Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story)

by Daniel Nayeri

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.