Everything Sad Is Untrue

by Daniel Nayeri

  “No,” he said, “Yellow cake, with cream inside.”

  “Cream puffs?”

  “Yeah. Twinkles?”

  “Oh. It’s Twinkies.”

  “Twonkles?”

  “No, I’m sure it’s Twinkies.”

  “They’re incredible.”

  I looked out the window.

  Behind the overpass rose a tangle of neon blue tubes—three giant water slides behind a billboard: White Water Rapids. The park extended into flume rides, wave pools, and a lazy river. From the highway, you could only see people far away like ants and hear the tinny music playing on the loudspeaker.

  “That looks interesting,” said my dad.

  “You should take the kids,” said Ray.

  My dad nodded. “They have something like that in Paris,” he said.

  Turns out he’d gone to Paris with Morteza the previous summer.

  * * *

  THE TIME IT TOOK to get my dad out of the car and into our house almost killed my sister. All through the ride over, she’d said, “Speak English,” and he’d said, “Basheh meekonam,” which is “Okay, I will,” but not in English.

  When he entered the house, he looked around at the blank-faced walls, the two prickly bushes outside the window—the tan shag carpeting, the lack of books, the tiny stove. On his face it said, “How did my kids end up here?”

  When he spoke, he said, “You don’t have a TV?”

  Ray said, “We keep the living room for family conversations,” which is true, I guess, since we never had any family conversations.

  “It’s in my room,” I said.

  My mom had been stalling by putting something in the oven, but she finally walked over. The last time they had been together, in Dubai, they were married to each other. Now they were married to Ray and Morticia.

  She walked over, but stopped short. They bowed to each other, like a gesture of affection, but no touching.

  I said, “What did you bring?”

  Everyone was more than happy to jump right into the suitcase.

  Happy reader, honorable friend, I can tell you, he brought back my heart.

  * * *

  MY HEART HAD BEEN broken beyond the repair of King Khosrou’s greatest weaver, and carried in it a hole so big it could be said to be made up entirely of one big flaw.

  * * *

  I STOOD IN OUR LIVING ROOM—while my mother looked through the papers she had asked for, and Ray opened the tray of baklava from the Tehran airport, and my sister inspected her inlay jewelry box—holding Mr. Sheep Sheep.

  His face was just as I remembered. Big round eyes, smiling as if he was happy to see me. He’d forgiven me, even though I had betrayed him. And he was happy to see me. He wasn’t white anymore. A hard life had turned his wool gray. His arms still stretched out wide for a hug, but his left one drooped a little. But that wasn’t the news. The news was that his throat had been slit, all the way around his head. It would have fallen off if not for the jagged black-thread stitching. It was sloppy, like a dentist who didn’t know how to sew had done it on a plane, after some agent in the airport had ripped the sheep open to see if he’d been stuffed with drugs.

  As Mr. Sheep Sheep looked up at the lights of the plane cabin, lying on a cold tray table, it must have felt like an emergency clinic in Dubai.

  I stared into Mr. Sheep Sheep’s eyes and wondered if he was still alive in there, or if the journey—all the ugliness he’d seen—had killed the light in him. I looked at my dad, who seemed like a nice man, and who wanted me to be happy. I don’t know why I did it—maybe I realized everyone in my memories was already gone—but I ran to my room and sobbed into Mr. Sheep Sheep until he was soaked.

  * * *

  OH, AND HE BROUGHT Orich bars.

  They taste pretty much like Mounds bars.

  * * *

  I WOKE UP THE NEXT morning with Mr. Sheep Sheep’s head dangling off his body like a pinky finger caught in a door. The stitching had come loose overnight.

  I got into the car, because I had missed the bus.

  My mom—who had cut her hair short for the convenience—was still messing with it in the rearview mirror, and still frustrated.

  Then we drove to the Economy Lodge Motel to pick up my dad, because it would have been inappropriate for him to stay at our house. Also, there was no room.

  At one point she said, “I can fix Mr. Sheep Sheep if you want.”

  I shrugged, “Whatever.”

  They had sheep in Oklahoma and sheep farmers.

  But what did I know about it, without a Baba Haji to explain? Besides, I was too old for stuffed animals.

  “Do you want me to cancel with Mrs. Miller?”

  She meant the visit from my dad to Mrs. Miller’s class.

  I said, “No.”

  Like the demons who believe in God, I had accepted my fate. To be outside the place where He speaks or listens. To know and remember and to never be believed.

  To be punchable by Jareds and untouchable by Jennifers.

  Maybe the truth of it is that Persians are sinners, and lying is just another one.

  Are you even still there, reader?

  No?

  Maybe you’ve gone and the only eyes are the ones who flipped to this page accidentally. Or you’ve skipped ahead from someplace in the beginning and missed all the parts that explain me to you—from there to here.

  Maybe I’m the patchwork text.

  Maybe I deserve to be hit all the time.

  Maybe I’m a liar.

  Maybe I don’t deserve a welcome.

  And maybe I never had anything good.

  Maybe even this.

  I’m sorry I wasted your time.

  * * *

  ANYWAY, WE PULLED UP to the motel where we would stay the night, sometimes, when Ray was mad and they were getting a divorce.

  My dad shuffled out of his room holding a bag that looked vaguely foreign. Like it wasn’t Nike or Adidas. It was morning, but he was already sweating through his short-sleeve button-down shirt. Keys jangled in his pockets.

  “Good morning, weepy boy!” he said as he collapsed into the front seat.

  I didn’t say anything. “This place is great,” he said. “I already made friends with the 7-Eleven guy. He’s open all night. I wanted a Twinkie cake, but all I had was a hundred dollar bill, and he didn’t have that much change.”

  “You could have bought comic books,” I said.

  “I went outside to see if anybody had change, but nobody walks around here, so all I met were police who wanted to know why I was walking around with all this money.”

  “You got stopped by cops?”

  “Yeah, no problem, Khosrou. Don’t worry. I asked them if they had change for a hundred, and they laughed.”

  My mom couldn’t help but laugh too.

  He told the story as if he was an adventurer on the Silk Road. “I returned to 7-Eleven and bought one hundred dollars’ worth of Twinkies,” he said. “I gave some to the police. I’m friends with them now.”

  He pulled out a Twinkie and tossed it to me. My mom sucked her teeth. In the entire time we had been in Oklahoma, she had not bought a box of Twinkies. Too expensive.

  “Save it for lunch,” she said.

  “Oh eat it now,” he said. “Who cares. The whole world will die someday and who cares if you had a bad breakfast?”

  “How many have you had?” I asked.

  “Seven,” he said.

  I decided to save mine for lunch.

  We—me, my dad, and his weird bag—walked into the school toward Mrs. Miller’s class. I wished for genies to be true, and for me to find one someday, and for it to come back in time and make all the Kellys and Jennifers stay home sick today.

  My dad walked through the halls like he had been there a thousand times, and every time someone had told him he looked handsome.

  His back was straight, belly out. He nodded hello to the custodian, the vice principal, and the office ladies. He didn’t ask anyb
ody permission for anything.

  The classroom was a cement cube. But it had streamers and wavy cardboard on the walls, and posters about kindness that really mean calmness.

  Everybody was in there. Mrs. Miller was at her desk finishing her notes. Jared S. sat in the front, because otherwise he’d flick the ears of the person he sat behind. Kelly J., the girl who had made my heart, little by little, immune to poison, sat in the back with Jennifer L. and Jennifer S. Daniel W., who was born a Daniel, sat beside them and helped make fun of Michael M., who had been home-schooled until this year and didn’t know any of the chill expressions people use. He didn’t keep notebooks.

  “Introduce me to your friends,” said my dad in Farsi.

  “Kyle’s in a different class,” I said.

  He said, “What’re you, a squirrel, hoarding friendship?”

  Or something like that. It was a phrase I didn’t know, so I made up that meaning based on how it sounded.

  Mrs. Miller looked up and saw us. “Hello,” she said, and walked over to give my father a handshake. She got the kiss-kiss on the cheek from my dad, which isn’t a real kiss, but they don’t do it in Oklahoma, so she said, “Oh!” and laughed like she was nervous.

  “Everyone,” she said, “This is Daniel N.’s dad …”

  She paused, so he’d say his name.

  He didn’t say anything.

  My dad just smiled.

  It was at this moment—standing in front of the whole class for a presentation on Iran—that I knew for certain, he didn’t speak English.

  * * *

  “HIS NAME IS MASOUD,” I said.

  “Muh-zood?” she said.

  “Mah-sood,” he said, cause he recognized his name. But he said it too loud. When you’re speaking a language you don’t know, you forget how loud to make the words.

  In the 1,001 Nights, you have to imagine at least once or twice that Scheherazade loses her place or realizes she’s already used the genie-turns-into-a-mouse trick, and she goes blank. Her eyes—black, begging—stare at the king. He doesn’t know what has happened. The river has run dry.

  There is a pause that lasts almost an entire night, that for Scheherazade feels like the rest of her lifetime.

  Good reader. Wait. No one is good but God alone. Decent reader. Reader who is kind to sheep and wears tasteful hats. Wise reader.

  This was like that.

  We stood before the class as if they were agents behind glass.

  Finally, Jared S. said, “So he’s a dentist?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Does he have a magic carpet?”

  “No.”

  “I do have a carpet,” said my dad in Farsi.

  “A magic one,” I said to him in Farsi.

  “Well I could tell them about one,” he said.

  “Why are you answering for him?” said Kelly.

  “He doesn’t speak English,” I said.

  “Of course I speak English,” said my dad in Farsi. “Why did you say that?”

  “You don’t,” I said.

  He turned to the class, “I—espeek—Engleesh.”

  “Baba,” I said.

  “Are you famous there?” said Jared.

  “I never said he was famous,” I said. Jared was trying to make me seem dumb.

  “Of course,” said my dad, speaking through his barrel chest and mustache. “Very famous. Are you famous?”

  “No,” said Jared.

  My dad turned to Kelly and said, “Excuse me, miss, do you know this boy?”

  She laughed at his playful seriousness.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know he is a little …” He rolled his eyes and wiggled his eyebrows. It could have meant anything, like he’s silly or kinda dumb.

  Kelly burst out laughing. “Yes!” she said.

  My dad turned to Jared S. “See? You are famous.”

  Jared had to smile when my dad made a show of shaking his hand as if he was a movie star and saying, “Thank you, famous man. Thank you.”

  The whole class was laughing by then.

  He answered more questions in his broken English, sometimes turning to me for translations.

  Was it true we had a house with birds in the walls?

  “Of course. Their great-uncle had five pools with swans. And falcons in the roof.”

  Did his great-great-grandpa really get his weight in gold?

  “Yes. He was no—Khosrou, what is the word for ‘giant man’?”

  “Hulk.”

  “He was no hulk like me, so not too much gold.”

  “What about saffron fields?” said Jennifer.

  “What about saffron fields?” said my dad.

  “Do they exist?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you own them?”

  “Khosrou’s mother’s mother’s mother, yes, but no more.”

  My dad turned to me and said in Farsi, “Khosrou, tell them this. They don’t understand what stories are for.”

  “What are they for?” I said.

  “For remembering,” he said, “Tell them this. Rostam, do they know Rostam?”

  “I don’t know.” Then I said in English, “Do y’all know Rostam?”

  “Persian Hercules,” said Daniel W.

  I turned back to my dad, “Yeah.”

  He said, “When the poet Ferdowsi finished his great book, he said, ‘Keh Rostam yalee bood dar Sistan, manesh kardam Rostameh dastan.’ Tell them that.”

  “Uh.”

  “You didn’t understand.”

  “Just the poem part.”

  “Do you know Sistan?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a small town.”

  I turned to the class. “Okay, everybody. Sistan is a small town in Iran.”

  Jared said, “So?”

  “Stay with me,” I said. I smiled at Mrs. Miller, who stood beside us at the front of the room the whole time smiling—not to herself like she had some joke about us in her head, but at us, like she was beaming her happiness right into us.

  “Okay,” said my dad in Farsi, “He says, ‘Rostam was just a local hero of Sistan when I met him.’ Ferdowsi means when he began his poem, Rostam was a real person, famous in a small town. But do you know ‘dastan’?”

  I shook my head, even though I knew it. I wanted to hear him say it, in person and not on the phone.

  He said, “Story. Dastan is the land of stories. The world that we speak.”

  I turned to the class. “Okay, so Sistan is a small town, and dastan is a storyland. When the poet ended his book, he said, ‘When I met him, Rostam was just a local hero of Sistan. I’m the one who turned him into the Rostam of dastan.’”

  “Yes,” said my dad in English, and dropped a meaty paw on my shoulder. He said to the class, “Stories are stories. Life is life. They kiss and they marry, but they die alone.”

  Then he thought about it some more and added, “And death is not the end. They kiss more in paradise.”

  I waited for questions.

  “That took forever to explain,” said Jared S.

  “Yeah, it does,” I said.

  “Your dad’s awesome,” said Daniel W.

  Then my dad put his European bag on Jared’s desk and pulled out a tray of baklava—which, if you don’t know by now, is layered pastry soaked in rosewater syrup and stuffed with cardamom and walnuts. He had bought an extra tray at the Tehran airport for my class. He was thinking about it way back then.

  The whole class stood up and rushed to the front.

  “Hold on, everyone,” said Mrs. Miller.

  I handed out napkins and my dad served pieces of gooey, crispy baklava.

  Kelly J. looked at hers and said, “What is it?”

  Jennifer S. said, “Just eat it. It’s so good.” She had already swallowed hers. My dad gave her another.

  He winked at me as the whole class turned into a party, and whispered, “Sugar.”

  Which was his way of saying a good storyteller gives the peop
le what they want. And it’s kinda funny, cause he’s a dentist, so a good storyteller also makes sure to keep them coming back.

  Kelly brought it up to her lips. I watched and waited for her judgment. Even though I do not love Kelly J., I wanted her approval. She nibbled the pastry as tentatively as a deer. “It’s amazing,” she said. She put the rest in her mouth and smiled.

  I would have jumped like a fool at the chance to offer her another piece. But my dad put his hand on my shoulder. He said to Kelly, “He can make.”

  “Wow, really?” said Kelly. “You can make this?” Reader, she looked at me as if I was Abbas the Baker himself.

  I can’t really make baklava so I shrugged. In Farsi I said, “I can’t make baklava.”

  “Your mother can teach you,” said my dad. “That’s practically the same. It’s more of a promise. You could make it if she asked.”

  It’s not like she became my girlfriend.

  But I did learn to make baklava later, just in case it comes up again.

  As everybody ate and laughed at my dad’s jokes, I took the biggest and best piece of baklava from the middle of the tray, walked to Mrs. Miller, and gave it to her.

  I thought about the long year and everything she’d done for me. How she had always known which to be—a teacher who speaks or a teacher who listens—and I said, “Thank you, Mrs. Miller.”

  She was the best teacher I ever had, and she was crying a little, so I walked off before she could hug me or anything.

  * * *

  A FEW MONTHS AFTER WE finished the workbooks in Italy, the President of the United States said we could have asylum—but only if an American family vouched for us and promised we wouldn’t become the kind of people who live on welfare and steal from Americans.

  It took another few months, but an old couple in Oklahoma said they would. They were retired already—Jim was a NASA engineer and Jean was a school teacher, and if you want to know the details, it’s because their church had a program with Ellie’s church (remember Ellie is Sima’s mom exiled in London), and the word got to them that Sima and her kids weren’t thieves and would be good people. So they signed up. Can you believe that? Totally blind, they did that. They’d never even met us. And if we turned out to be villains, they’d have to pay for it. That’s almost as brave and kind and reckless as I can think of anybody being.