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.

When the immigrants came to America, they thought the streets would be paved with gold. But when they got here, they realized three things: The streets were not paved with gold. The streets were not paved at all. They were the ones expected to do the paving.

Imagine how much you’ve got compared to all the kids in the world getting blown up or starved, and the good you could do if you spent half a second thinking about it. 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.

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.

Miracles are absurd by definition. If they weren’t, they’d just be odd things that happened. Improbable things. But while miracles are impossible, they aren’t coincidences. They’re knives that cut into our reality. And they’re messy and weird.

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.

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. That or Sima is insane.

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.

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.

If you did it wrong, you could probably die. But it also looked super cool. So it seemed like the thing to do.

😂😂

Reading is the act of listening and speaking at the same time, with someone you’ve never met, but love. Even if you hate them, it’s a loving thing to do. You speak someone else’s words to yourself, and hear them for the first time.

If I ever have a kid, I wouldn’t let them go, ever. Even if they had to leave Earth, and I had to follow them into airless space, I’d hold on to them and suffocate, but at least I’d have held them close.

My mom is the hero of this whole story, in case you were wondering. She always did what heroes do. The law that applied to her was the law of sacrificial love. The legend was unstoppable belief. The myth was the strongest person you have ever known. Not Hercules. Not Rostam. Not Jean Claude van Damme could protect and love as Sima, my mom, who was our champion, and who—like Jesus—took all the damage so we wouldn’t have to.

what you believe about the future will change how you live in the present.

the second greatest hero of all time.

He realizedd his is mom is the first :,)

Memories are just stories we tell ourselves, after all. What if we are telling ourselves lies?

“Of course. You were his. He would have also made a feast,” she added. “But it would have been a sheep. He would have spilled the blood. You have to understand that means a blessing. It’s ancient. To step over the river of blood, to accept the sacrifice and be thankful. Then we could eat, only after we understand the cost of joy. And he would have washed his hands.”

This was my life, as I experienced it, and it is both fiction and nonfiction at the same time. Your memories are too, if you’ll admit it.