Mahtob Maryam Mahmoody (Persian: مهتاب محمودى; born September 4, 1979)[1] is an American author who wrote the autobiographical memoir My Name is Mahtob,[2][3] which depicts her perspective of her family's story when she and her mother, Betty Mahmoody, were held captive by her father, Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody, in his country of birth, Iran, for a period of 18 months during the mid 1980s.
[4] Her mother wrote her version of their story in her 1987 biography Not Without My Daughter, which was adapted into a 1991 feature film of the same name in which Mahtob was portrayed by Sheila Rosenthal and her parents were portrayed by Sally Field and Alfred Molina.
[1] Mahtob was born to parents Betty Lover and Sayyed Bozorg "Moody" Mahmoody in Houston on September 4, 1979.
[5] Mahtob has two half-brothers through Betty's first marriage, Joe and John, who are 13 and 9 years older than her respectively.
[9] On August 4, 1984, Mahtob and her parents arrived in Tehran to meet with Moody's relatives.
Their stay was originally meant to have lasted only two weeks, but Mahtob and Betty were held captive by Moody for eighteen months.
[3] After eighteen months, Mahtob and her mother managed to escape Iran by crossing the mountains of Turkey.