“They Do That to Foreign Women”: Domestic Terrorism and Contraceptive Nationalism in Not Without My Daughter

I ran was a nightmare for Betty Mahmoody. Rather than forfeiting her child to divorce, she had agreed to visit her husband’s family on what she thought was an extended vacation. In Tehran, Mahmoody found herself trapped, told she was now her husband’s property and would never return to the United States. Forced to feign affection for her husband to see her child and leave the house, Mahmoody bartered her body for mobility. Once on the city’s streets, she endured harassment and assault at the hands of strange Iranian men. Her sister-in-law dismissed these incidents, explaining that “they do that to foreign women,” and warning Mahmoody to tell no one else if she ever wanted to leave the house unaccompanied again. Ultimately, she risked rape and losing her daughter to childmarriage during their perilous escape to Turkey. Again and again, Mahmoody professed her willingness to endure sexual trauma at the hands of savage Muslim men, to use her body as a “tool. . .to fashion freedom.” Withstanding sexual harassment and assault is a leitmotif throughout the controversial best seller Not Without My Daughter (1987). The abuse Mahmoody endures at her husband’s hands mirrors the abuse she receives from his family and men throughout the Islamic Republic of Iran. Muslim men present a constant threat of sexual violence and physical assault throughout this account. Mahmoody’s story cautions American readers about the alleged dangers of Muslim men and what they do to “foreign women.” That scholars and former acquaintances alike have criticized Mahmoody’s narrative as misleading, inaccurate, and racist does little to mitigate its lasting influence on Americans’ understandings of Islam and Iran. Despite its questionable content, Americans frequently read Not Without My Daughter not merely as a personal memoir of domestic