Everything Sad Is Untrue

Ray and Daniel’s mother divorced once, but when Ray told the pastor he repented, the pastor told Daniel’s mother to remarry him.

Aziz eventually remarried, and her new husband, Agha, adopted Ellie, who married at 13. Agha wanted to have his own kids with Aziz, but no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t have kids. Aziz told Agha she must be infertile to save him the humiliation, and he asked her for a divorce. She eventually married again, but only to have a companion.

Ellie now lives in England. Before she left Iran, she and her husband had four kids, and her husband, Arman, often cheated on her. She would stay home and write poetry. She eventually fell in love with another man, who Daniel imagines to be a librarian. The only real information he has is that his grandmother and her lover decided to kill her husband. The lover tried to sneak in and shoot Arman. Ellie was waiting at a train station, planning to leave behind her children. A man arrived to tell her that her lover was dead and that her husband was sending her away with her youngest daughter, Sanaz.