Not Without My Daughter Book «Verified»

Betty laughed, a nervous, hollow sound. “Don’t be ridiculous, Moody. The flight is tomorrow.”

It had all started with a promise. Her husband, Moody, a handsome, charismatic Iranian-born doctor, had looked into her eyes in their suburban Michigan home and whispered, “A short vacation, Betty. Just to show the children their heritage. Two weeks. I swear on my life.”

They met Ali, the smuggler, in a dusty garage on the outskirts of Tabriz. He was a small, wiry man with a scarred face and the eyes of a predator. He looked at Betty and Mahtob and shook his head. “A woman and a child? The mountains will eat you.” not without my daughter book

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.” Betty laughed, a nervous, hollow sound

“We have money,” Betty said, pulling out the last of her hidden stash—nearly all of Mrs. Hakimi’s savings, plus what she had managed to pilfer from Moody’s wallet over the months.

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. I swear on my life

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.

Betty wrote the name on a scrap of paper: Ali. She hid it in the hem of Mahtob’s coat.

Moody’s personality disintegrated like a sandcastle in a tide. The charming husband was replaced by a stranger who quoted the Koran at her, who accused her of being a spy, who locked her in the bathroom for hours when she cried. One night, he dragged her by the hair across the living room floor in front of Mahtob. The little girl screamed, “Daddy, no!” But Moody’s eyes were vacant, possessed by a zeal that was part culture, part madness, and all cruelty.

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.”