Everything Sad is Untrue: Daniel Nayeri

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Daniel: How do you get out of a country that is overseen by a totalitarian theocracy? How do you escape? Do you bribe everybody? Do you just go to the airport?

We did. We went to an airport, sort of in some ways, knowing we were going to get flagged.

Shelby: Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com.

Ann: This is FamilyLife—

Dave and Ann: —Today!

Dave: I have never read a book quite like this. This was an exciting, exciting read, and we’ve got the author in here. Listen to this: Everything Sad is Untrue. It’s a true story—

Ann: —right.

Dave: —about our author, sitting right here.

Ann: This is going to be super-fun today!

Dave: Yes; Daniel Nayeri is with us.

I read this out loud to Ann when we got the book—

Ann: Yes, he did.

Dave: I said, “Oh, listen to this! This grabs you.”

Our books never grab anybody, but yours says, “All Persians are liars, and lying is a sin. That’s what the kids in Mrs. Miller’s class think, but I’m the only Persian they’ve ever met, so I don’t know where they got that idea.” I mean, that’s the opening paragraph. You are a writer, dude!

Daniel: Thank you; thank you very much.

Yes, I started playing with this idea. Anytime you have a character who’s trying to tell you this story, some of it is really grand and has all kinds of what you’d call coincidences or miracles or whatever. He’s sort of immediately trying to address the skepticism of somebody who’s just not going to believe it.

So, he says, “Alright. Everybody thinks I’m a liar, but I don’t know what to tell you. It’s what happened.”

Dave: I mean, in some ways, as I’ve heard your story, and reading it and watching you (on YouTube^®) do interviews, they really did think you were lying about your story, right?

Daniel: Well, as a kid, it totally makes sense, right?

Dave: Yes.

Daniel: I mean, it opens with a young boy who’s in the sixth grade standing up in front of his classroom and trying to explain what life is like back in Iran.

Ann: And this is your life memoir.

Daniel: Correct, yes.

Ann: Yes.

Daniel: Anytime I would say that—you know, admittedly, we were fairly poor when we came to Oklahoma. I dressed in Sam’s Club^® sweats, and I thought it was cool if you did the matching top and bottom. [Laughter]

Dave: Like pajamas?

Daniel: Yes, like pajamas. I didn’t know. Somebody should have labeled it as pajamas at Sam’s Club: “Pajamas; not for school.” [Laughter] My social life wouldn’t have taken such a hit.

So, you have a kid standing there in one-color Sam’s sweats, saying, “We used to have a house with a pool and an aviary in the middle, where every wall was glass, and you could look in and see the tropical birds. My father’s father had orchards and land, out in the outskirts of Isfahan. Isfahan is an ancient city from the Silk Road, where the great Arabian Nights tales happened!”

You can imagine a kid saying, “Yeah, sure!” You know? “I think you saw that in a video game called Prince of Persia. You for sure made that up.” [Laughter] And I was, you know, the poor refugee kid. So, I completely understand anyone’s skepticism.

I think when you tell a story—especially when you tell a story with a kind of wistfulness [like] a kid does: “My father was there; my grandfather was there”—you know, every kid kind of says, “My dad can beat up your dad,” you know? [Laughter]

There’s that kind of heroism that we see our fathers and grandfathers with. When that gets seeped into the story, all of the sudden, he’s a larger-than-life figure. “My dad memorizes poetry! He’s a great dentist! Everyone in Isfahan agrees, he’s the greatest dentist there!” It’s like, “Well, maybe he is. He’s a good dentist, to be certain, but”—

Ann: —and your mom is a doctor.

Daniel: —that’s right, she is. So, you know, all those little fish tale exaggerations, maybe, are also a part of it, and I completely admit that. That’s what happens when a kid is trying to remember a home that was, at that time, complete and whole. So, that all kind of comes together in that. And then, you know, fast forward to being at the cafeteria, where he’s saying all of this, and the kid [says], “Yeah, okay.”

Dave: Yes. [Laughter]

Daniel: “We don’t believe it.”

Ann: But we’re all drawn to great stories.

Daniel: Yes.

Ann: That’s why, as Dave and I were reading it and looking at your book, we thought, “Man, our listeners are going to love this great story of life change.”

Daniel: Thak you.

Ann: And you’re such a good storyteller, you know?

Daniel: Thank you.

Ann: So, this is really fun.

Dave: Yes, so, take us back. I mean, obviously, we’re in—

Ann: —take us back to that little boy.

Daniel: Sure.

Dave: We’re in Oklahoma now, but you can go pre-Oklahoma.

Daniel: Well, the reason it starts there is because, as I said, when you’re standing in front of a classroom, and you’re trying to express the fundamental question for this little refugee from Iran—“Why did you come here?”—the question is always “why,” right?

You say, “Well, we came here because we were refugees, and we got asylum because a wonderful family in Edmond, Oklahoma sponsored us.”

“Okay, then, why were you refugees?”

“Well, we were refugees because my mother converted from Islam to Chrisitanity, and that’s a capital crime in Iran, which means if you’re captured and found guilty of apostasy in the Islamic courts, you’ll be put to death.”

“Okay, well, why did she commit a capital crime?”

Ann: I mean, right there: aren’t kids like—I’m assuming that their jaws are kind of open, saying, “What?!”

Daniel: Right, but there are also a lot of questions.

Ann: I bet!

Daniel: Because even just every noun I just said requires some explanation.

Ann: Yes!

Daniel: “Wait! Islamic courts?”

“Well, yes; it’s a theocracy over there, which means there are both legal courts and theological courts. You can be found guilty of religious crimes.”

So, you find yourself explaining a lot, and you find yourself in that position where you’re telling the story, and they say, “Okay, well, why did she do that?” And you say, “Well, that’s a bigger question.”

“Why did she commit this crime?”

“Well, she’d been captured by the secret police, and they told her that they wanted to know the names of all the people in the underground church she was attending, or they would kill her and her kids.”

[The kids asked], “Why?”

“Okay! Let’s go back.” [Laughter] “She joined the underground church because she had converted when we, as a family, had gone to the United Kingdom in order to attend a wedding.”

“Well, why did you go to the [U.K.]?”

“Okay; well, I have to back up a little bit. My grandmother, who’s my mother’s mother, was exiled to the U.K. because she had divorced from her husband, who was my grandfather, and with her went her youngest daughter, which is my mom’s youngest sister (my youngest aunt). She grew up, and she wanted to get married; a normal thing to do. So, we went to attend. Now, my mother, who at that time was a very devout Muslim—she was a Koranic scholar, and she was on the side of. . .”

You know, a lot of people think we came here because a lot of Persians came here after the Revolution, because there was an Islamic Revolution in the ‘70s. My mother was on the side of the Revolution. She actually was very, very devout. So, when we went to the United Kingdom, this was a Christian nation. They were going to get married in a church. They had converted to Christianity.

My mother, at first, was very hostile to that notion, and she was kind of stand-offish, I guess you’d say with the church. The idea was, “Okay, we’re going to attend the wedding, but nothing more.” We were there for a long time. It wasn’t just for the wedding. We were there for about six weeks, I think, in order to help, and in order to just have a family reunion. My mother’s mother was there; her sister; all that stuff.

So, while we were there, quite a few things happened, and this is a category—in the book, there are moments when you [say], “Here’s a moment where you don’t have to believe in miracles; but then, I’m just going to tell you a bunch of coincidental things that happened.”

Dave: Yes.

Daniel: “We can just chalk it up to that, if you’d like.”

But yes, there was a daycare center—as they were helping with the wedding, my sister was going to a daycare; there was a little boy there who—you know, who knows why little kids do anything? He had sort of decided that he was going to trick her. He said, “Hey! Stick your finger in this little door jamb.” It was a fairly gullible thing to do; she does—she sticks her pink in there, and he slams the door. It severed the finger.

Ann: Wow.

Daniel: It’s just this horrible injury; this thing that happens. My mother rushes to the hospital, and everything is fine. They sew it back on. It’s just scary and traumatic.

Ann: “Everything’s fine.” [Laughter] They sew her finger back on.

Daniel: Just the tip! [Laughter] Let’s not get crazy here.

I don’t know how many times you’ve really been saved by the tip of your pinky. I’m not sure. [Laughter] Are you that attached?

Dave: I mean, would it have happened if your mom weren’t a doctor? Did she put it in ice immediately?

Daniel: Yes, she put it in ice immediately. Maybe; perhaps. I think everybody would probably think to put it in ice.

Dave and Ann: Yes.

Daniel: Where else would you put it?

Ann: Okay, well, keep going.

Daniel: A pocket would be a terrible place for a pinky. She’d forever have lint in there.

[Laughter]

We came back, and it’s the return that’s important, because my grandmother (it was her apartment where we were staying) goes and puts my sister in my grandma’s bed. She’s kind of in that post-traumatic lull. She takes—they were just going to have her take—a nap. We were all in the living room.

Not 30 minutes later, she comes back out and she’s this happy child, as the story goes. Everyone’s kind of wondering what’s happened. Is the emotional elasticity of a child so good that you bounce back already?

Ann: Yes.

Daniel: Or is she--? So, everyone was saying, “Hey, how are you doing? What’s going on?” She describes this moment that everybody still wonders about; because she says, “Well, there was this man in my room, and he was sitting at the corner of my bed. He said, ‘Everything’s going to be okay’ and that ‘I’m his now.’”

She proceeds to describe him more, and one of the reasons this is sort of odd is because, of course, here in the States of anywhere in the West, we have a lot of images of Jesus. We’ve seen these images wherever: on posters, in people’s living rooms. You know, we kind of have a sense of the iconographic Jesus, on a crucifix.

That’s not how you’re raised in Iran. Iran is not a Christian nation, and those images aren’t everywhere. So, for a little kid to make this description felt fairly authentic. My grandmother, who was a Christian, said, “You know, that sounds exactly like Jesus!”

Dave: Yes.

Daniel: “That sounds right.” She said, “I’m a Christian.” Famously—my sister is very precocious, very smart, and very stubborn—my mother has this sudden realization that we’re about to go back to Muslim Iran, where there are Secret Police. The environment was that teachers would sometimes hold up pictures of whiskey bottles and ask if anybody recognized this (because, of course, alcohol is illegal in Iran). If any child raised their hand, because they had, presumably, seen that bottle at home, the Secret Police would raid their home by that afternoon.

So, we’re talking about a very intense, totalitarian state. It’s not the kind of place where a six-year-old can skip around and tell a story about her finger and Jesus, and that, now, she’s thinking about being a Christian. None of those are good moves! But then, what it really kicks off is this force. My mother, now, can’t be standoffish with that church.

Ann: Yes!

Daniel: She’s not just going to attend. Now, she’s got to kind of attend to and deal with this. When she does—and by that, I mean quite literally, she has to read the Bible, and say, “Okay, what is my grandmother doing? What is happening?”

Ann: Yes.

Daniel: When she reads it, one of the things she always describes is that “a lucky factor” in her life was that she had done all that reading of the Koran, because there are plenty of people who just are culturally what they are, whether that be Muslim or Christian, or whatever they are. That’s just the world they’re in; that’s the culture. They don’t know exactly what the specifics of their faith are.

So, sometimes, you can have these moments where you’ll tell someone—especially a Muslim; you’ll tell them—about Christ, and they’ll say, “Yes, yes; He was a good teacher” or “We venerate him, too.”

Ann: Yes.

Daniel: And you say, “Right! I understand that; but there’s a difference that makes a difference here.” For her, that was a very, very clear difference, as she was reading that Bible. She converted during that time, specifically because, as she was reading it, she was making that comparison and contrasting it. [She was] saying, “This is the truth. I’m seeing it.” So, we returned to Iran at that point (from that wedding), and as I said, that was the inciting incident; because now we’re back, and she’s meeting up with a missionary there.

Ann: This is a big deal!

Daniel: Yes!

Ann: It’s a big deal!

Daniel: She had this zeal.

Dave: And she knew how big of a deal it was in Iran, right?

Ann: Yes, she did!

Daniel: She did; although, my mom—I tell people: she’s about as tall as a houseplant. [Laughter] She’s a very, very small woman; but also, I’ve seen her outwork college students.

One time, we were all moving me somewhere, and all of my college buddies—tough, big guys—by lunchtime, they were sitting around that pizza, exhausted. My mom was still just going back and forth! She’s a tough one.

Dave: That would be her [Ann].

Daniel: Yes, right. I believe it.

Ann: And she’s smart! She’s a physician?

Daniel: Yes. Even though she knew about that danger, one episode I always talk about it is [that], because she was so zealous and completely unafraid–in what might be, from the world’s perspective, a reckless way; she just put a cross up, hanging from her rearview mirror.

Ann: Come on!

Daniel: It is nuts! It’s a [crazy] thing to do!

Ann: Yes.

Daniel: We were—she was—at the market one day, and someone scrawled something on her car: “If I ever see this cross again, I’ll kill you!” It was really just an aggressive thing to see; the kind of thing—most people would take it down. “It’s not worth it! Just go to the market, get your eggs, and come back.” [Laughter]

She did take it down, and she put up a bigger one.

Dave: Did she really?! [Laughter]

Daniel: Yes.

Ann: This says everything we need to know about your mom.

Daniel: Right; yes.

I thought, “I would never do that.” I’m four times her size, and I would still just [let] caution prevail. But that’s not what she was up to. She was going to job interviews as a doctor for this hospital, witnessing to the interviewer. Again, this was in a city that was being run by the Secret Police, which has the most ominous name in the world! They’re called “The Committee,” the “komite.” [co-mi-tay]

Dave: The committee?

Daniel: Yes, “The Committee.” And if you get brought before The Committee, there is no desk between you. It’s not a well-lit interview space! [Laughter] It’s just such a terrifying panopticon. Everybody is telling on everybody. If you’re throwing out beer bottles in the trash, the neighbor ladies might see it, and that night, you might get raided. It’s such a tight, fear-controlled environment.

For her to do those fearless things has always been a really strong thing.

Ann: What is your dad thinking?

Daniel: Oh, he thinks she’s gone crazy!

Ann: He does?

Daniel: Yes. He’s a Sufi, so he’s the type of Muslim—Sufi is sort of the mystical tradition of Islam. They’re like hippie Muslims. [Laughter]

Ann: That’s the best way to describe it.

Daniel: Yes; that’s the best way. Rumi, the famous poet—

Ann: —yes—

Daniel: —was a Sufi. There’s a great emphasis on incredible poetry and, I think, a really beautiful tradition of reveling in the majesty of the Lord; and also, kind of a very strong tradition of fear of the Lord. So, a lot of interesting philosophers and writers have come out of the Sufi tradition. My dad is what you might call “light” on all of this stuff. He’s very much a pragmatist, not a religious man.

So, he has—every single time I’ve ever spoken to him on the phone—said, “Religion has ruined my life. Your mother didn’t need to do any of this!”

Ann: Oh.

Daniel: To jump to that moment: one day, she was in that market again, and some men, not in uniform, pulled up in a van and throw her in.

Daniel: “The Committee” showed up!

Daniel: The Committee, yes. And they took her to a safe house and started to interrogate her. They told her, of course, what I said, which was: “We want the names of the underground church, or we’ll kill you and your kids.” They basically just kicked her out of the safe house for her to walk home.

People always ask: “Well, why didn’t they keep her in custody?” I go back to [the reality] that this is a city that’s on lockdown at all times. They know where she is; they know where she is.

Ann: Yes, and was the underground church, at that time, growing?

Daniel: It was, yes! Isfahan is a city that is a fascinating place, because there’s a city within a city (kind of like Vatican in Rome).

Ann: Yes.

Daniel: There’s a city called Jolfa in Isfahan, and Jolfa is traditionally an Armenian cultural city space. They’ve always been allowed, because they’ve been there for so many years. They’re traditionally Christian, and they’ve been there for so many years that they’re kind of allowed. There’s, obviously, a tax; there’s, obviously, social separation in those ways.

If any of them are ever discovered proselytizing—they have wonderful bakeries there. If, for some reason, some Muslim is buying some cookies, and they say, “Hey, do you want to tell me about your faith?” Nope! That is not the kind of conversation we can have. And if you do have it, you’re going to prison.

But what that meant was [that] there was—in a country that’s 96% Muslim, and the other 4% is not Christian (I think it’s 0.7% Christian last time I checked)—a very, very small percentage of Christians. But there was still a population of them in the city where my mother was, and there was a missionary who was supported out of a church in New York City who was there. They were just sort of beginning an underground movement.

So, when that happened, that day where my mother was given that ultimatum and that threat, I enter the scene when my dad picks me up from kindergarten. We come home, and my mother is—you know, this is a loaded term, but accurate for the moment—absolutely hysterical. She doesn’t know what to put in a suitcase; doesn’t know where to go; doesn’t even know how it’s going to happen.

There begins another series of miracles that I’ll leave for the book; but, effectively, it’s a lot of logistics. How do you get out of a country that is overseen by a totalitarian theocracy? How do you escape? Do you bribe everybody? Do you just go to the airport?

We did. We went to an airport, sort of in some ways, knowing we were going to get flagged. Eventually—you know, that was the moment where we sort of realized (I did, as a young child): “Oh, my father has no real interest in this situation.”

Ann: “He’s not coming.”

Daniel: Yes, “He’s staying, and we’re leaving.” So, I didn’t even understand divorce at that point. I thought my dad was going to come later—

Ann: —yes—

Daniel: —when he sold our house or something.

Ann: Let me ask you—we’ve got about a minute left—

Daniel: —oh, goodness!

Ann: As a little boy, were you scared?

Daniel: Yes; I used to sleep under my bed, for a long time. I thought that would trick the people who ran into my room.

Ann: Ohhh! So, your mom’s fear and some of the things in getting you out, you felt, as a child?

Daniel: Sure; yes, absolutely! I mean, there’s an adventurous quality to seeing new places and things like that, but fundamentally, yes. I had always assumed there were—in a kid’s mind—“bad men after me.”

Ann: Yes.

Daniel: It’s that sort of thing. I was very keen on trying to get strong, get good at self-defense.

Ann: Goodness.

Daniel: You know, hide properly and well. Yes, that would be a part of my childhood.

Shelby: I’m Shelby Abbott, and you’ve been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Daniel Nayeri on FamilyLife Today. You can, obviously, be captivated by a story like Daniel’s. If you want to learn more—if you want to read more—about what actually happened with him, you can read his book, Everything Sad is Untrue: A True Story.

You can get your copy by going online to FamilyLifeToday.com or finding a link in the show notes; or feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329 to request your copy. Again, that number is “F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY.”

Isn’t it amazing how God works in families? It’s just so incredible; the stories that are gold about how God works by bringing people into the context of families in order to see life change happen. That’s what we really believe in here at FamilyLife. We are dedicated to reaching families and making every home a godly home. If that’s something that you resonate with, or you’ve been impacted by FamilyLife Today, I just really encourage you to partner with us. Jump in! Link arms with us and become a financial supporter.

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Again, you can head online to FamilyLifeToday.com to make your donation, or you can give us a call at 800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word, “TODAY.”

Now, tomorrow, Daniel Nayeri is back to talk about his journey from Iran to Oklahoma as God used it to highlight his faith, build resilience in him, and discover that there can be kindness in strangers. That’s coming up tomorrow. We hope you’ll join us.

On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I’m Shelby Abbott. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

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