Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story)

by Daniel Nayeri

THE HISTORY OF THE CLOWN’S underpants is a secret history and I will never tell it. But if you think people are stupid and mazloom and all you ever do is take from them, then they eventually learn how to survive you. They learn to hide away everything they love, where you can’t touch it. And they won’t just hide it someplace easy to find, like a clown’s pockets, or anyplace in this world. They’ll create a new world, with its own language, and they’ll hide everything there—all the favorite jokes they won’t say around you, all the best books, the spot on the wall that looks like a keyhole, being safe and free and comfortable—all those things, and you won’t even know they exist. And when you’ve gotten your hands on the one Orich, and you’ve laughed at the badly hidden tears, you won’t even know there was a secret zipper in a bus pillow where the rest of the bars were really hidden. Not some obvious clown. You won’t know because you believed the weak can’t do anything. But hiding is something to do while you wait to get stronger. Deep hiding. Hiding so sneaky that it’s hidden below tears that you think are trying to hide themselves—but they’re actually decoy tears. Not real ones.