My Name Is Mahtob

by Mahtob Mahmoody

  Also a wonderful discovery was the fact that hot chocolate was not the same everywhere in the world. In France it was not very sweet. It was rich and bitter like the centers of the pain au chocolat, so I added my own sugar. In Spain, it was slightly sweeter, but it was also thick, almost like cooked pudding before it sets.

  It was in Spain that I came to love gazpacho, although my first experience eating it wasn’t entirely pleasant. There was a large group that evening for dinner—people from the publishing company, I suppose, and perhaps some representatives of the media. As was the custom at such meals, Mom and I weren’t seated near each other. The meal began with bowls of chilled tomato soup placed before each guest. I watched the others at the table for the cue to begin eating. No one reached for their spoons, so I waited. Before I knew it, there was a waiter at my side offering me some diced cucumbers for my soup. Liking cucumbers and wanting to oblige the custom, I nodded. When he had dished a spoonful into my bowl, I thanked him, and he moved to the next guest. Then I was presented with a bowl of onions, which was followed by tomatoes and peppers and I don’t recall what else. Thinking it the polite thing to do, I graciously accepted each offering.

  One of the guests seated across from me watched in amazement as my bowl heaped with toppings. Leaning to the man at his side, he chuckled, nodding in my direction and whispering something under his breath. Instantly I understood it wasn’t customary to accept each topping. I was mortified. The deep sense of embarrassment I felt was almost more than I could hide. I wanted to cry. I wanted to melt into my chair and pool into a puddle beneath the table. I felt fat, self-conscious, and awkward. I couldn’t raise my eyes to meet any of their stares.

  In retrospect, I’m sure they weren’t staring at me, but at the time I felt every eye in the restaurant boring into me disapprovingly. In my Middle Eastern culture, where food is offered in excess as a symbol of abundant hospitality, it would have been rude for me to turn down the offerings. It could have been seen as an insult to our hosts. Acutely aware of my gaffe, I had lost my appetite, something I find most regrettable now. The soup was scrumptious. Why should I have let my humiliation rob me of enjoying it?

  During our travels, our hectic schedules rarely allowed for sightseeing, which was fine with me. What I found most alluring about a nation was its food and its people. My fondest memories of our journeys are of hours spent sharing meals with the strangers who welcomed us into their lives for a day or two or a lifetime.

  Whether abroad or at home, people went out of their way to shower us with kindness. Thousands of letters from people who had read the book offered support and encouragement. Children sent me their pictures and invited me to be their pen pal. Many said they would name their daughters Mahtob. The letters that touched me the most were those from other children like me who lived with the constant fear of being kidnapped by a parent. Each served as a reminder of the vital importance of raising awareness of international parental child abduction. And so we continued granting interviews.

  While Mom was exceedingly vocal in her quest to raise awareness, my bashfulness rendered me virtually silent, much to the frustration of media legends such as Larry King, Maria Shriver, and Barbara Walters.

  When Mom was scheduled for a second interview with Barbara Walters—this time on Good Morning America—I watched from the periphery. Ms. Walters greeted Mom on the set amidst a flurry of activity. A makeup artist ran over to touch up their powder, and the audio guy wired Mom with a mic. The two women chatted familiarly despite the commotion, as if they were the only two in the room. “So, how’s Mahtob?” Ms. Walters inquired.

  “She’s fine,” Mom said pointing to me. “She’s right over there.”

  “Oh, my goodness.” Barbara Walters beamed, waving for me to draw near. “Bring her over.”

  It was seconds before they were to go on air, and the crew went into a tizzy. There was no chair for me. I hadn’t been through hair and makeup. I wasn’t wearing a mic. The prepared questions didn’t include me.

  Our host would hear none of it. Giving me a hug, she motioned for me to sit beside her. Wrapping her arm around me, she shooed everyone off as we were counted in.

  The segment opened with Barbara Walters smiling warmly into the camera. “Welcome back. I’m here with my good friend, Mahtob. We go way back . . .” She was in complete control of the interview. Having not yet recovered from the fright of causing the staff such grief, I’m not sure I said a word on camera. I may be the only person ever to be interviewed twice by Barbara Walters and not answer a single question.

  CHAPTER 16

  I don’t regret that Mom went public with our story. The book’s success provided us with many unique opportunities while also providing an unforeseen level of security. Wherever we went people recognized our names and expressed their support, which meant that even strangers played a role in my protection. Several times customs officials acknowledged that they knew who we were. One even told us not to worry, because she would recognize my dad just as easily as she had recognized us.

  Not only did Mom’s candor shine the spotlight on us, it also brought to light broader issues that were going unaddressed. Before we went to Iran, instinctively fearing my dad would do what he did, Mom had sought legal advice from friends who were attorneys. They had told her the truth—that no judge would believe her and that if she left my father, no judge would order his visits with me to be supervised. Even then, international parental child abduction was a scourge on society, but no one talked about it, and our legal system was not equipped to deal with it.

  The situation hadn’t changed after we escaped. Having recognized that she couldn’t safely petition the courts for divorce under the current laws, Mom began talking about the issue, making use of every opportunity to get the information in front of anyone who would listen. Increasingly, others approached her for help, and she quickly recognized that this form of abuse was much more pervasive than even she had imagined. Both men and women kidnapped their children to and from every country in the world, and yet, until we experienced it firsthand, she had never heard of another such incident. How could the entire world turn a blind eye and leave these families to suffer in silence?

  Informally at first, Mom began working with some of the left-behind parents who came to her begging for guidance. Soon she was involved with hundreds of cases, and those hundreds quickly swelled to more than a thousand. Feeling it her duty to take action, she cofounded an organization called One World: For Children and hired a staff to join in her calling.

  Mom had never been politically active, yet now she found herself at the forefront of a battle to protect the children of the world. Tackling international parental child abduction consumed her life and mine by association. It was empowering to live in the midst of such activism. I traveled with Mom to Washington, DC, to meet with members of congress and officials in the US State Department and the Department of Justice. In Michigan she was on a first-name basis with the staff of our state representative’s office.

  No obstacle seemed too daunting for my mom in her quest to give me a world where I could live without fear. If state and federal laws didn’t do their job of protecting me, then she would get the government to change the laws. She testified in court on behalf of other children who, like me, were in danger of being abducted by a parent and explained to judges that this threat was real. When parents called in the middle of the night crying because their hope was gone, she listened to their heartache, knowing she could easily be in their position.

  On Christmas Eve the year I was thirteen, we received a call from an area police department. A family of six was in extreme danger and needed a place to stay. Could we help them? Without hesitation, Mom welcomed them into our home. There were three sisters, one of whom had three young children. They had fled the family’s home in America because their father planned to sell the youngest sister, who was just sixteen, as a bride to a middle-aged man in Palestine, their native land.

  Being Muslim, this
family had never experienced a Christmas celebration before. The little children were in awe when they spotted the decorated tree with wrapped packages beneath it.

  “Is Santa coming for us too?” they asked.

  “Have you been good this year?” Mom inquired.

  Their eyes sparkled as they dared to hope. Jumping up and down they exclaimed, “Yes, we’ve been good! We’ve been very good!”

  “Well, then,” Mom said with a smile, “you must be on Santa’s list.”

  That evening, as was our tradition, Mom and I went to a Christmas Eve candlelight service. It was one of my favorite services of the year. Near the end of the service, we would each hold an unlit candle, and as we began to sing Silent Night in German, the pastor would light the ushers’ candles using the Christ Candle from the Advent wreath. The ushers would then make their way down the aisle, passing the flame from one person to the next, until the whole church sparkled in the glow of flickering candles. The church lights would dim, and together we’d sing of heavenly peace.

  The Palestinian family joined us that evening, and it was there that they heard for the first time about the Savior that was born to them and all people in a stable in Bethlehem. In fact, the greatest gift I received that year was given to me at that service—by the youngest member of the family. During the sermon, when the pastor explained that this baby whose birth we were celebrating would grow up to die for our sakes, the little girl was distraught. She had been standing quietly at the balcony railing, listening intently to the pastor’s every word. At the news of Jesus’ death, she turned to us in a panic. “Jesus died!” she cried. She might have been young, but she recognized the true meaning of Christmas.

  Church ended at midnight, officially Christmas day. We made our exit amid joyous rounds of yuletide greetings. Mom took us all home, figuratively tucked us all in, and then raced to the only twenty-four-hour store in town. She feverishly filled a cart with gifts for our new guests, then stayed up all night wrapping them. In our home, everyone was family, and everyone had presents to open on Christmas morning. When Joe and John arrived with their families, they were unfazed to find six more places set at the table.

  At times I felt frustrated by such disruptions in our family time. For years, family vacations consisted of my brothers, their families, and me. No Mom. She would have good intentions of going with us, but at the last minute there would be a break in a case, or some other emergency would demand her attention. If she did go along, she would spend the whole time on the phone or flipping through case files.

  I wanted her to get a “real job,” one where she could punch the clock and be done, one that would allow for uninterrupted family time. But I was torn because I understood the important nature of the work and took great comfort in the recovery of a child. Over the years, Mom helped to rescue seventy-eight children. Each success story served as a reminder that there was hope.

  The week Grandpa died, in August 1986, Mom had signed a movie contract. The book had yet to be penned and Mom had yet to find her calling as an advocate. But by way of Hollywood, God was already providing a means to bring the issue of international parental child abduction to a worldwide stage. Mom would help with the screenplay and work as a consultant for the project.

  Filming began in Israel in February 1990, and we arrived in March. I hadn’t been prepared for the shock of seeing armed guards posted at the airport in Tel Aviv. Not since our days in Iran had I come face-to-face with a machine-gun-toting soldier.

  It was sunny and warm, much balmier than in Michigan. Spring was at its peak as we rode from the airport to the movie set. The windows were down, and the fragrance of orange blossoms filled the air. We were told that a skyscraper-sized painting of the Ayatollah Khomeini, unveiled for filming, had caused a collective panic. The police had come to investigate, and a press conference had been required to ease the fears of the public. I was grateful for the advance warning but even so, the painting was an unsettling sight.

  It was in the shadow of Khomeini that Mom and I met the cast and crew. I was most excited to meet Sheila, the young actress who played me. Sally Field, who had been Mom’s first choice for the role of Betty, worked on elaborate embroidery projects between takes. Alfred Molina, who played my dad, was extremely social and approachable. Often he would sit and talk with us.

  I was on the set the day they filmed a scene of my parents fighting at school. The script called for Alfred to hit Sheila while screaming at her and Sally. Then he was to drag Sally out through the courtyard by her hair. They performed the scene as directed. When Alfred realized I was standing alongside the producers watching, he came over and apologized to me. “I’m not really hurting them. It’s all just acting. I’m only pretending to hit Sheila, and even though it looks like I’m pulling Sally by her hair, I’m not really. I promise you.”

  When they filmed the scene a second time, it was Alfred who was left in pain when Sally, arms and legs flailing, mistakenly kicked him in the groin. “See,” he said to me afterward, “I couldn’t hurt her if I tried. She’s the one who’s beating me.”

  Sally’s makeup artist, Lee, became my favorite person on the set. It became his personal quest to break me out of my shell, and his methods were not exactly conventional. One afternoon, during a lull in the action, Lee offered to give me a black eye—with makeup of course. So Mom and I followed him to his trailer, where he unleashed his artistic abilities. Not only did I end up with a black eye, but a gnarly scar to boot. A black eye from Lee was a true honor.

  The producers invited me to be an extra in the movie. So for the first time since Iran, I donned a montoe and macknay and became an Iranian schoolgirl. I sat at a desk in a classroom repeating sentences in Farsi with other pretend Iranian schoolgirls. I huddled in a bomb shelter among a crowd of students. I followed Sally and Sheila (“Betty” and “Mahtob”) off a bus and ran through the corridors of the school in the frenzy that followed an explosion. Mostly, though, I waited, because that’s life on a movie set.

  At night we joined the cast in a small room with a projector to watch the dailies—the footage that was filmed that day. I didn’t know it then, but with the exception of one small clip, that was the only time I would see myself on the big screen. I may have been the real daughter, but my scenes still ended up on the cutting room floor.

  Our time in Israel wasn’t all work. We toured Jericho and saw the Jordan River. We went to Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives, where we were swarmed by young children hawking olive branches. We visited one of the places that claimed to be the burial site of Jesus and saw the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. We even managed to visit Bethlehem, though we’d been told it was too dangerous, and spent a day floating in the Dead Sea.

  Our hotel overlooked the Mediterranean Sea. One afternoon Mom and I went for a walk along the white sand, and a strange thing happened. Within minutes my whole body hurt. Every inch of my skin felt like it was being stabbed by fiery hot needles—a penetrating, unscratchable itch mixed with violent, shooting pain. We didn’t stay out long, but by evening I had turned red as a lobster. Most of my skin was blistered, and I was in agony. It didn’t seem possible that I could be so badly burned so quickly. I had always been sensitive to the sun, but this was different.

  Before we left Israel, the movie’s still photographer invited us to her parents’ house for a Seder. Ever eager to experience a culture from the inside out, Mom and I accepted without hesitation. They shared the centuries-old Passover tradition with us amid the passing of dishes of bitter herbs and the reading of ancient texts—a fitting conclusion to our time in Israel.

  It was an unfortunate turn of events that the movie was released in January 1991, just as conflict in the Middle East was coming to a head. The film drew criticism from people who saw the timing and subject matter as a political statement. Death threats were issued against those involved with the production. Suddenly it wasn’t only my dad that posed a danger. We were caught in the crosshairs of the Iranian government and Musl
im extremists the world over.

  Although they were vocal, the fierce challengers were few. The vast majority of the feedback was encouraging and supportive. At one of the premiers, the audience reaction was so strong that Alfred had to be removed from the theater for his safety. I think it was a testament to his skill as an actor that the audience struggled to distinguish between him as a person and him as the monster on the screen.

  It was baffling to me that some people viewed our story as an anti-Iranian or anti-Muslim statement. That simply was not the case. The story is nothing more than an account of a piece of my family’s journey. If anyone reflects poorly on Iran and Islam, it is my dad for doing what he did, not Mom or me for talking about it. Even so, it’s unfair to judge Iranians or Muslims by my dad’s behavior.

  Although the timing of the release was in many ways problematic, it was actually a blessing in disguise. Because of the political climate, the US government was more ready to lend a listening ear. A congressional screening held in Washington, DC, helped bring the issue of international parental child abduction to the attention of our nation’s lawmakers.

  To help raise awareness further, Mom began work on her second book, For the Love of a Child. She and her coauthor, Arnold Dunchock—Arnie, as I knew him—did much of their research in Paris, so I spent part of one summer living there. By far my favorite spot was Montmartre, the artists’ district built atop a hill that overlooked the city. Painters congregated there, creating their works in the open air for all to see. I found them mesmerizing—their concentration, their attention to detail, the way they stood back to examine their work and then continued to add layer upon layer of thick paint to their canvases. Some did watercolors; others created charcoal sketches.