Everything Sad Is Untrue

by Daniel Nayeri

  I’m not sure why I’m so much less valuable to him.

  Maybe you’re reading this and you know.

  Maybe you see the reason I don’t. Like maybe I’m a bad person, and I don’t realize it, and I don’t deserve a dad.

  I don’t know.

  If you do, and you see me someday, I hope you’ll tell me.

  But I’ll tell you one thing now. 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. And I wouldn’t hit my wife either, not for any reason, not even if she hit me.

  * * *

  SO WE COME TO the hitting.

  * * *

  THE MEMORIES ARE ALMOST all done now.

  * * *

  THAT DAY, AFTER WE TOOK my dad to the airport, we got home to find Ray was in his bad mood. What happened was the last best memory I have of my sister. She’s still around. She’s not dead or anything. I just mean it’s the memory I’ll keep, instead of all the other ones.

  He was furious.

  We knew that because he was working on his car, throwing tools around the garage, and he didn’t say anything as we walked into the house, even after my mom said, “Salaam,” three times.

  “Go ahead,” she said to us. But we knew there would be less fighting if we stayed.

  “No,” said my sister.

  “It’s fine,” she said.

  “No. You come in,” I said.

  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.

  She walked into the house with us.

  In moments like these, when you know something is about to happen, everyone finds some reason to stand around and wait for it.

  Ray stalked into the house.

  They fought.

  I will spare you the details.

  Fighting is never poetry.

  It is always bad storytelling.

  The characters say something and mean something else, but the connection is so obvious it embarrasses the reader.

  It might be, “We still don’t have soy sauce. You didn’t have time to get soy sauce?”

  And that means, “You’ve spent too much time attending to a guest I don’t like.”

  But it escalates.

  They shout. He approaches her so he can look down and she has to look up.

  He looms over her.

  His hands are at his hips, but cocked and loaded.

  She doesn’t back down, and can’t back away—her back is to the kitchen counter.

  She says, “Go to your room,” to us, but we don’t.

  He turns and says, “Go.”

  But my sister says, “No.”

  Her arms are crossed.

  He says, “What’d you say to me?”

  My mom explodes to get his attention. She slaps his back and shouts, “Don’t you talk to her!”

  He grabs her by the shoulders, lifts her, and pounds her into the side wall of the kitchen. The whole kitchen rattles with her bones. The dishes in the cupboard.

  He does it again so hard her head slams into the wall and her knees buckle.

  My sister screams, “Stop! What’re you doing, you animal.”

  Ray must be in a movie in his own mind at this point.

  He turns toward us.

  I look at him and try with whatever look I have to tell him that someday I will know all the moves, and will be strong enough to break all his bones, and that future me will remember this. But he looks past me and storms at my sister. She doesn’t move.

  He juts his jaw down at her and says, “Say it to me again.”

  And she juts hers up at him, eyes directly pointed into his, and says, “If you touch me, I will call the police and they will put you in a cage.”

  He looks like a panther staring down at a parrot. He looks like he wants to kill her. And Dina, that’s my sister’s name, stares back unafraid, and dares him to do it.

  * * *

  ANYWAY.

  * * *

  I DON’T KNOW HOW MY MOM was so unstoppable despite all that stuff happening. I dunno. Maybe it’s anticipation.

  Hope.

  The anticipation that the God who listens in love will one day speak justice.

  The hope that some final fantasy will come to pass that will make everything sad untrue.

  Unpainful.

  That across rivers of sewage and blood will be a field of yellow flowers blooming. You can get lost there and still be unafraid. No one will chase you off of it. It’s yours. A father who loves you planted it for you. A mother who loves you watered it. And maybe there are other people there, but they are all kind. Or better than that, they are right with each other. They treat each other right.

  If you have that, maybe you keep moving forward.

  * * *

  IMAGINE YOU’RE IN A refugee camp and you know it’ll be a year or more before anything happens. It’s going to be a tough year. But for the person who thinks, “At the end of this year, I’m going somewhere to be free, a place without secret police, free to believe whatever I want and teach my children.” And you believe it’ll be hard, but eventually, you’ll build a whole new life—that’s like winning the lottery. It’s like saying you’ll get one hundred million dollars at the end of the year.

  But if you’re thinking every place is the same, and there will always be people who abuse you, and about how poor you’ll be at first. The sadness overtakes you; it’s like saying you’ll get a soup and a sandwich at the end of the year, and that’s it.

  Here’s the thing, you’ll both have the same year at Hotel Barba. But one of you will be looking around with joy and anticipation, wondering what you can do to prepare your kids for the new world. And the other will be slumped in the courtyard, surrendered to the idea that it’s all one long river of blood. I don’t know which belief is true—nobody does. But what you believe about the future will change how you live in the present.

  That’s how she did it.

  * * *

  MY MOM DIDN’T WANT to go to the hospital because she had already gone twice that year, and we couldn’t stay in the house, so we went back to the Economy Lodge Motel next to the 7-Eleven in the part of town where neighbors don’t really talk to each other.

  Ray had stormed out and slammed the door.

  But we knew we had to escape again.

  My sister didn’t talk about it. We just got our things. I grabbed my school backpack, dumped out the books, and put in some clothes and Mr. Sheep Sheep, and my Micro Machines, and the peach pits. This time, I had my own suitcase.

  We got in the car and drove around until nobody was crying and our eyes weren’t so red. Then we went to the motel so my mom could lie down, cause I think she was still dizzy.

  The room was just another cement cube. One brown bed, one bathroom, one window with brown curtains. But it also had a TV with channels we’d never seen before. Dina said, “Let’s get candy and watch stuff.”

  We bought Twinkies, and Pringles, and Mounds bars at the 7-Eleven with money our dad left us. I bought a comic book of Wolverine, the second greatest hero of all time. We watched TV late into the night, until my mom woke up. My sister was asleep. I was watching an action movie by myself.

  She said, “Are you okay?”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  I had been thinking about the 1,001 Nights and wondering what would happen if Scheherazade was sick or dizzy one night and fell asleep right in front of the villain king. Or what would happen if she ran out of stories, her mind went blank, and she knew if she didn’t keep talking, he would kill her. Would she start recounting her
memories?

  Right from the beginning, would she start with her grandpa and grandma and tell all the family stories? Would she run up, eventually, to her own life? To the fruit trees when she was a kid, the rivers and rooftops and mirrors and cats until she was telling him about himself, about the moment she met him, about the telling of that first story, and what she was thinking as she was telling it, and the way he was reacting? Would the memories curve into themselves into a perfect round river? A red river? A heart pumping blood in and out in perfect circulation? What if it goes on forever, the telling and retelling? When did all these words begin? Are they all just distant memories we are passing to each other?

  And what if, like a rug, they are flawed? Memories are just stories we tell ourselves, after all. What if we are telling ourselves lies?

  I don’t know.

  Maybe I was just scared that I would never be strong enough to protect the people I loved. I was crying in her arms while I was thinking all this. She said, “It’s okay.”

  There was a long time of silence.

  Eventually, I said, “Do you remember Baba Haji?”

  And she said, “Of course.”

  “No,” I said. “Do you remember the time I was a kid. I walked around into his courtyard, and there was a bull they wanted to kill for a feast for me. All the men were struggling with it. Is that real? Did that happen?”

  I was terrified of what she’d say, because all this time, I had held on to that one memory like a peach pit in my pocket. It was mine, and it was the only one I had of my Baba Haji. If it was untrue, I don’t think I could take it.

  “No,” she said. “It wasn’t like that.”

  I closed my eyes, because I had lost my Baba Haji.

  “That wasn’t for a feast for you. The bull had gone mad,” she said. “It was going to kick someone or kill one of the farmers. So they went to your Baba Haji. He was so strong, they all went to him for this kind of thing. He took care of everyone who worked for him. And it was a mercy to kill the bull, because it would thrash and break its own neck if they didn’t.”

  “Really?” I said. “And did he come out and hold my face?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And were his hands red with blood?”

  “Oh no. He would never have done that. You must have imagined that.”

  “But he smiled at me.”

  “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.”

  We sat in the dark motel room with the light of the TV flickering. I knew we would be whole one day.

  Maybe it would take a thousand years.

  But we’d get there, little by little.

  author’s note

  HELLO, READER. It’s Khosrou again, but this time I am thirty-six years old, with a beard, and a job where everyone calls me Daniel.

  Around thirteen years ago, I was living in New York City, when my dad called with the news that my Baba Haji had died. I knew right then I would never have another memory of my grandfather, other than the three I recounted in this book. All I ever wanted up till then was to return to Baba Haji’s house in Ardestan, to learn how to be a man, to farm, and to reclaim the eighteen sheep he had given me on my fifth birthday.

  That was the moment I began to write this story.

  I figure you want to know which parts are true. The short answer is all of it is true. I have changed the names of some people simply to avoid calling them out, combined others into a chorus of Jareds and Jennifers, and played a tiny bit with the timeline. But the elements are all—to my recollection—true. Ah, but remember, a patchwork text is the shame of a refugee. I am afraid I did not have access to family records, historical documents, or even most of my family members. I relied on interviews I made of my parents. And, of course, I spoke only, ever, from and about my memories. Even the stories of the generations before were from the memory I had of hearing them. My mother would like me to tell you that her father was not nearly as bad as I remember him. Perhaps I misunderstood a great deal, in the way that a child misunderstands, but those are the myths I believed at the time.

  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. But you’re not a liar. You’re just Persian in your own way, with a flaw.

  I have a son now. He is the exact age I was when I freed Mr. Sheep Sheep, and I can’t imagine ever losing him. I pray that he will be rich in memories of me holding him. He is named after my Baba Haji.

  acknowledgments

  IT HAS TAKEN much of my adult life to write this book. In that time, a great many people showed me undue kindness, and deserve my love and gratitude. My mother, first and foremost, is truly the hero of this story. Without her unstoppable bravery I’d be unrecognizable to myself. My wife, Alexandra, and son, Gideon, have given me the love that kept me intact while revisiting all these moments of shatter. Carey Wallace is the reader whose opinion I have relied upon at every step.

  Stacey Barney was the friend and advisor who told me to write this from the perspective of my younger self, and opened the floodgates as result. It was Namrata Tripathi who advised me, and invited me to her company dinner even though I was just a stray at a book conference.

  As most people do, I made a fool of myself the first time I met Arthur Levine. His mythology is well-known, and I wanted so badly to win his esteem. He was gracious and encouraging—exactly as you’d wish heroes to be. He was the first and only editor to see the book and his guiding hand made it far better than I could have on my own. Thank you, Arthur. I imagine Khosrou and Arturo would have been friends, and I hope this book makes you proud.

  Thank you to the entire team at Levine Querido: Meghan Maria McCullough, Antonio Cerna, Nick Thomas, Semadar Megged, and Alex Hernandez. I’m so proud to be a part of your adventure. To have been the first book of Levine Querido feels like I have been given a part of history.

  Thank you to Elizabeth Parisi for art direction and infinite patience. Thank you, David Curtis for art unmatched. Thank you, Anamika Bhatnagar for the most thorough and encouraging copyedit I’ve ever had. Thanks also to Allison Elsby, Shona Burns, and everyone else at Chronicle Books.

  And now we come to Joanna Volpe. Reader, I wish you knew what I know. I wish you understood what I mean when I say Joanna Volpe is, hands-down, the best agent in the industry. Jo is a visionary who speaks, and one who listens. She’s a kind friend and I’m honored she’d choose to work with me. My greatest gratitude to her, and to Pouya Shahbazian—a Persian brother in arms. Thank you, Meredith Barnes, who is so talented I have dreamed of working with her for ages, and who showed up for this project like some sort of genius ex machina. Thank you to the entire New Leaf family: Suzie Townsend, Hilary Pecheone, Joe Volpe, Abbie Donoghue, Veronica Grijalva, Mia Roman, Kathleen Ortiz, JL Stermer, Janet Reid, Jordan Hill, Cassandra Baim, Mariah Chappell, Madhuri Venkata, Kate Sullivan, Dani Segelbaum, Devin Ross, Jordan Hamessley.

  And thank you, reader. Time is an unrenewable resource and you have given some to me. If ever you see me, consider this your invitation to say hello. You deserve my thanks in person.

  That’s enough from me.

  Thanks, everybody.

  Some Notes on This Book’s Production

  The art for the jacket was created by David Curtis layer by layer: The sky was painted with a gradient wash; the landscape was painted in acrylic with some details in colored pencil; and the trees were drawn in ink. The rest was drawn digitally, and the layers brought together, on a Cintiq in Photoshop, with some added paint and pencil textures. The text was set by Westchester Publishing Services in Danbury, CT, in Melior LT Std, designed by Hermann Zapf in 1952. Zapf was inspired by the concept o
f the superellipse, and by the Didone typography of the 19th century, which was characterized by narrow serifs and strong contrast between thick and thin lines. The display is set in Futura Bold Condensed and Futura Bold, condensed and bolded versions of the original Futura font family designed by Paul Renner in 1927. Popular since its inception, Futura’s design is marked by low-contrast lines and near-perfect geometric forms. This e-book was created by Westchester Publishing Services.

  Production was supervised by Leslie Cohen and Freesia Blizard

  Book jacket designed by Elizabeth Parisi and Semadar Megged

  Book interiors designed by Semadar Megged

  Edited by Arthur A. Levine