Daughter Book: Not Without My
The night of the escape arrived in the gray hour before dawn. Moody was on a forty-eight-hour shift at the hospital. His mother was visiting relatives in Qom. The apartment was silent except for the hum of the heater. Betty’s hands shook as she packed a single bag: two changes of clothes, Mahtob’s asthma medicine, the hidden money, and a small photo of her parents in Michigan.
The guard’s eyes narrowed. But Betty had prepared for this. She launched into a stream of practiced Farsi: “My daughter is ill. We go to the doctor in the north. Please, God bless you, let us pass.”
Outside the terminal, the winter sun was pale but warm. The air smelled of coffee and jet fuel and ordinary, glorious freedom. Betty took a deep breath, the first full breath she had taken since tearing up those airline tickets. She held her daughter’s hand, and they walked out into a new world—a world without guards, without walls, without the shadow of a man who had once promised to love her. not without my daughter book
Mahtob, wise beyond her years, nodded. She had stopped calling Moody “Daddy.” She called him “that man.”
It was the longest night of Betty’s life. The smuggler moved like a ghost. Betty held Mahtob’s hand, half-carrying, half-dragging her through the snow. The child’s lips turned blue. Her breathing became labored—the asthma. Betty stopped, dug out the inhaler from the coat lining, and gave her two puffs. “You can do this,” she whispered. “We are almost there.” The night of the escape arrived in the gray hour before dawn
Ali pointed to a faint light in the distance. “That is a village. Go there. Tell them you are American. You will be safe now.” He turned and disappeared back into the darkness, back toward Iran. He had done his job.
The snow on the Alborz Mountains looked deceptively peaceful, like a postcard slipped under the door of a nightmare. Betty Mahmoody stared at it from the frost-veined window of her mother-in-law’s apartment in Tehran, a city that had become her gilded cage. Just three weeks ago, that snow had been a novelty. Now, it was a wall. The apartment was silent except for the hum of the heater
Ali cut the wire with a small clipper. He pushed Betty through first. The wire snagged her coat, tearing it. Then Mahtob. Then he slipped through himself. They tumbled down a shallow ravine. The dogs were closer now, howling.
But on the tenth day, the cracks appeared. Moody returned from visiting a cousin with a dark look. He tore up their return tickets at the breakfast table. “We are not going back,” he said, not looking at her.
The guard hesitated, then waved them through. Betty’s blouse was soaked with sweat.
“We made it, sweetheart,” Betty whispered, tears streaming down her face. “Not without my daughter. Never without my daughter.”
