MelonQueen.com » 2009

So I’m off to Adelaide today! I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Eat plenty of junk, drink till you’re pissed and be merry all the way through!

Just a quick update on my progress at the gym… I’ve lost 4kg in 4 1/2 weeks!! I’m awesome

<3 MQ

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Personal training hurts. It really does. It took me 3 days to get over the muscle pain from my first session, and it’s all going to happen again tomorrow. But without the pain there is no gain as I keep telling myself! So yes, I am still keeping up my gym regiment, and I’m increasingly finding myself with more energy and keeping up with my healthy eating habits!

I just finished watching the documentary Without My Daughter. Now, a lot of you would have heard of the book Not Without My Daughter and the film of the same name starring Sally Field. For those that haven’t, the basic gist of the story is that an American woman named Betty Mahmoody marries an Iranian man, Dr. Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody (Moody), and when they go on a family holiday to Tehran (the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran), along with their young daughter Mahtob, Moody keeps Betty and Mahtob there against their will and not for the two week vacation they had originally believed they were going on. According to Betty’s book, Moody became increasingly hostile and violent to both her and Mahtob, acting as a jailer more than a husband, until eventually she was able to organise to get herself and her daughter out of the country with people smugglers through the mountains and over the border into Turkey around 18 months after they first arrived in Tehran.

Without My Daughter is a documentary made in 2002, around 16 years after Betty and Mahtob left Iran. It shows Dr. Mahmoody’s attempts to get in contact with his daughter to try and reconcile with her after years of isolation. Now of course there are two sides to every story, and Dr. Mahmoody claims many things in Betty’s book were untrue. Dr. Mahmoody was unsuccessful in his attempts to get in contact with Mahtob and he died in August this year without ever being able to see or speak to his daughter.

Now, I can understand what it’s like to be isolated from one’s father. I haven’t spoken to mine for about a year. This documentary tends to play on sympathy towards Dr. Mahmoody, and I’m not sure whether it’s my own prejudices from my own experiences or prejudice from reading Not Without My Daughter many times, but I did find it hard to give him sympathy. While I do feel that it is always a good idea to try and reconcile and re-establish a relationship with a parent, sometimes scars can run deep and there can be a certain wariness and even fear with taking these steps. If the circumstances in Betty’s book are true, then Mahtob can be quite justified by not reaching out to her father when he tried to reach out to her. However, if her accounts were an embellishment, then I do believe that Mahtob should have at least given her father the opportunity to have his say. It’s a tricky situation as we, the general public, have no idea what really went on behind closed doors, both in their home in the US before they went to Iran, and in their home in Tehran. It is sad to think of someone growing old without their children around them, but if they did something to seriously traumatise them, then is that child not justified in trying to protect themselves from further hurt and anguish? The thing that I did find about this documentary though was that Dr. Mahmoody didn’t really try to explain his side of the story too much. It was mostly an “I’m sad, I want to find my daughter” vein along the whole thing. I think a bit more depth on his part, and that of the film makers, would have made a more valid case for his argument that Betty’s book was untrue. I think that’s why I found it hard to swallow a lot of this documentary, because it didn’t truly give his account on the time they all spent together in Iran. If you Google Mahtob Mahmoody, there are some articles where she is quoted correlating her mother’s story. Seeing as she was between the ages of 4 and 6 during her time in Tehran, she was old enough to retain the memories and I’m sure, as many of you may know, it’s the more horrific memories that tend to stick in your mind, the ones that truly change your life, that will haunt you for the rest of your life. It is one thing for you to say you miss your daughter, and yes you can, no matter what passed between you, there is still that bond and no one disputes that fact. But to show no remorse for the events that your actions led to, then that’s quite another thing… And it’s hard to feel sympathy for someone like that.

To view Without My Daughter, click here (6 parts, roughly 10mins each)

For more information on Betty Mahmoody and Not Without My Daughter click here

<3 MQ

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