After that, life really became difficult. Warplanes came more days than not, and our lives were ordered by the sirens. No matter what we were doing, when the alarm sounded, we took cover. Most bombings happened at night, prompting citywide blackouts that made it harder for the pilots to hit their marks. In silence, my family would tiptoe into the blackened corridor, inching our way downstairs to the first floor. There we would sit on the cold floor of the main hallway, shoulder to shoulder with our neighbors, waiting to see if we would be hit.
Much as children count seconds between lightning and thunder to gauge a storm’s distance, we counted. I’m not quite sure what we counted. Maybe we started with the flash and stopped when we heard the explosion. Perhaps the count began when the bomb was released and ended with detonation. At any rate, we counted. Sometimes a barely audible count would quietly crescendo through the darkness. Close strikes gave us hope that the next blast would be beyond us.
Those were excruciating, anxiety-provoking waits. Sirens shrieked their warning long before the planes could be heard. The longer we waited, the more frightened I became. And whenever I was frightened, I had to go to the bathroom.
“I have to go potty,” I whispered to Mom.
“Can you hold it?”
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I have to go right now.”
“Moody,” Mom said softly to my dad, “Mahtob has to go to the bathroom.”
Her words sent him into a fit of rage. He insisted that I did not have to use the bathroom. I tried to wait, but the added fear of his ire made my need even greater.
“Mommy,” I cried, “I have to go potty. I can’t wait.”
“Moody,” Mom pleaded, “Please. Let me take her.” Begrudgingly he handed over his penlight, the kind doctors use to examine patients. Mom lifted me silently into her arms and carried me up to our apartment. There we had a modern bathroom that smelled of soap. In the dark I went as quickly as I could, being careful to fight the reflex to flush when I was done. We couldn’t risk making that much noise. Then we rushed right back to our spots along the wall with our neighbors and my fuming father.
My parents and I started sleeping in a makeshift bed beneath the dining-room table. They draped layers of blankets over the sides in an attempt to create a protective barrier between us and the shards of glass that they feared would pierce our bodies in the night if an unexpected explosion struck nearby. It was from that bunker beneath the table that I witnessed one of my father’s many horrendous attacks.
That afternoon, without warning, my dad turned and grabbed my mom by the hair. He dragged her to the wall that separated the living room from the bedroom that was no longer safe enough for us to use. Other family members were visiting that day, but they did nothing to stop him.
Mom fell to the floor, begging my dad to stop. Screaming at her, he took clumps of her hair in both hands and brutally bashed her head against the wall. Pleading with him, she clutched at his fists with her hands, trying to pry his fingers from her hair. He just kept smashing her head against the wall, over and over again. I crouched on my knees beneath the edge of the dining room table, reaching out to Mom. Tears streaming down my face, I beseeched the family members to help her.
They stood scattered about the living room watching, completely unaffected by my father’s savageness. They said nothing. They did nothing. They just stood there.
“Stop it, Daddy! Stop it,” I shrieked. He continued lambasting her. He kicked her as he slammed her head against the wall. Sobbing, I scrambled to my feet and charged at him with all my might. “Stop it, Daddy! You’re hurting her!” Undeterred, he swatted me away. I charged at him again, trying to wedge my body between him and my bloodied mom. He hit me. I didn’t care. I just wanted him to stop hurting her.
One of the women in the room came and pulled me away from him. She cradled me in her arms on the floor until my father, running out of steam, bashed my mom’s head into the wall one last time and pulled his fists from her hair. Mom lay sobbing and gasping for air on the carpet, partially propped against the wall. I wriggled free and ran to her. She enveloped me in her embrace and together we wept.
That was how I learned what a goose egg is.
One afternoon I was out on our balcony, splashing in a kiddie pool, when the sirens sounded their alarm. Mom immediately came running with a towel. “Just a few more minutes,” I protested. “There’s still lots of time before the planes come.” That may have been true, but she snatched me from the pool nevertheless, and my parents and I took our standard places in the hallway with our neighbors. I had become so accustomed to the routine bombings that I had become somewhat desensitized to the urgency of their dangers.
Stepping outside after the planes had flown was enough to jolt anyone back to reality. After one particularly close nighttime attack, we went out to inspect the damage. There were people wailing and screaming. Flames shot from toppled buildings. Vehicles were upturned. People ran in all directions. We breathed thick clouds of dust tinged with gunpowder and the acrid smell of burning electrical wires. I imagine hell looks an awful lot like what we saw that night.
At one point I saw grown-ups pointing toward the branches of a tree in disgust. Mom was carrying me. As her eyes came into focus and she recognized what it was she was seeing, she too gasped and quickly turned me away, pressing my face against her shoulder. Only later would I stitch together enough snippets of conversations whispered between wary adults to learn that dismembered body parts were hanging from the tree.
The other thing I didn’t immediately understand as a child was that the characteristic stench of a bombing’s aftermath wasn’t only composed of fire and rubble and gunpowder. Intermingled with all those components was the smell of burning human flesh. Life in a warzone was cruel, wretched, sickening, terrifying, and chillingly inhumane—not unlike my father’s increasingly ferocious outbursts.
Even in the States my father had felt that people were out to get him and that the government was watching him. As our months as his captives passed, his paranoia mounted. He watched our every move, eyeing us with more and more suspicion.
The bathroom became our refuge—the place where we whispered our prayers in English, beseeching God to deliver us from my father’s hands and return us safely to the family we sorely missed back home in Michigan. Even in the bathroom, we weren’t free of my father’s surveillance. There were two entrances—one from the living room and one from the bedroom. The latter held a window where he would stand silently, observing to be sure we weren’t up to anything.
My dad wouldn’t allow us to communicate with our family in America. At the beginning of our captivity he had called them, saying the Iranian government wouldn’t let us leave the country. That was a lie, but how were they to know? Later he forced Mom to send letters and pictures that made it seem like we were happy living in Iran. Our loved ones sent us letters and care packages, but I suspect only a small fraction of these made it past my father.
Given the circumstances, items that at other times might have seemed insignificant took on treasured memento status. My former babysitter Patty sent her university ID badge with her picture on it. It was so special to me because she had held the little laminated card in her hands, just as I held it in mine. Someone else sent a toothpaste-like tube of gooey pink bubble gum. Instinctively I rationed it. Holding the closed tube in my hands, I would swish the sticky substance back and forth, feeling it ooze between my fingers inside its plastic container. When I could resist no longer, I would gingerly twist off the cap to smell the pink goo that reminded me of home.
One afternoon I walked with my parents to the market, my treasured tube of bubble gum in hand. It was an affluent neighborhood. The sidewalks were wide and lined with grand houses that boasted manicured lawns, gardens, and mature trees. My parents walked side by side in front of me, making small talk—one of those moments between fits of rage when I could still catch a glimmer of my daddy as he had been before he turned into a monster.
I dawdled a step behind and, without thinking, reached into my pocket to give my bubble gum a squeeze. It was gone!
Panic-stricken, I stopped and looked all around. There was no sign of my treasured gift from home. It must have fallen from my pocket. Stinging tears welled in my eyes, and I fought to keep them from falling. The distance was growing between my parents and me. I wanted to run back and retrace my steps but knew I couldn’t. Taking one long last look down the path, I quickened my pace and once more fell into step behind them.
Dread swelled within me. If my dad found out I had lost the tube, he would lose his temper for sure. His recurrent belligerent tirades were always on my mind. At best he would scream at me. More likely he would scream at Mom, and when he screamed at Mom, things snowballed far beyond a verbal tantrum. I considered whispering my tragic news to Mom when my dad wasn’t looking, but I didn’t want to burden her with my sadness. She was so sad already. So I trudged on with my head hanging, tears threatening to flow. I longed to go home, and I hated my dad.
Returning from the market, I kept a hypervigilant watch for my missing trinket hoping it waited to be recovered somewhere along our path. Block after block I scanned the sidewalk, the grass, the bushes. With each step my heart grew heavier. I had all but given up when out of the corner of my eye, in the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street, I glimpsed something at the base of an old tree. Lagging behind, I scampered over for a closer look. There, to my great joy, was my tube of bubble gum—my treasured connection to home.
CHAPTER 6
For me five was an age filled with fear—fear of my father and his violent temper, fear of being separated from Mom, fear of the bombs that were sure to fall, and fear of never again seeing my loved ones back home. Months came and went; Mom and I remained trapped. We clung desperately to life’s little moments of joy—a package from Annie with a letter, a Raggedy Ann doll, and a red dress; a box from Aunt Carolyn bearing a packet of red Jell-O and a Crystal Gayle cassette tape; my favorite view of the city at night from high atop the winding mountain road. Sadly, their solace was elusive and fleeting.
Compounding the fear already consuming my life, late one afternoon my dad made a chilling announcement: the next morning I would be starting school. I clung to Mom, crying. I didn’t want to go to school. I didn’t want to be away from her. What if there were a bombing and we couldn’t find each other? What if my dad killed her while I was away?
Mom protested on my behalf, “We can’t send her to school. Moody, let’s talk about this. She’s not ready. Can’t you see she’s frightened?”
He was staunchly resolute. I was starting school, and that’s all there was to it. Life in Iran in the mid-1980s was bleak. There must have been some color somewhere, but when I think back, what I see is gray. The streets, the concrete high-rises, the sky itself—all are etched in my memory in grim, polluted shades of bleakness. Outside the home, people wore clothing in solid shades of black, dark blue, brown, or gray. The gutters were malodorous and lined with urine-soaked filth. The air, perpetually heavy with the dust of exploded bombs, covered the city in smog. Even the water cisterns that dotted the sidewalks were made of drab, weathered tin. Mom and I never drank from the small metal ladles that hung from chains, to be shared by all who passed. She carried a portable plastic cup that collapsed into a case.
My new school was not immune from the unremitting bleakness. It looked more like a military compound than a nurturing environment intended to foster creativity and learning. Our identities were stripped from us, as were our rights to speak or even think freely. Classes were segregated by gender, and each student wore a government-sanctioned uniform. For girls, that meant a montoe, a shapeless coat that reached to the knees, and a macknay, a loose-fitting, billowy head covering long enough to conceal our shoulders. Beneath the montoe we wore pants made of the same drab fabric as the rest of our garb. The color of the uniforms at my school, not surprisingly, was gray.
The government of Iran was engaged in an all-out campaign to indoctrinate its citizens. Every country does this to some extent, but Iran’s brand of brainwashing was particularly effective. Thinking of the generation of young Iranians who marched alongside me in the gray courtyards of our gray schools, I am reminded of Ronald Reagan’s words, “Information is the oxygen of the modern age. . . . It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire. It wafts across the electrified borders.” Did enough information reach my classmates before it was too late—before the government sterilized their minds and stole their souls?
I remember climbing down from the bus and staring at the school gate, desperately wanting to be anywhere else. The smell of diesel fuel mingled with the hot tar that was being mopped onto the street. A uniformed guard stationed at the gate ensured that each person entering the complex treated the American flag with proper contempt. In order to pass, I was required to either stomp or spit on its image, which was painted on the ground. Seeing my flag on the ground was insult enough, but to be mandated to physically defile the symbol of my heritage more than infuriated me. On the outside I may have been small and meek, but inside I seethed with hatred.
After showing disdain for the American flag, we were lined up in military fashion and forced to keep step as we chanted the familiar cadence.
“Maag barg Amrika.”
“Louder!”
“Maag barg Amrika!”
“Louder!”
“Maag barg Amrika!” I screamed the words with such force my throat burned. My screams mingled in unison with those of the other students echoing off the cheerless walls that confined us, infusing us with the government’s bigotry.
“Maag Barg Amrika.” Death to America. The words grieved me. Day after torturous day, I called down curses on the land I loved.
Finally reaching my limit, I made an announcement to Mom one day as she fixed me an after-school snack. “Tomorrow,” I declared brazenly, “I’m going to shout, ‘Death to Khomeini!’”
“No, you will not,” she said, firmly. “You can say anything you want to me when no one else can hear, but don’t you dare say those things in the presence of others. It would be very dangerous. Do you understand? If your teachers heard you say that, the government would take you away, or they would take your daddy and me away. Promise me you’ll say exactly what they tell you to say.”
I heeded her warning, knowing she was right. Violence was such a prevalent part of life under Khomeini that not even the youngest children were shielded from it. Khomeini used children as his moles. How better to infiltrate the home? They were the eyes and ears of the government, used to gather intelligence. Teachers asked, “What does your mommy read? What does your daddy listen to on the radio? Do your parents drink alcohol? Is music played in your home? Does your mommy cover inside the house?” Any wrong answer was grounds for government action.
People disappeared on a regular basis. The government was fond of using such disobedient traitors as examples to strike fear in the hearts of its citizens. Sometimes these alleged “criminals” were tortured for months or years before being released to tell the tales of their captivity. Others spoke by their blood. Public executions were commonplace.
I have a memory of watching the scenery of the city pass before me from the backseat of a vehicle. We were driving past a military compound or a prison—I’m not sure which. Through the fence topped with barbed wire, far off in the distance, I saw a group of men standing beside one another. They were wearing blindfolds and their hands were bound behind their backs. Soldiers standing opposite them opened fire and, one by one, the men crumpled to the ground.
I wonder sometimes if that really happened. Maybe I saw it on TV, or maybe I saw it in a dream. It’s scary what the mind and body can become accustomed to. The sound of gunshots was as familiar to us as car horns honking in the city or birds singing in the country or waves crashing along the shore. Violence surrounded us on all sides, whether we were within the confines of our home or venturing down the streets of Tehran.
Even at age five, I understood what might happen to my family if I were defiant enough to speak my mind. So in my head I substituted the word Khomeini for Amrika. With my lips I protected my family, but in my heart I remained loyal to the land of the free—and my hatred grew.
In school, we stood at desks in groups of two or three. The teachers, harsh women in black chadors, paced before us wielding wooden sticks. They asked questions and supplied the answers in a chantlike fashion. Students responded by repeating the answers we had been given in unison, in the same singsong tone—same inflection, same speed, with the emphasis on the same syllables. We were told what to think, and nothing else was tolerated.
I had hours of homework. I was ordered to write pages of a single repeating letter. Each one had to be formed precisely as the teacher had illustrated. Even my dad thought the copious copying was excessive. He meticulously inspected my assignments each night, and my work wasn’t complete until he had given his approval.
He was a perfectionist in the most severe sense of the word, especially when it came to his native tongue. When Mom tried to speak with someone in Farsi, he would become incensed, screaming at her to shut up. She had an accent, and he would not tolerate such mediocrity. “If you can’t say it right, don’t say anything at all,” he would rant.
I had the advantage of being immersed in Farsi during a period when my brain was developing language, and the elongated guttural sounds rolled off my tongue with ease. Within weeks I had become fluent to an age-appropriate level. Reading and writing came with practice, and my teachers made sure I got plenty of that.
School was pure agony for me. Among the students, I was an outcast and that’s not surprising given that I was too timid to talk and often cried inconsolably—so much that Mom had to come to school with me. On top of that, they saw me as an American. As far as my social struggles went, however, being American was the least of my troubles.
My Name Is Mahtob: The Story That Began the Global Phenomenon Not Without My Daughter Continues Page 4
