Everything Sad Is Untrue

by Daniel Nayeri

* * *

  IT STARTED WHEN ELLIE moved to London and decided to become English. She colored her hair to be lighter and never spoke about Arman and drank tea with her pinky up. And she didn’t say their names.

  But just cause they don’t have something in English doesn’t mean they don’t have it in England, know what I mean?

  I mean she couldn’t escape the memories, and maybe never left her seat in the train station for the next forty years.

  * * *

  IT GOES LIKE THIS:

  By the time my aunt Sanaz turned nineteen, she spoke English like a proper Disney Princess Diana. If you can express yourself super well, show people who you really are—that you’re just like them—then they might love you. So Sanaz met an English guy who was so handsome and clean that Grandma Ellie cringed when he shook hands with my dad, who, at that time, was just out of prison for buying enough opium to give to an entire village of sad people.

  When this happens, I am three years old. My sister is six. We both have Orich strategies for each other already. My mom and dad were both out of medical school and had already moved to Isfahan, to the house I told you about with the jasmine garden and the birds in the walls.

  Sanaz and Charles are finigonzon and finigonz.

  They wanted to get married.

  We bought plane tickets.

  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.

  First, I will tell you about the peanut butter.

  London was a cold city, paved with wet stones. When we arrived at Ellie’s apartment she opened her door, said, “Khossie!” and squeezed my cheeks into paste.

  Everyone screamed and hugged.

  My dad was wearing a long overcoat he bought in the airport of England (because he had never needed a coat that thick before) with a wad of cash as thick as a peanut butter jar. He carried the giant suitcases into the entryway of the apartment, plopped them on the ground, and said to Ellie, “Where do you keep the knives?”

  * * *

  THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED: My dad approached the suitcase like his dad approached the bull. My mom said, “Massoud, what are you doing?”

  No answer.

  The suitcases, I should tell you, were a set from one of those expensive fashion stores that Oklahoma rich people drive to Dallas to shop at.

  In the airports, the attendant had lifted them and said, “Wow. Beautiful.”

  When we got to my grandma Ellie’s, my dad took the big suitcase to her bedroom. The suitcase was big enough for me and my sister to fit in it. He unzipped the top. Inside were all my mom’s clothes and things for a three-month visit.

  “Massoud,” she said.

  “Hold on.”

  Dad picked up the suitcase and turned it over on the bed. Everything fell out in a pile. My mom sucked her teeth because that would be such an annoying thing to do.

  Then my dad took the knife and stabbed it into the suitcase. He cut all the way around, then ripped open the inner lining. Underneath it was a hidden compartment. My dad turned the suitcase over again and poured out a bunch of brick-shaped things, wrapped in red plastic bags.

  He did this with the entire suitcase set. Something like a few thousand dollars worth of luggage.

  Cut them all into bits.

  Poured out a whole river of red bricks.

  Apparently he’d paid a tailor in Isfahan to sew them into the lining of the super expensive suitcases so the guards at the airport wouldn’t think to inspect them.

  The red bricks were drugs, I found out later, when my sister told me this story.

  In fact, I don’t even know if I was there—because I don’t remember what happened to the suitcases once they were destroyed. I guess they threw them out.

  The only part I actually remember with my own eyes is standing in a really nice German suitcase store in London as my dad shopped for a new set.

  I was really scared, I remember, and my mom wasn’t there. Maybe they had a fight when she found out he’d smuggled drugs into the country.

  I just remember being scared.

  The shop had marble floors. Huge glass doors, with suitcases displayed like sports cars. The attendants all wore black and pointed their noses at the vaulted ceiling.

  My dad barely spoke English, but walked into places as if he was returning to his castle. He nodded to the doorman and shook his hand. The doorman nodded back.

  And suddenly everyone wanted to talk to him. My memory is the back of his coat. And a young German saleswoman laughing at every joke.

  At some point before the memory, he must have said, “Wait here, Khossie.”

  I remember standing in the entryway next to a row of suitcases. I poked one of them and it rolled on freshly oiled wheels.

  “Oh no no no,” said the attendant, lunging at the suitcase before it moved two inches. “No touching,” she said, smiling but not smiling.

  But I had nothing else to do. And the attendant—maybe her name was Gertrude—realized I was just going to be in the way. “Would you like a treat?” said Gert.

  I looked at my dad.

  Back then, I wasn’t poor, so I could take things if people offered them.

  My dad nodded. You have to understand, when he nodded to me or the doorman, it felt like everything was okay and you were a good person and you deserved good things to happen.

  So I said, “Yeth pleeth.”

  Gert said something in German or English—I didn’t know either language except for “yeth pleeth”—and a different person ran into the back of the store.

  The other one returned and gave Gert a package.

  Gert handed it to me. Her face was still in my face. She was kneeling.

  “Tantu,” I said.

  She stretched her lips into a smile again and got up.

  “It’s peanut butter,” she said. I don’t think she had kids or knew what to do with them. What she gave me was a sandwich cookie with peanut butter cream in the middle.

  I already told you I’d never tasted peanut butter before.

  It was the taste in my mouth when my dad said, “I take this set, yes?”

  And he handed Gert a stack of money as thick as a novel. It was so much that Gert laughed at it, and put a hand on my dad’s arm like she had to touch him.

  He didn’t even care what color luggage he got.

  The peanut butter was super sticky.

  I realized it’s for keeping kids busy, and their mouths shut.

  I watched Gert skip behind the counter to stuff the money someplace.

  Her helper went into the back to get boxes.

  And a little river started to flow along the marble floor toward my dad.

  He turned around to say, “Khossie, you ready to go?”

  His mustache was turned up, but when he saw me it fell.

  “Khossie!” he said.

  Gert looked up and saw the river moving toward her luggage.

  It was pee.

  Cause I’d peed myself.

  It just spread across the store looking for something to soak.

  Gert ran toward the nearest luggage set and pushed it away. The rolling bags scattered like pool balls. But they dragged pee with them and painted the floor with more of it. Everybody started scrambling to move suitcases as the pee river chased them around the shop.

  Gert shouted for the helper. He doesn’t need a name. None of these people need names. I never saw them again. They were all furious. They said stuff in German or English.

  My dad picked me up. He was embarrassed, I could tell. All the laughing was over. I still had half my peanut butter cookie in my hand, but I dropped it. He held me away from his coat. He pointed at the wet luggage and said, “I take this too, yes?”

  It’s a funny story when he tells it.

  Everybody laughs and it ends with two sets of luggage and a hilarious trip shopping for pants before we got back to Ellie’s place.

  My dad always walked into every door
carrying a mountain of gifts.

  And even when some of them were soaked in pee, everybody would be happy.

  * * *

  NEXT I WILL TELL you how my sister almost lost her finger. This was two years before we both lost our dad.

  By the time we got to Oklahoma, my sister had become hard and sharp, but in London she was still soft clay, and we were still friends.

  I would spend all the hours she was gone asking for her, and saving half of my cookies on a plate in Ellie’s kitchen, for when she got back.

  Back then, I thought she was the smartest person I had ever met.

  Now I know she’s the smartest person anyone has ever met.

  Trust me on this. I saw her when she was five—she could recite twenty pages of the Persian history books our dad gave her.

  People thought she had a photographic memory—real grown-ups, not her family. She learned English, no problem. They put her in two schools at once in Oklahoma, just so they’d have classes hard enough. I’ve never seen her struggle to understand anything. Sometimes I would stare at her and I knew I could see more inside her than anyone else, and all I could see was the whirring light complex of a supercomputer.

  Have you ever looked at the inside of a computer?

  With the boards and the boxes like miniature cities?

  You can’t see them working. There’s nothing moving.

  You can’t understand it by looking. It’s too complicated.

  Anyway, that’s my sister.

  She was a person too, but more and more she hid that part. She loved our dad more than anybody. I’m not sure she ever liked me at all for being born.

  When we went to England, we planned to stay for months. She was six so they had to find something to do with her.

  Everyone was busy. My mom helped with the wedding and went to Ellie’s church and learned about Christianity. My dad went around the city meeting friends and giving them gifts in red bags. If anyone asked about him, my mom or Ellie would say, “He’s a powerful man, with many friends. Lots of obligations.” I don’t know what that means. My mom once said he was just meeting other addicts and wasting himself.

  I went to parks with Ellie.

  And my sister—they put her in a daycare so she’d have something to do. Otherwise she’d destroy stuff. She was cheeky like our dad, and when grown-ups were around, she’d say things no six-year-old could possibly know and they’d all laugh. But you couldn’t leave her alone or her brain would overload and I would end up crying.

  So they had her in daycare in a neighborhood in London that didn’t like new people. Looking back, they probably thought we were Muslim immigrants who were going to cram into Ellie’s little apartment and cook smelly food and act unEnglish or something.

  One little kid at daycare would hit her a lot.

  Like, my sister would be sitting at a round table, coloring, and he’d smack her in the head with a crayon. But when she’d cry about it, everybody was awkward, because the kid’s parents didn’t really care (and didn’t want people like us in their kid’s class), and the teacher was a bashful British lady who wasn’t going to take sides. So people told my sister the kid probably liked her and that she should be nice to him, even though she should have pinned him down and made him eat the crayons.

  Till one day, the kid said, “Ay! Brownie. C’mere.”

  They were in the schoolyard and he was standing by the door to the kitchen. I should mention, my sister is a genius, but socially—definitely not a genius. She walked over thinking the kid was finally going to be friends with her.

  He said, “I got a secret. Wanna hear it?”

  She nodded.

  He said, “Put your finger here. It’s special.”

  Don’t ever listen to anyone who randomly says, “It’s special,” instead of a real reason. My sister was suspicious, so she only put her pinky finger in the little space in the hinge between the door and the doorjamb.

  The little boy ran over to the other side, as if he was going to hand her a secret note or something.

  I think about my sister in that exact moment a lot.

  She’s just six.

  Brand-new place. She doesn’t speak the language exactly.

  She’s alone at a school.

  Some kid pelts her with crayons.

  And everybody has given her bad information: Be nice, he likes you.

  But he doesn’t.

  He hated her. Even in his brand-new kid heart, he’d found the hate spot.

  And she’s just standing there with a tiny delicate finger placed in the hinge of a big wooden door.

  The kid is probably giggling like a villain.

  He’s giving every sign that he’s going to hurt her.

  And she is genuinely hoping he’s going to play with her.

  It’s beautiful.

  How badly we all want love.

  It’s tragic.

  How bad we are at searching for it.

  “Closer,” said the kid.

  My sister leaned forward.

  The kid slammed the heavy door in her face, like, “Not welcome.”

  It didn’t even slow down.

  The hinge clamped shut and cut her pinky in half.

  She didn’t even have time to scream.

  The noise of the door slamming was the only part that got the teacher’s attention.

  She looked over from across the yard.

  My sister’s pinky was dangling by a thin string of skin. A little river of blood poured down her arm, over her dress, and onto her leg.

  My mom says that by the time she arrived, the only thing the teacher had managed was to put my sister’s pinky parts in a mug of ice.

  My mom says my sister was standing by herself, shivering. The kid was back playing with all the other kids, who got an extra long recess, because of what he did to my sister.

  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 if you think my sister would ever fall for anything like that again—now that we’re here in Oklahoma and lots of boys have that same way of showing they like you—then you’d be dead wrong.

  * * *

  AS MY MOM RUSHED her to a hospital to have her finger sewn back on, my sister hardened her expectations for the world into a tight ball.

  She cried most when she saw the needle that would sew it back on.

  My mom told her she’d never have to go back to the school.

  When my dad got back from wherever he was, he took her for ice cream. And then they all came back to Ellie’s apartment.

  I remember that my sister went straight into the bedroom to sleep and my mom cried as she told Ellie what happened.

  That’s how my sister almost lost her finger.

  But I didn’t just tell you the story for no reason. I told you because it was the start of everything that would come later. It was the first step of how we ended up in Oklahoma.

  And it wasn’t even the weirdest thing that happened that day.

  I wonder sometimes, if I had looked at the space under the door to the bedroom, where my sister was sleeping, whether I would see beams of magic light shining from inside.

  Because when my sister opened the door and walked out a few hours later, she was suddenly happy again, as if everything was going to be alright.

  And when they asked her what happened, she said she’d met an angel.

  * * *

  BELIEVE ME, I KNOW how it sounds. But imagine you’re six and you came home every day crying, begging not to go back to school. And the grown-ups just pat you on the head and say, “There there. It’ll get better.” But it doesn’t get better. Only worse.

  Until today, you got your finger chopped off in a door and everyone realized they should have let you stay home.

  If that was you, would you walk out two hours later into th
e living room—where the adults are sitting at the table having tea and biscuits and kicking themselves—and would you tell them everything was fine, or would you milk it a little?

  The answer is you’d milk it so hard it would turn into butter.

  There is no reason to come out and say you’re fine.

  But that’s what she did. She said she was lying in Ellie’s bed. By the door was a rolled-up Persian rug that we had brought with us for Ellie. When my sister woke up, she saw a man sitting on the rug. She didn’t know him, but she wasn’t scared.

  When she described him—kind eyes, brown hair, a glow like a TV in a dark room, white robes—Ellie gasped and said, “Oh my God, you saw Jesus.”

  And my sister said, “Yeah,” even though she had no idea who Jesus was or what he looked like, because we didn’t have pictures of him in Iran.

  He only said four words, “It will be okay,” which is funny, because that’s what all the grown-ups said, and it wasn’t.

  Ellie was the happiest I have ever seen her.

  Maybe because it meant there would be another exile.

  “Your daughter’s a Christian,” she said to my mom, who was furious.

  “Yeah!” said my sister, “I’m a Christian!”

  Because she saw it made my mom twitch.

  That was the moment that everything started to blow up.

  It wasn’t the bang.

  Maybe it wasn’t even the lit fuse.

  But it was definitely the struck match.

  The flash and the spark that sent us flying across the world.

  And it was mostly absurd.

  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.

  So all of a sudden my mom had a six-year-old saying she was a Christian, which—if you didn’t know—was a crime in Iran.

  Not a regular one either, a capital crime. The kind where if you’re found guilty, they kill you.

  * * *

  I SUPPOSE IF YOU DON’T want to believe it, all you have to do is say my sister wanted to be like Ellie, or she wanted to harass my mom. Both of which are true.