Martyr!

 Martyr! 

By Kaveh Akbar

Death is a constant in the life of Cyrus Shams. His mother died when he was an infant, her plane, mistaken

for a fighter jet, shot down by the US Air Force. Some 20 years later, his father followed, though he was dead in many ways before his body expired. Cyrus seemed destined to die young too, and made something of a past time of consuming substances -- anything, really -- that seemed sure to accelerate this process.

Until. One day, out of his mind on something, a bulb hanging from his ceiling blinks, and when he wills God to make it happen again, it does. Henceforth, Cyrus becomes sober. But sobriety can only take him so far. He is convinced that his life has no meaning and, from the outside, it's a bit hard to argue with him. He is a perpetual student, a writer who barely writes with no real plan or aspirations for the future. Yet he yearns to imbue his life with purpose.

Then the bulb blinks again. A show opens at the Brooklyn Museum called Death Speak in which an artist, Orkideh, who is diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, sits in a room and speaks with whoever wishes to about life and death. Here, thinks Cyrus, is a woman whose death with have meaning. He launches a writing project about martyrs, flies from Indiana to New York, and meets with her regularly. He is surprised when she goes out of her way to invite him back, and so he returns two days in a row. She hints at knowing something about his mother and her death, which spooks him. He ruminates on it -- how could she know? -- and vows to ask her about it the next day.

Except the next day, Orkideh is dead. Twice. Once when her body expires, and once when Cyrus learns the truth about who she is: his mother. She had been trying to leave Iran with her lover, who took on her identity to fly out quickly to escape her more acutely intolerant and intolerable husband. When the lover dies, Cyrus' mother leaves anyway and builds a new life for herself in New York. Without Cyrus.

Suddenly, Cyrus' whole world view crumbles. His mother, who he had thought died a meaningless death, actually died what he considers to be a meaningful one. They coexist at the same time. Or do they nullify each other? 

It is enough of a twist to shock Cyrus out of his self pity and into the world, perhaps for the first time.