58 pages • 1 hour read
Betty MahmoodyNot Without My Daughter
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains a description of domestic violence and abuse, and the injuries sustained thereby.
The family moves to the cramped and cluttered home of Moody’s younger relatives, Reza and Essey. The neighborhood is bustling with people begging for help and itinerant traders loudly selling products on the streets. Betty observes that the living conditions are far from ideal, featuring cockroaches and other evidence of unsanitary practices. However, she gradually adjusts to this new way of life, learning to cope with the daily challenges. Eventually, the family moves to a different apartment upstairs, which is owned by a couple named Mammal and Nasserine. Betty helps the couple by cooking, cleaning, and taking care of their baby, Amir. After some time, Betty attempts to contact the Swiss Embassy due to her dire circumstances. Struggling to find a payphone with the correct coin, she meets an English-speaking shopkeeper named Hamid, who offers his phone. She connects with a woman named Helen at the embassy and learns that the embassy has already contacted Moody in an attempt to speak to Betty. This knowledge instills fear, as Moody now knows that Betty’s parents are working to help her. After the phone call to the embassy, Betty decides to share her story with Hamid, a rare act of trust in a stranger. Hamid promises his assistance, stating that not all Iranians are like her husband, and offers to use his connections to help her with passport-related issues.
As she attempts to gain some measure of freedom, Betty finds her relationship with Moody deteriorating further. Her narrative comments on Moody’s financial irresponsibility and his increasing shows of frustration. At the end of the chapter, Moody physically assaults Betty in front of their daughter, with the other household members watching. The local attitude toward such behavior is rationalized by the other women in the family, who tell Betty that all men act the same, including their husbands.
Chapter 7 Summary
Betty has a limp after her husband’s abusive episode and conceals her facial bruises to avoid attention. Mahtob becomes increasingly distant from her father, crying herself to sleep each night. Betty and Mahtob now live in perpetual fear of Moody’s unpredictable rage. Despite her emotional and physical turmoil, Betty grapples with the dilemma of whether to pursue her vague plans for freedom, knowing that it may jeopardize her and Mahtob’s safety. Throughout her ordeal the author desperately clings to her faith in God.
Betty returns to Hamid’s menswear store and shares the story of the abuse episode that she suffered. Hamid empathizes with her situation. The narrator describes Hamid’s story, who is an ex-officer of the shah’s army and is deeply unhappy with Iranian society as ruled by the ayatollah. Hamid shares that he is planning to leave Iran with his family. He aims to sell his business, manage his assets, and take precautions to escape his past. Hamid’s generosity reveals that many Iranians still value a more liberal, Americanized lifestyle despite the Iranian government’s open disdain for America.
As Mahtob starts attending an Iranian school, she endures a range of struggles, and her mother is forced to accompany her to school and wait until classes finish every day. This development allows Betty to form a bond with some Iranian women who work at the school; they indirectly express their underlying discontent with the current political regime.
Chapter 8 Summary
One afternoon, Moody reluctantly takes his wife and daughter to the park, where they encounter an American woman named Judy and her Iranian brother-in-law, Ali. Betty finds a moment away from Moody and tells Judy about her situation, asking for help. Later, Judy provides stamps and arranges a plan for Betty to communicate with her family in America. Betty writes to her brother, Jim, asking him to call and inform Moody about a family emergency in hopes of convincing Moody to leave Iran. Judy also brings a man named Rasheed to the park meeting. Rasheed is the manager of a medical clinic and therefore has a legitimate excuse to speak to Moody. At the same time, Rasheed has connections with people who help others to escape Iran by way of Turkey. Judy invites Betty and Moody to a party where she hopes that Betty will find a moment to talk to Rasheed privately.
During the party, Betty talks to Rasheed, who tells her that his contacts can facilitate her passage to Turkey for $30,000. Betty contemplates the possibility of such an escape and takes Rasheed’s telephone number. After the party, Moody is happy because Rasheed has offered him a job at his clinic. However, the offer turns out to be merely a gesture of politeness rather than a real job opportunity.
Meanwhile, the situation in Tehran grows increasingly tense as winter approaches, and financial concerns strain Betty and Moody’s relationship. Moody becomes more paranoid, believing that the CIA is spying on him. He restricts Betty’s freedom further still, forcing her to write a letter to her family in the US to request that the family’s remaining belongings be shipped to Iran. Betty obeys, knowing that her family won’t carry out such a request. Later, Betty calls Rasheed from Hamid’s store to ask for more details about the escape via Turkey. However, Rasheed informs her that the smugglers do not take children through the crossing and that, in any case, it is not possible to cross during the winter because of the snow that accumulates in the mountains. She begs to talk to the smugglers, but Rasheed tells her to wait for now. Back on the street, Betty’s scarf does not cover her hair completely, so she is stopped by the female Iranian morality police (pasdar), who are enforcing the dress code. Despite the many challenges that face her, Betty remains determined to find a way back to the United States.
Chapter 9 Summary
Suffering from a cold, Moody continues to relax his guard over Betty. This shift allows Betty to test the reactions of her daughter’s teachers by coming late to school; they do not seem concerned. She contacts Helen at the embassy, who warns her about two mysterious women who want to help her. Betty decides to meet these women, Trish and Suzanne, against the advice of embassy officials. The women try to convince Betty to leave with them immediately, but she hesitates and asks for 24 hours to think it over. The women berate her and leave, claiming that Betty does not want to leave her husband and will never. Betty later regrets not taking this chance for freedom, and the narrative includes her reflections on this decision.
Chapter 10 Summary
In this chapter, Betty and her husband’s family start socializing with a religious man, Aga Hakim, and his wife. Despite his religious fervor, Aga Hakim speaks English and is more progressive than the other social contacts of the family. The Hakim family encourages Betty’s integration into Iranian culture and is supportive of Moody’s attempts to find employment in Iran, either in medicine or in teaching. Aga Hakim encourages Moody to undertake a translation project by translating into English the works of their grandfather. To this end, Moody buys a typewriter, and Betty becomes his secretary as he works on translating Father and Child, a work that reflects his grandfather’s views on parenting according to the doctrines of Islam.
Aga Hakim suggests that Betty and Mahtob attend Qur’an study classes for English-speaking women. Betty is excited about this opportunity to meet English-speaking women, and although Moody initially hesitates, he eventually allows them to attend the classes. At the Qur’an classes, Betty meets Ellen Rafaie, an American woman from Michigan who is married to an Iranian man named Hormoz. Ellen’s story reveals the complexities of her decision to stay in Iran, which is rooted in her fear, her lack of financial independence, and her worries about the welfare of her children. Ellen’s experience with an abusive husband and her decision to adapt to a Muslim way of life in Iran contrasts with Betty’s point of view and strengthens her determination to escape Iran with her daughter. Betty later confides in Ellen about her situation with Moody, asking Ellen to help arrange a plan to escape and seek help from the Swiss Embassy. Ellen cautiously agrees to assist Betty in fleeing Iran and formulates a plan for future meetings. Later, Betty and Mahtob narrowly escape an air raid while shopping. As the war escalates, Moody’s fear during the bombings becomes increasingly evident, and the family’s sense of helplessness intensifies.
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
This section of the novel intensifies the main conflicts driving the narrative while also providing key connections that illuminate the many reasons behind Betty’s determination to plan an escape from her ever-worsening situation. As Betty works to protect her daughter’s well-being and find various ways to improve their lives in the moment and advocate for their eventual escape, the major theme of The Strength of Motherhood becomes particularly prominent in these chapters. Betty’s struggle in Iran thus becomes a trial of motherhood itself, testing her resilience, her resourcefulness, and her determination to protect her daughter, Mahtob. The author’s exploration of the burdens of motherhood is a multifaceted one that encompasses episodes of physical endurance, emotional turmoil, and the quest for freedom against all odds.
Thus, Betty’s physical and emotional endurance is pushed to its limits, and as Moody’s behavior devolves into outright physical abuse in Chapter 6, this event deeply distresses both Betty and Mahtob and provides a catalyst for further plot development. Moody, whose nickname comes to symbolize his capricious and erratic behavior, keeps Betty in a state of high tension with his unpredictable outbursts as she slowly maps her way through Tehran, gathering information and making strategic acquaintances in her covert yet ongoing efforts to effect an eventual escape with Mahtob. In the aftermath of this first episode of physical abuse, Betty continues to risk her husband’s wrath and pursue her plans in order to recover a sense of normalcy and personal agency, working to establish some form of contact with the outside world and to gain help through both official and unofficial channels. Motherhood thus becomes a battleground upon which Betty fights not just for her own survival but also for the well-being of Mahtob, who witnesses her father’s escalating violence and does not have the means to process or understand it. Mahtob’s distress after witnessing this first traumatic episode of physical abuse underscores the toll of living in perpetual fear, and Betty grapples with the grim reality that she cannot shield Mahtob from Moody’s wrath. Her resolve to keep fighting for their escape mirrors the broader theme of maternal sacrifice for the sake of the child’s well-being.
The theme of motherhood also intertwines with Iran’s political and cultural landscape in unique ways. The physical and emotional dangers inherent in Betty’s pursuit of freedom are escalated by the bombardments that the family experiences as part of the Iran-Iraq War. Amidst this landscape of political turmoil, one moment that provides a brief respite in the narrative is Betty’s encounter with Trish and Suzanne in Chapter 9. At the women’s proposal of immediate escape, however, Betty faces an acute moral dilemma—to seize the chance for freedom and risk the safety of Mahtob, or to remain cautious and endure her oppressive circumstances while she devises a safer, more deliberate plan. In this moment, the burdens of motherhood become apparent as a balancing act of risk and responsibility, and Betty’s internal struggle ends with her refusal to follow through with the plan that Trish and Suzanne propose. However, this episode highlights the real possibility of escape for the first time, while serving as distinct foreshadowing that a similar situation of escape will arise at some point in the succeeding chapters of the narrative.
Amidst these challenges, Betty forms meaningful connections with other women, such as Judy, Ellen, Trish, and Suzanne, and this pattern reveals the strength of Female Solidarity in the face of adversity. Most notably, Ellen and Betty’s willingness to exchange similar stories and experiences provides an example of the potential support network of support amongst women who are trapped in similar circumstances of abuse and oppression. However, Betty’s experience after Moody’s violent outburst also provides an example to the contrary, for rather than rallying to Betty’s side, the women who share her household, Nasserine and Essay, do not intervene during the domestic abuse episode. Afterward, they show their compliance with Moody’s hierarchical position in the household, and while Nasserine’s gesture of consolation in the form of the phrase “All men are like this” (132) expresses a measure of solidarity between victims, she refrains from forming any sort of bond with Betty beyond this simple acknowledgement. As women collectively face extreme pressures in this traditional religious society, the bonds between them are necessarily policed and conditioned by their reflexive subordination to the male figures in their lives. The expression of female solidarity, far from being a given in the context of Not Without My Daughter, is in fact a constant struggle, and as this exchange shows, it is often suppressed out of a sense of self-preservation. Ironically, one aspect whereby women are given power in this society is in the enforcement of the restrictive Islamic dress code over other women. Despite this contradictory dynamic, however, the narrative illustrates the nuanced dynamics of female relationships in Iran, making an honest attempt to portray both supportive alliances and those relationships that are more restricted by challenges rooted in Iranian cultural and religious contexts. While navigating her relationships and remaining vigilant in her search for a way to escape Iran, Betty bows to the necessity of adapting to this cultural milieu that challenges her personal freedom and her autonomy. Her struggle involves negotiating a myriad of cultural intricacies for the sake of survival, always remaining hopeful for the prospect of eventual escape.
