were staring at me. My nerves made my stomach growl, and I developed a twitch. I could feel it coming on but was powerless to stop it.

  It had gotten better as I settled into high school life, but now sitting opposite my unknown classmate, it was back. I blinked to try to fight it off. My body felt jittery. I couldn’t hold it back any longer. My head jerked awkwardly to the right. I bit my lip and returned my gaze to my partner’s eyes.

  “Focus,” I told myself, echoing Dr. Kaufman’s instructions. “Gently bring your attention back to the present.” My classmate had striking eyes, a hypnotizing shade of crisp green. I focused on them and forced myself to breathe. Something about her eyes was soothing. I lost myself in them and, as I did, I had the sensation of everything else in the room literally floating off into the distance. We were engulfed in silence. I didn’t even discern her face. The only thing I saw was the beautiful pair of green eyes gazing back at me. Somehow I felt wholly at ease.

  Ever so gently, Dr. Kaufman’s voice broke our trance. Time was up. We could look away. I felt energized and slightly disoriented. Having lost all sense of time during the experience, it was shocking to learn that five minutes had elapsed. I would have guessed it had been only thirty seconds, a minute at the most. Had I really maintained eye contact with someone for a full five minutes? It was unthinkable. It was baffling. It was exhilarating!

  Our assignment for the next week was to practice our newly honed eye contact skills. Suddenly the thought of looking someone in the eye for a fraction of a second as we passed on the sidewalk didn’t seem so intimidating. And it proved not to be.

  That one experiment made a significant difference in my shyness. Being forced to face my fear, to literally stare it down, freed me from its power. Now, whenever I feel that old insecurity rising back to the surface, I am no longer stuck in the awkwardness of the early days of high school. Instead, I am reminded of the five minutes I shared with a beautiful green-eyed stranger—the five minutes that taught me it is okay to be seen.

  A human being can “alter his life by altering his attitude.” That is a lesson Dr. Kaufman taught me well. Yet I was still so introverted when I was in his class that I never once spoke to him. I never told him how much I appreciated his instruction or how invaluable I found his lessons to be. He changed my life and we never really met.

  We aren’t always aware of the ways we touch others. An act of silliness, a smile shared in passing, an unexpected compliment, a life lesson passed on to a nameless face—these seemingly insignificant events were life altering for me.

  CHAPTER 29

  The men with whom I have had relationships needed to grapple with my past, and their methods for doing so have varied widely. In my late twenties, I was introduced to a man by some mutual friends who joined us on our first date. We went bowling and then had a leisurely dinner. Conversation moved with ease, and when our meal ended he invited me to go for a walk along the water. As we strolled we made the usual first-date small talk—family, siblings, work, education and so on.

  I can usually tell when someone knows about my past. They’re a little nervous and uneasy, wanting to know more yet not knowing how to ask. But this time I got none of those signals. So when he casually asked if there was anything he should know about me, I smiled, looked him in the eye and said, “Nope, I’m just your typical girl next door.”

  On Monday morning the friend who arranged the date came to my office. “So, how’d it go?” she asked. “You seemed to really hit it off.”

  I told her about our walk along the shore and our conversation. “It’s nice to meet someone who doesn’t know about my past for a change,” I said, which sent her into a roar of laughter.

  “He didn’t tell you?” she questioned. “When he found out who you were, he went straight to the bookstore, bought the book, and stayed up all night reading. He hadn’t slept in two days. I don’t know how he managed to stay awake through dinner, let alone a walk on the beach.”

  I felt like a fool. Here I’d fed this guy a line, and he’d graciously played along.

  After our second date, I told him that for the next two weeks, I would be extremely busy. I was working a lot of hours and in the midst of a move. Mom would be coming to stay with me to help, and I would simply have no time left for a social life.

  I thought that was the last I would hear from him, but two weeks and a day later, my cell rang while I was at the hardware store buying caulk for my new bathtub and shades for my living-room windows. He wanted to take me to dinner.

  “No, sorry,” I told him. “I still don’t get to have a social life. This weekend the only thing on my agenda is unpacking and getting settled. Right now I’m at the store buying supplies. Tonight I caulk the tub and install blinds. That’s all the excitement I can handle at the moment.”

  “Then I’ll come help you,” he offered. “It’ll be easier with an extra pair of hands.”

  Being intensely independent, I immediately set him straight. “I don’t need help. I am perfectly capable of doing these things on my own. Mom didn’t have a man around the house to do this kind of stuff for her. She did it herself and she taught me while she was at it. When I was twelve, I changed a doorknob—”

  “Okay, okay, I get it. You don’t need my help. So I’ll just come and watch.”

  I couldn’t think of any more excuses, so I gave in. When he arrived I was standing in the bathtub spreading the caulk. I hopped out just long enough to answer the door. I was a mess, wearing grubby work clothes with white paste smeared all over my hands and arms. “Come on in,” I said, heading right back to the task at hand. “I’m almost done in the bathroom. You can keep me company while I finish.”

  That was exactly what he did. He leaned against the sink chatting while I finished repairing the seal around the tub. He never once told me that I wasn’t doing it right or that he could do it better.

  I let him help with the blinds. “Not because I can’t do it on my own,” I reminded him. “You’re here. I might as well put you to work.” He just laughed and opened the box. When the tasks were completed, we made our way to the couch.

  This time we did talk about my past—what I remembered about my time in Iran, what it was like to grow up with the fear of being kidnapped, how it felt for the world to have access to so many of the details of my youth. I told him about my dad’s documentary and the student who had stalked me on his behalf. And then I explained how it was that I had come to live in his town.

  After my dad’s documentary, creatively titled Without My Daughter, was released in 2002, things seemed to quiet down a bit. My roommates and I graduated. Trish married Scott, and Brian moved to the west side of the state. I rented a small apartment and lived alone for the first time. I was twenty-five and had a job at Carson City Hospital where my parents had met. I felt quite grown-up. But unsettling things continued to happen.

  One day I came home from work and discovered the toilet lid was down. Someone had been inside my apartment. At work everyone laughed it off, saying that I was just being paranoid, that spending my days on a locked inpatient psych unit was taking its toll on me. But a few days later, early on a Saturday morning, I woke to the sound of my front door slamming. Apparently the intruder had returned and, startled to find me home, had bolted.

  I told myself it hadn’t really happened, that I had dreamt it. Mom came over later that morning and we went to a graduation ceremony. We were gone for a little over two hours. When we returned, Mom went into the bathroom and came back out to ask me if I had been cleaning the toilet before we left.

  “No, why?” I walked into the bathroom. This time the toilet seat was up.

  I packed a bag and went to stay with Mom, whose house was more secure. But even though I felt safer there, I was furious. I felt as if I were setting a precedent; that if I ran I’d spend the rest of my life running. I was determined to fight back, to catch whoever was doing this. I was certain my dad was involved, tho
ugh I didn’t think he was the one breaking in. My guess was that he had someone doing his bidding.

  For six months I left the apartment set up as if I still lived there. I tried everything I could think of to catch the person in the act. I worked with the police and private investigators. I even set up motion-activated surveillance cameras. Whoever was breaking in was keeping a close eye on me. He saw through my every move. I installed sensors in the garden so that a camera hidden inside the apartment would start recording anytime someone passed by. He must have gone in, hit rewind, and rerecorded over the section of the tape that showed him entering. Then he left the TV on so I’d know that trying to catch him was a waste of time.

  Twice I must have been close, though. The first time, you could see he’d been in a hurry to leave; there was a clear path of destruction from the TV to the door. In his haste to escape he had bumped into both the coffee table and the dining table and knocked over a plant. The second time he must have been too rushed to erase his image from the tape, so he took it with him when he left.

  I don’t know what it was with him and the bathroom, but there was definitely some sort of fixation. He kept leaving the toilet seat and lid in different positions. Once he defecated in the toilet and didn’t bother to flush. He wanted me to know he’d been there.

  This was a horrible time in my life. With every break-in I felt more frustrated and more vulnerable. To fight that feeling I took shooting lessons, but I stopped short of getting a gun. I didn’t want to live like that. I am a strong proponent of the right to bear arms, but I personally am not comfortable around guns. I didn’t want to carry a weapon, although I found it empowering to shoot one.

  After six months the police called to say they were closing the case. I hung up, called Mom, and asked her to help me move out of the apartment. The next morning we threw everything I owned into boxes as movers loaded them into a truck. Just like that I had walked away from my life.

  I was absolutely miserable. I was an intensely independent twenty-five-year-old who was living back home with Mommy. I appreciated having a place to go, but I hated being there. I wanted my own life.