When west meets the east, there will be quite a few cultural differences that will come to the fore front. And, if this meeting happens in the worst possible situation, then the list of differences go a long way and in the most gruesome manner. Dear Readers, let me introduce you all to one such terrible meeting in the form of the book “Not without my daughter”, written by BETTY MAHMOODY.
“Not without my daughter” tells you the real experiences of Betty Mahmoody (author) in Iran during 1980s after the Iranian Revolution. It gives you the shocking ordeals that Betty goes through in Iran and her desperate attempts to get out of Iran with her daughter. Betty is an American woman who visits Iran along with her American-settled Iranian husband and their American-born daughter for a 2 week vacation to meet her in-laws. Betty goes through the cultural shock with patience for 2 weeks only to know that she has been duped by her husband who has made plans of settling down completely in Iran with his wife and daughter. What follows from here on is the desperate struggle of Betty to get out of Iran with her daughter even at the risk of getting killed by her husband and the Iranian Government.
While the book gives away the main idea of the story in its preface itself, what gets you hooked on to the book is the experiences that Betty goes through every day of her life. Over a period of time, the reader starts routing for Betty and sympathizes with her in all her attempts to succeed, her failure, her agony, the torture which she goes through, her re-attempts and her culture-shock. One reason for this could be that the reader would not be happy to know what the women are going through in Iran and how they are reduced to individuals without identities, if not for a man beside them. Though I feel that Betty has exaggerated some of her cultural shocks to the extent that you easily realize she is exaggerating, one still feels upset after reading what she has gone through in Iran. It also strikes a thought in the reader’s mind that if this is what just one woman has gone through, then how about the others? If foreigners are made to experience this disgusting face of life, then how about the Iranian women who have their life defined and restricted within the borders of Iran.
While Betty’s attempts to escape from Iran forms the back bone of this book, it also opens up a whole lot of information about
· The culture shock faced by an American ( woman specifically) in Iran
· Absurd and in-human Iranian Laws
· Anti-American movement in Iran
This book acts as an eye opener into the day-today life of common people in Iran, which is otherwise kept away from the rest of the world. It’s been over 20 years since this book was written and I hope that Iran has changed a lot from there onwards. Even though I like Iran on certain grounds, I would never support the Iranian laws that have been mentioned in this book. I do condemn them. On the other hand, I do not agree to all the outbursts of Betty against Iranian ways of life and Iranian policies (military / political). If one of the thousands of Iranians tortured in American prisons is made to write a book, then I am sure he/she might have an equally interesting tale to narrate, including the shocking American culture from the eyes of an Iranian.
This book has enough masala in it to be made into a movie and as expected it has been made into a Hollywood movie. With so much of masala in it, do you think Indian cinema would stay behind!!.. NeverJ. There are desi versions in Telugu (anthapuram) and Hindi as well (Shakti). But the desi versions are modified enough to make the hero as a nice guy, hero’s family as nice people and obviously an emotional change-of-heart for the villain at the end of the movie :-)
From the look of it, I feel that Betty is not a good writer. The strength in her content succeeds in diverting the reader’s attention away from her narrative flaws. In the middle of her thrilling experiences, she inserts some of her experiences which neither take the story forward, nor make a point in the narrative. Also, Betty’s intricate details of her cooking attempts make me wonder how she is able to remember such minute things of the kitchen amidst the day-today deathly experiences she had in Iran!!! It is also visible that she has taken help from professional writers after finishing her writing to arrange the book in an interesting format. There are flashbacks inserted at certain points which seemed to be forcibly added to make the narrative sound interesting.
Did Betty finally get out of Iran and reach America safely at the end? Well, if she is able to write a book which has so much against Iran and Iranians, then I am sure she did that after entering USA :-) . I suggest you all to read this book without fail. It not only gives you an insight into the life of a country which is shielded from the glare of the International media, but it highlights how important is freedom for an individual and to what extreme a person can push herself to achieve it in one of the worst possible circumstances that a person can be in. Go for it!!!
On a wilder thought, I always feel that a happy story has only one version while a sad story has as many versions as the number of people involved in it. Since this is a horribly sad story, I wonder if we need to sympathize with Betty without hearing her husband’s version of the story. Who knows, Betty might actually be the villain who cooked up an interesting story for us with the confidence that nobody would anyways get access to her husband in Iran :-) …..I wonder if I should make a trip to Iran just to meet her husband and write a book on his behalf titled ,”Not without my Daughter, but without my wife for sure” :-) :-)
