Everything Sad is Untrue

Most of us remember the One Thousand and One Nights from our childhood (we probably called it the Arabian Nights).  And we may remember some of the stories that were contained in that book -- for example, "Sinbad the Sailor" and "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp."  (Although both of those stories were later additions, not found in the original versions.) 

We also probably remember the framing story -- how the evil king Shahryar, angry with an unfaithful wife and thence with the entire female gender, begins marrying one woman after another.  Each is married for one night, and then executed.  This goes on for some time until he marries Scheherazade.

Scheherazade entertains her new husband by telling him a story.  Just as it gets to the exciting part, the sun rises, and she quits.  Anxious to know how the story turns out, the king lets her live another day.  The next night, she finishes the story, but then starts another.  This goes on for, well, 1,001 nights.

David Nayeri, a 36-year-old immigrant from Iran, uses the Arabian Nights frame for a story of his own -- Everything Sad is Untrue.   For a Scheherazade figure, he uses his memories of his own 12-year-old self, recently arrived with his mother and sister in Edmond, Oklahoma, as an immigrant-refugee from Iran.  The young David ("Daniel" in the book) speaks to us, the readers of the book, as he also speaks to his seventh grade class in junior high school.

In Iran, Daniel and his mom had been Sayyeds -- direct descendants of the Prophet, and revered for that reason.  His father was a dentist, and his mother was a doctor, with both a Ph.D. and an M.D. to her credit.  They lived in Isfahan, probably the most beautiful city in Iran, "the city of covered bridges.  The city that smells of jasmine."  Their home was beautiful --  he recalled most strongly the smell of jasmine, and the glass-enclosed room within the house, with live trees and birds.  Kids in Oklahoma knew nothing of his past, and saw him differently.

I am ugly and I speak funny.  I am poor.  My clothes are used and my food smells bad.  I pick my nose.  I don't know the jokes and stories you like, or the rules to the games.  I don't know what anybody wants from me.

But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what he saw.

Like you, I want a friend.

He describes himself as a "mazloom" -- "a puppy.  But not a happy puppy, a kicked puppy.  ...  A victim."  He is laughed at.  He is bullied.  He is "different," and Oklahoma apparently isn't a place in which to be different.   But he is strong in ways that his classmates don't understand.  He has experienced a lot, and he has made himself strong to survive his experiences.  He's a survivor.

His teacher asks him to tell the class something about himself.  She gets more than she bargained for.  He stands before the class, and speaks on and on and on.  He tells his own 1,001 tales.

He begins with the origin stories of his family, arising out of myth and legend, stories that are strange and wondrous -- but that leave us the readers, as well as his classmates, confused as to where he is going.  He reminds us that he is speaking only from memory, his patchwork memory of events and his memories of what others have told him.  Bits of memories of myths and legends.  "A patchwork story is the shame of a refugee."  But he also tells us that legends "are more detailed than myths, but not always more accurate." 

He approaches the present, telling stories of his grandparents and great-grandparents.  Finally, we learn of his mother's conversion to Christianity, a conversion she embraced with zeal, with no interest in acting "prudently."  Conversion by a Muslim to Christianity is a capital offense under the laws of the Islamic Republic.  She is arrested, perhaps tortured.  She manages to escape through a series of coincidences that she understandably considers miraculous, and takes her children aboard a flight to Dubai, leaving her husband behind. 

After years of detention in refugee camps in Dubai and then Italy -- times often harrowing -- always afraid that the Iranian secret police would find them and kill them, the family finally receives permission to immigrate to the United States, and to live initially with a sponsoring family in Oklahoma.  Daniel is a lonely boy, a homesick boy, a boy who misses his relatives back in Iran, who misses the smells of jasmine, the familiar food of home.  Who misses his abandoned stuffed animal, Mr. Sheep-Sheep.  A boy who lives a life of poverty, suffering the disdain of his fellow students in Oklahoma.

And then he begins telling his stories, often to the ridiculing remarks and sneers from his listeners -- remember seventh grade? -- but with remarkable empathy and forbearance from his teacher.  Caught up in the stories he tells us, the stories of strange ancestors or of his own life experiences, it is only toward the end of the book that we seriously recall the framing story.

His father receives  permission to visit America for a couple of weeks.  Daniel's classmates are interested to meet this father they've heard so much about, to find out to what extent Daniel has been telling tall tales.  The father arrives, not at all impressive in appearance, knowing little English, but gregarious, totally self-confident in his own importance, and displaying an unfeigned interest in each person he meets.  He answers questions, with Daniel translating, and then -- in a brilliant move -- brings out baklava for everyone in the class, and wins their hearts. 

"Your dad's awesome," said Daniel W."

Daniel's chief tormentor approaches him a bit later.  Daniel cringes, awaiting pain.  "Yeah, man," the boy says.  "How's the summer going?" 

Daniel is a thoughtful boy, and he remembers all his teacher has done for him -- "she had always known which to be -- a teacher who speaks or a teacher who listens" -- and he walks up to her and says "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.

I don't think Daniel becomes suddenly popular.  But he is accepted.  His classmates had listened to him.  His father was not only a cool guy, but spoke the same thoughts as had his son.  The class came to know Daniel, just as the king came to know Scheherazade.

The point of the Nights is that if you spend time with each other -- if we really listen in the parlor of our minds and look at each other as we were meant to be seen -- then we would fall in love.  We would marvel at how beautifully we were made.  We would never think to be villain kings, and we would never kill each other.  Just the opposite.  The stories aren't the thing.  The thing is the story of the story.  The spending of the time.  The falling in love.

All the good stuff is in between and around the things that happen.  It's what you imagine I might be like when I'm not telling you a story, but we're sitting together in silence.  Would my hands be fumbling with themselves in my lap? Would I be nervous? Would I love it if you asked about Final Fantasy? And would I say yes if you invited me to your house?

Daniel is still a sad boy.  He misses his grandfather, who he will never see again before he dies.  He misses life in Iran.  But he sees a path forward in America. 

We are proud of him, and  confident of his future.