Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story)

by Daniel Nayeri

And before that a myth, a poem of what his father had been, what fathers could be, what place we took in the story of our people. He was all of Ardestan—all the saffron fields, all the walnut trees, the platter of pomegranates and wedges of cheese. He was the lonely mountain and the snake, the pheasant in the mulberry tree. He was the bull and the boulevard of jasmine. And tea. He was the house with the birds in the wall and the Ferris wheel in the desert. He was the fountains of Isfahan, the steps in the stone, cut by the hand of Farhad. He was the city of kings, and the voice of Scheherazade, the whirling dervishes that leap, the fire worshippers, the nomad Kurds, and the eighteen sheep. He was the sizzling kebab, from the land that once belonged to Cyrus, the late great shah-in-shah. He was the rug and the flaw.