Not Without My Daughter

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Although Alfred Molina plays the role of Betty’s abusive Iranian husband well in the film, reading this book really made me realize just how far gone her husband was in real life. On my second reading I couldn’t help wondering how damaging a book like this is/was to Iranian society. When the movie, “Not Without My Daughter” came out back in 1991, I remember hearing that many of my fellow countrymen boycotted it. I’m not trying to minimize their struggles, just saying that hers was quite unique and had its challenges also. I think this was my first introduction to the middle east and what it was like to be a woman in their culture.

Her book, Not Without My Daughter, is an account of her experiences in 1984–86, when she left Alpena, Michigan to go to Iran with her husband and daughter for what she was promised would be a short visit. Moody's attitude toward Betty also changed: He forced her to abide by increasingly strict Iranian customs; he lied to her; he claimed that she was lying whenever she complained; he ignored her and their daughter for days at a time; he even blinded himself to the oppression of women in Iran. Sie hatte aber Recht: es ist wirklich ein sehr gutes Buch mit einer bewegenden (wahren) Geschichte und es konnte mich sehr berühren. After years of marriage and a beautiful child together, Betty agrees to travel with her husband to Iran to visit his family. Little by little Betty's account shows how one woman's struggle is a nightmare for thousands of such women, kept captive in their husband's native land without any rights whatsoever.Not because it is great literature, or because it is an intelligent, thought-provoking book about a culture few Americans take the time to learn about, but because William Hoffer is capable of writing a light, fast-paced, adventurous story. There was not a single thing in the book that I could point my finger at and say: this can’t be true. In August 1984, Michigan housewife Betty Mahmoody accompanied her husband to his native Iran for a two-week vacation.

How she finally escapes, and the sympathetic friends she meets along the way will make your heart soar. They were to travel through Turkey; the smugglers would take them from Tehran to Tabriz and then to Van. When they had landed in Tehran, Moody's family had gathered at the airport to meet them and showered them with gifts. The family was a crazy one to say the least: extreme, fanatical, superstitious, and never mind disgusting with their hygiene (but let’s not go there!A movie version starring Sally Field and Alfred Molina was in theaters in January 1991 and is fantastic but pales in comparison to its thrilling, emotional source material. At the same time, Mom was working really tired hard to help me let go of the hatred that had taken hold of me and help me to love my dad again and remember that he had loved me. Why would anybody fabricate (or, in the case of Not Without My Daughter, embellish) such horror stories? Not Without My Daughter is an account of her experiences in 1984-1986, when she left Michigan, to go to Iran with her husband and daughter for what she was promised would be a short visit.