Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story)

by Daniel Nayeri

It’s true. We can keep talking about it,...

our teeth on why Sima converted, si...

the fate of everybody in the story. It’s why we’re here h...

We can wonder and question and disagree. You can be certai...

But you can’t make Sima agree with you. It’s true. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again....

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 a...

My mama is not dumb, by the way. So when you’re evaluating whether she’s sincere in her belief or a lunatic, you should know

she’s got more degrees, speaks more languages, and has seen more of the world than most people you know.

And how do you know anything for ce...

Maybe don’t be so certain al...

HERE’S SOMETHING ELSE YOU need to understand:

Sayyeds don’t convert. That’s why I told you all that stuff, so you’d understand how mad everybody got.

Being a sayyed meant you were rich. But the bles...

in...

pocket. It was in yo...

For Muhammad’s kids to go against the family, for my mom to reject h...

conversion has to happen—from sayyed to najis. A “najis” thing is a “vile” thing. It means “ritually impure,” “unclean on a cellular and c...

so Muslims avoid eating najis things. Young boys throw stones at dogs because they are najis and shouldn’t be touched. Najis people can give you th...

would rather die than have you so much as breathe your stenc...

To the Supreme Leader of Iran at that time, a najis sayyed would be a loaths...

hater, a spoiled child, an insult to the Holy Prophet, someone whose badness it’s not even said what to do with. The Supreme Leade...

to have you killed and buried someplace far...

SIMA WAS BAPTIZED JUST a few days after the wedding of Sanaz, her youngest sister, Ellie’s youngest daughter.

if my dad had been paying attention, he would have been against the whole thing.

In

Oklahoma, on the phone, he’ll tell me, “W...

have gone.” “To the wedding?” I say. “No. It would be horrible to miss the wedding. The church.” “Th...

“Akh! You know what I mean.” I don’t, but I don’t say anything. He thinks it was religi...

“It was like waking up and your wife is a completely different pers...

that. And suddenly she takes my children and goes a...

These are the parts of the conversation that feel like a video game. He’s jumping around the topic—religion bad, ruined his life—and throwing a b...

people what they can believe? Why would she take his children?—and all the while, the giant lizard on the screen he’s trying to avoid is my on...

IF THERE’S ONE THING to know about my mom, it’s that she doesn’t stop. And if you don’t stop, you’re unstoppable.

As soon as we got back to Iran, after the wedding, she joined a secret church with a missionary named Pastor Pike, who would one day—three years later—get

his throat cut in the street like he w...

The secret police of the Supreme Leader of the new government. In our city of Isfahan, they were the shadows on every wall. The invisible claw of the Supreme Leader. They could do anything. Their sudden raids on homes would make families disappear. They tortured people to get information about who was breaking Islamic law. And anyone could be helping them. If the old lady across the street saw a satellite dish on your roof, or a picture of the old king in your kitchen—you’d make eye contact with her on the way to your trash can, and you’d realize she had a hammer over your head. She could tell the Committee and you’d disappear. People suspected their own cousins and dreaded their own children. In the middle of assignments, teachers would hold up a picture of a whiskey bottle and ask if anyone recognized it. An eager six-year-old might raise her hand, and come home to find a ransacked house and Daddy gone.

To be stared at too long at the market meant you were suspected. And so, in turn, you suspected them. The Committee was the Supreme Leader’s best idea. It curdled society in its own fear. One day, they would catch my mom and kill Pastor Pike. But for now, they were lurking behind the curtains of every bathtub.

It was as if Sima brought home a stray cat and said, “Can we keep him?” and my dad said, “If the Committee finds out they’ll kill all of us.” And my mom said, “Then we’d go to heaven telling people about the truth and saving their souls.” And he said, “Akh!”

We hated waiting for grownies to talk about eternity. It seemed so obvious that everything was already eternal. That something made all of it. Something that loved and was beautiful and was cosmically and royally ticked off with what everyone was up to.

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.

My mom was like that. One day after work, she went to her car and there was a note stuck to the windshield. It said, “Madame Doktor. If we see this cross again, we’ll kill you.”

To my dad, this is the kind of story that proves his point. That Sima was picking a fight. That she could have lived quietly and saved everyone the heartaches that would come. If she had kept her head down. If she stopped telling people. If she pretended just a few hol...

Sima took the cross down...

Then she got a cross so big it blocked half the windshield, and she put it up. Why should anybody live with their head down? Besides, the only way to stop believing something is to deny it yourself....

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...

It’s a tough question, because most people haven’t picked a...

A few weeks after that, Sima was in a market buying pomegranates, and tea, and saffron, when a black va...

The Committee men, who looked like regular men, got out and grabbed her up. Nobody in the market said anything. The van drove away and disappeared like a bad memory. The grocer probably put back the pomegranates and the tea and the saffron, so that someone else could buy them.

Oklahoma

it’s a great place to hide.