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

by Mahtob Mahmoody, Kristin James (Narrator), Thomas Nelson (publisher)

Two decades ago, millions of readers worldwide thrilled to the story told in the international bestseller Not Without My Daughter—subsequently made into a film starring Sally Field—that told of an American mother and her six-year-old child’s daring escape from an abusive and tyrannical Iranian husband and father. Now the daughter returns to tell the whole story, not only of that imprisonment and escape but of life after fleeing living in fear of re-abduction, enduring recurring nightmares and panic attacks, attending school under a false name, battling life-threatening illness—all under the menacing shadow of her father.

This is the story of an extraordinary young woman’s triumph over life-crushing trauma to build a life of peace and forgiveness. Taking readers from Michigan to Iran and from Ankara, Turkey, to Paris, France, My Name Is Mahtob depicts the profound resilience of a wounded soul healed by faith in God’s goodness and in his care and love. And Mahmoody reveals the secret of how she liberated herself from a life of fear, learning to forgive the father who had shattered her life and discovering joy and peace that comes from doing so.

Audible Audio

Published December 1, 2015

About the author

Mahtob Mahmoody is the daughter of American author Betty Mahmoody. Her father was an Iranian-born, American-educated doctor, Dr. Sayed Mahmoody. In 1987, her mother published Not Without My Daughter in which she describes how she and then four-year-old Mahtob had been kidnapped from the United States in 1984 and imprisoned in Tehran by her Iranian husband. The book sold 12 million copies and inspired the 1991 Hollywood film of the same name.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Michigan State University, Mahtob Mahmoody works in the field of mental health and is an advocate for public awareness of health and welfare initiatives. She is represented by AEI Speakers Bureau and lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Reviews

[Helynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of us who saw the 1991 film Not Without My Daughter, based on the book of that name, sighed with relief when abused wife Betty Moody, played by Sally Field, stepped up to the American Embassy in Ankara with her daughter in her arms and said, “We’re home, Baby. We’re home.” We assumed that was their happy ending when they escaped from Iran back to America in 1984. But was it really the end of the trauma they had just endured?

Betty and daughter Mahtob, who was about six years old at the time, had spent a harrowing 18 months in Iran where their husband and father, Moody, had turned from a benevolent immigrant physician in the United States to an orthodox Muslim patriarch and vicious brute as soon as he took his family back to his native land. (He lied, saying they would stay there only two weeks, then announced the move was permanent and underwent his horrifying personality change).

In this 2015 memoir, the grown-up (and very beautiful) Mahtob shares her side of the recollections of Iran, the carefully planned escape through the rough mountains of Iran into Turkey, and the aftermath of her and her mother’s lives back in their native Michigan. They were welcomed back by family members and friends, and tried to lead a normal life, but the threat that Moody would somehow find and abduct them persisted. Mahtob had nightmares about a scary fox , a terrifying vision of her father that reminded her of the first time she had to witness her “dear daddy Baba John” hitting her mother. “That was the day my daddy turned into a monster” (10).

Mahtob went to a private Lutheran school under an assumed name, but the fear was never far away. “Whenever the phone rang in those day following the escape. I saw the panic in the eyes of my aunts and uncles , my grandparents, and my mom. No one had to explain the fear to me. I felt it, oo. A knock on the door or a car turning in to the driveway, expected or not, had the same momentarily paralyzing effect” (61).

Betty wrote her best-selling book about her experience, and the film was made. She also became a worldwide leader of movements to find kidnapped and endangered children. (In 1993, Betty lobbied for a bill to forbid international parent-child abduction. It was signed into law by President Clinton [182]).

Betty’s high profile encouraged Moody to make a film about his own perception of his wife and daughter’s escape, and to take more aggressive measures to get in touch with Mahtob. She excelled in school, graduated from college, and began a career, but suffered from debilitating lupus (which finally went into complete remission). As a young adult, she was menaced for months by a skillful intruder who—at her father’s behest—was able to bypass all her security equipment, enter her apartment many times, and rearrange her things. (She was never physically accosted, but was certainly frightened and creeped out).

Five years before Moody died in 2009, Mahtob was able to read some letters her father had written to a family friend that described their life together in Iran as privileged and comfortable, and proved Moody was in denial about his own cruelty toward his wife and daughter. “I’ve read his words over and over hoping to see that sorrow and I don’t think it is there to be found. He was sorry that he didn’t get what he wanted. He wasn’t sorry for his actions. He wasn’t sorry for the pain he caused Mom and me. He wasn’t sorry that we lived in fear because of him. He wasn’t sorry for his physical and emotional brutality. He was only sorry that Mom and I got away and that we told the world what he did” (296).

Betty showed admirable constraint and forgiveness in that she never spoke ill of her ex-husband to Mahtob and made sure her daughter retained some awareness and love of her father’s culture and cuisine. (Mahtob eventually began lining her eyes in the Persian fashion and eating pomegranates in the unusual Iranian manner) (259).

[Viviana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Children are seldom heard and this book is exactly that, the voice of a now woman who shares her own voice throughout her childhood and youth. Bravo to Mahtob for healing herself and being the brave woman she is. And thank you Mahtob for sharing your side of the story and beyond.

[Lynette · Rating 4 out of 5]

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