Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story)

by Daniel Nayeri

But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what He saw. Like you, I want a friend.

He speaks in poetry by the great Persian writers. Hafez, Rumi, Ferdowsi. It is two in the morning in Isfahan. I imagine him sitting in the dark house where we all used to live together. The doves in the aviary are asleep.

‘The thing that turns a lion into a little fox is need.’

He wants me to understand so badly. He wants me to know the Persian poets like I know American rappers. I feel desperate to give him the connection, but can’t.

“I was a lion,” he says, “and I married and now I sit by the phone and beg to speak to my children. Do you see?”

His tears—they said—were the warm water baths that steamed up his oven. His trembling hands whipped pastry cream as light as a shroud. When the guests at Tamar’s wedding ate the cream puffs, they could taste the truest thing in all the world at that moment—the baker’s pain. They didn’t understand this, of course. To them, they were simply the most delicious pastries they had ever eaten. They toasted the merry couple. When Tamar tasted one, it was a love letter. She ran to her room and sobbed into a pillow.

Here is a list of the foods from Iran that they have never heard of here: All of it. All the food. Jared Rhodes didn’t even know what a date was.

IF YOU REALLY WANT to know the truth, it’s the forgetting that hurts most.

That’s what forgetting your grandpa’s face feels like. There’s no good in it. Nothing to gain but nothing. A piece of your heart makes a sound like a groan and disappears. Then you poke at it sometimes, trying to remember what was there by the shape of the hole. That’s it. You are less.

You don’t get to choose what you remember. A patchwork memory is the shame of a refugee. Did I tell you that already? I could still tell you how I left the toys in my room. How many Orich bars I left in that bus cushion. But I couldn’t tell you what it feels like to have a grandpa. I also forgot Italian when I learned English. I also forgot all the bad things about my dad when I met Ray. I also forgot my granddad on my mom’s side, but he’s less important because I think he’s a killer who married a child bride.

Sometimes on the bus to school, I think of her and hope she has a gentle death. I hope she has more memories that I do, and I hope she forgives me for the ones I have of her. In my head, I tell her I will always think of her as the princess of a kingdom of laughing flowers. But the truth is that we are both exiles and will never go home again.

Suddenly evil isn’t punching people or even hating them. Suddenly it’s all that stuff you’ve left undone. All the kindness you could have given. All the excuses you gave instead. Imagine that for a minute. Imagine what it means.

I want to tell them that when I was three, Saddam was at war with Iran. He bombed Isfahan every night trying to kill people and my uncles fought him. One of them has a twitchy face from the chemical attacks. One night, when I was a baby, the building next to ours was hit and the whole thing collapsed. My mom says she ran into my room and I was still asleep. I was a super fat and sleepy baby—which is the best kind of baby. And I even slept through bombs.

The better question is, Can God create a law so big that He himself has to obey it? Is there an idea so big that God doesn’t remember anything before it? That answer is love. Love is the object of unusual size.

Memories are tricky things. They can fade or fester. You have to seal them up tight like pickles and keep out impurities like how hurt you feel when you open them. Or they’ll ferment and poison your brain.

Maybe the lesson is that you never know the damage you might do, when you’re trying to help. Or that a feud is a profoundly stupid thing. There is no lesson maybe.

I remember riding on the front of his motorcycle barreling down the dirt road to Ardestan. So fast we would hit bumps and fly in the air. On a straight part he let me hold the handlebars and he let go. I screamed. He laughed in my ear, a laugh I will never forget. That laugh is the heart of the memory. I knew I was safe.

I think a person gets seen, really looked at, looked into, seen the way a leopard would see into you, maybe ten times in their entire life.

Every side of an explosion looks different. If you’re looking at a bull collapsing to the ground and I’m beside you looking at it, we’re seeing two bulls die, two rivers of blood, two everything. That’s why there is an infinite labyrinth of stories, even in just one family.

In that version he is my grandfather the sophisticated charmer who wore silk jackets and taught me how to wink like a cool guy. One thing about being a refugee is that you lose those little lessons, and you have to teach everything to yourself.

Does writing poetry make you brave? It is a good question to ask. I think making anything is a brave thing to do. Not like fighting brave, obviously. But a kind that looks at a horrible situation and doesn’t crumble. Making anything assumes there’s a world worth making it for. That you’ll have someplace, like a clown’s pants, to hide it when people come to take it away. I guess I’m saying making something is a hopeful thing to do. And being hopeful in a world of pain is either brave or crazy.

But I did. I had a Nintendo and uncles and tons of store-bought snacks. A house that smelled like flowers all the time, with birds in the walls and a pool. I wasn’t always poor. Other kids don’t know that. They think I’m lying. And if you tell somebody they’re lying all the time, they start to believe you a little. They start to question their own memories. Cause they’re so different than everything happening around them. They think, maybe I was always smelly. Maybe I never had anything like a dad. Maybe I’m going crazy, like Ellie after her exile, making up stories to feel better about myself. Maybe it would be too painful to live otherwise. But I don’t think so. I close my eyes and squeeze tight my grip on the memory of my Baba Haji, smiling, reaching to squeeze my face in his bloody hands. If you could see it like I do, how proud he was that I was his—you’d feel so good that a grandpa like that loved you—maybe you’d never cry again.

Being generous to a guest is one of the most different things about these countries.

But here, it seems guests are supposed to apologize all the time that they’re taking anything. It’s like they think the host is burdened. I don’t understand it. But I know I never want to go to the house of any of these grown-ups, who make you beg for so little. I don’t want the cracker sandwiches they made with all the groaning in their hearts. I don’t want to be poor.

Kyle said, “Cool.” Which was basically like saying he believed me. He drew the ifrit with a cross burned into its chest, and it was the coolest picture I’ve ever seen.

As we go inside, I usually make sure to be as far away from Brandon Goff as possible. If he sees Meg G. first, he tells “Your mama’s so fat” jokes and if he sees me, he tells “Your mama’s so poor” jokes, like your mama’s so poor she can’t afford to pay attention! I’m not sure why that one’s even funny. It’s just true. She can’t afford to pay attention.

My mom takes the yogurt she makes herself and cuts cucumbers into it with salt and pepper. And she bakes bread—real bread to dip into it. And she has jars of mixed pickles. And she grows radishes. And for dessert she has fried dough balls in rosewater syrup, and baklava, and saffron cookies stuffed with cinnamon, sugar, and walnuts—all of it she baked over the weekends. And she brews black tea. And none of it is from cans or anything. We eat as if we’re the shahs of Oklahoma City. She asks if school is fine, and it’s easy to say yeah with a mouthful of cookie. This is the best part of the day, and the only time I think my mom is happy.

England was the first time I tasted peanut butter. My sister almost lost a finger. And my mom met Jesus. All three were life-changing.

At that moment, if you looked in her eyes, past the tears, I bet you wouldn’t even see the pain of a severed finger, but the shock of how cruel people can be. And how stupid it was to put her finger in a doorjamb, hoping for the best in somebody.

And here is the part that gets hard to believe: Sima, my mom, read about him and became a Christian too. Not just a regular one, who keeps it in their pocket. She fell in love. She wanted everybody to have what she had, to be free, to realize that in other religions you have rules and codes and obligations to follow to earn good things, but all you had to do with Jesus was believe he was the one who died for you. And she believed. When I tell the story in Oklahoma, this is the part where the grown-ups always interrupt me. They say, “Okay, but why did she convert?” Cause up to that point, I’ve told them about the house with the birds in the walls, all the villages my grandfather owned, all the gold, my mom’s own medical practice—all the amazing things she had that we don’t have anymore because she became a Christian. All the money she gave up, so we’re poor now. But I don’t have an answer for them. How can you explain why you believe anything? So I just say what my mom says when people ask her. She looks them in the eye with the begging hope that they’ll hear her and she says, “Because it’s true.” Why else would she believe it? It’s true and it’s more valuable than seven million dollars in gold coins, and thousands of acres of Persian countryside, and ten years of education to get a medical degree, and all your family, and a home, and the best cream puffs of Jolfa, and even maybe your life. My mom wouldn’t have made the trade otherwise.

If you believe it’s true, that there is a God and He wants you to believe in Him and He sent His Son to die for you—then it has to take over your life. It has to be worth more than everything else, because heaven’s waiting on the other side.

She had all that wealth, the love of all those people she helped in her clinic. They treated her like a queen. She was a sayyed. And she’s poor now. People spit on her on buses. She’s a refugee in places people hate refugees, with a husband who hits harder than a second-degree black belt because he’s a third-degree black belt. And she’ll tell you—it’s worth it. Jesus is better. It’s true.

Sima—who was such a fierce Muslim that she marched for the Revolution, who studied the Quran the way very few people do—read the Bible and knew in her heart that it was true.

But no matter how many times her husband lashed Sima with a belt, she believed. You can’t make someone stop believing something. In fact, she hung a little cross necklace from the rearview mirror of her car, which was probably a reckless thing to do. But you know, in Oklahoma, after the hundredth time I rode bus 209 and got cut with something or Brandon Goff ripped my hair out, I understood it. They can’t break you. You stick your chin out, like, Go ahead, hit me if you’re going to hit me.

Besides, the only way to stop believing something is to deny it yourself. To hide it. To act as if it hasn’t changed your life. Another way to say it is that everybody is dying and going to die of something. And if you’re not spending your life on the stuff you believe, then what are you even doing? What is the point of the whole thing? It’s a tough question, because most people haven’t picked anything worthwhile.

NOBODY EVER EVER SPEAKS about what happened to my mom when the secret police took her. I don’t think they realize that I have seen more than seven rated-R van Damme movies and my imagination is probably worse than what happened. I mean. I don’t know. Maybe it isn’t.

And because I was thinking this is the same person as the one in the story. It’s no myth. And she’s so small. The legend of my mom is that she can’t be stopped. Not when you hit her. Not when a whole country full of goons puts her in a cage. Not even if you make her poor and try to kill her slowly in the little-by-little poison of sadness. And the legend is true. I think because she’s fixed her eyes on something beyond the rivers of blood, to a beautiful place on the other side. How else would anybody do it?

“They had already asked me to tell them the names of everyone in the underground church.” “Did you?” “No.” “So they let you go?” “He said, ‘Please, Madame Doktor, they’ll kill you and your kids if you don’t tell them.’” “And then they let you go?” She nodded. “Did he say anything else?” “That I had one week to think about it.” “And then you just walked out the door? Nobody saw you?” “They saw me.” “You just walked home.” “I ran to the market.” “To get the car?” “And groceries. We needed dinner.”

Would you rather a god who listens or a god who speaks? Be careful with the answer. It’s as important as every word from Scheherazade’s mouth that saved her life. And everybody’s got an answer. A god who listens is like your best friend, who lets you tell him about all the people you don’t like. A god who speaks is like your best teacher, who tells Brandon Goff he has to leave the room if he’s going to call people falafel monkeys. A god who listens is your mom who lets you sit in a kitchen and tell her stories about castles in the mountains. A god who speaks is your dad who calls on the phone with advice for your life in America. There are gods all over the world who just want you to express yourself. Look inside and find whatever you think you are and that’s all it takes to be good. And there are gods who are so alien to us, with minds so clear, the only thing to do would be to sit at their feet and wait for them to speak, to tell us what is good. A god who listens is love. A god who speaks is law. At their worst, the people who want a god who listens are self-centered. They just want to live in the land of do-as-you-please. And the ones who want a god who speaks are cruel. They just want laws and justice to crush everything. I don’t have an answer for you. This is the kind of thing you live your whole life thinking about probably. Love is empty without justice. Justice is cruel without love. And sometimes, like Sima, you get neither. OH, AND IN CASE IT wasn’t obvious, th...

When my mom describes it all, she skips over the interrogation and the panic and says it was a time of three miracles—three things that couldn’t have happened without the intervention of angels.

That afternoon, my dad got a call. A dental emergency. A miracle tooth! I told you already, he was the best dentist in Isfahan. Well it just so happened that a minister of immigration, a mullah, a boss man in the government, had taken an eager bite of a peach and broken his left front tooth on the stone. The sticky juice was still in his beard as my dad reached in to fix it. It was like the story of the mouse pulling a thorn from the paw of the lion. Except my dad is the lion and the mullah is a toad. But we lived in the land of the toads and needed toad papers. That’s how we got them. If it had gone any other way, we’d be dead.

“What was the third miracle,” I asked my dad. “There weren’t any planes. We didn’t have any tickets.” “Did you find tickets on the floor or something?” “One flight going to Dubai had some kind of leak, so they landed in Iran first for repairs. Totally unscheduled.” “How did we get in?” “Money.” “But it was totally random that the plane was there?” “Yep.” “Wow.” “Yeah,” he said, kinda dumbfounded about it. “It’s really nuts,” I said. “Your mom’s had more miracles than I’ve had hot food.” Then we didn’t say anything for a while. I mean, you don’t have to believe any of it and I wouldn’t blame you. But if they were accidents, then it was like putting a jigsaw puzzle into a tumble dryer and having it come out with all the pieces in the right place.

I think He’s a God who listens as if we are his most important children, and I think He speaks to tell us so.

But no matter which grade or pattern—no matter even if the greatest grandmother in the whole world wove it—every rug has a Persian flaw. The artisans of Kashan and Isfahan and Tabriz and Mashad all knew that only God was perfect—the only one who could listen to and speak the perfect truth. To remind themselves, and to show their humility, they would purposefully include one missed knot in every rug, one imperfection. I think it’s pretty funny that people would mistake themselves for perfect if they didn’t include a hole in a rug. But that’s the whole point of the Persian flaw—it’s there to remind you of all the other flaws, and even the flaw that makes you unable to see them in the first place.

The point of the Nights is that if you spend time with each other—if we really listen in the parlors of our minds and look at each other as we were meant to be seen—then we would fall in love. We would marvel at how beautifully we were made. We would never think to be villain kings, and we would never kill each other. Just the opposite. The stories aren’t the thing. The thing is the story of the story. The spending of the time. The falling in love. All the good stuff is in between and around the things that happen. It’s what you imagine I might be like when I’m not telling you a story, but we’re sitting together in silence. Would my hands be fumbling with themselves in my lap? Would I be nervous? Would I love it if you asked about Final Fantasy? And would I say yes if you invited me to your house? Look how much you know about me. I bet if I told you that my dad came to Oklahoma with just one surprise for me, a friend from my past, back from the dead, you’d probably even know what it was even before I told you.

For forty days, my mom sat in the chair for eight hours each day and never stopped erasing. If you look at her hands, you can still see the bumps where it bled so much. I’m telling you. Unstoppable.

It would have fallen off if not for the jagged black-thread stitching. It was sloppy, like a dentist who didn’t know how to sew had done it on a plane, after some agent in the airport had ripped the sheep open to see if he’d been stuffed with drugs.

I stared into Mr. Sheep Sheep’s eyes and wondered if he was still alive in there, or if the journey—all the ugliness he’d seen—had killed the light in him.

He had bought an extra tray at the Tehran airport for my class. He was thinking about it way back then.

I would have jumped like a fool at the chance to offer her another piece. But my dad put his hand on my shoulder. He said to Kelly, “He can make.” “Wow, really?” said Kelly. “You can make this?” Reader, she looked at me as if I was Abbas the Baker himself. I can’t really make baklava so I shrugged. In Farsi I said, “I can’t make baklava.” “Your mother can teach you,” said my dad. “That’s practically the same. It’s more of a promise. You could make it if she asked.” It’s not like she became my girlfriend. But I did learn to make baklava later, just in case it comes up again.