Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

Why does a book title have an exclamation mark? I kind of get the feeling every time I pick this book up as if the title is trying to spring up at me from the cover. Like a sudden idea that occurred to someone; a Eureka! moment. I have stared at the title long and hard and thought about it a fair few times during the course of my reading this, and have finally settled on the explanation that the exclamation is to jolt one out of everyday living. I think that that is probably what Cyrus Shams, the protagonist, likely felt during the unfolding of the events of the book.  

To be completely honest with you, I started this book with a gut feeling that I wouldn't like it. It's not that I judged it by its cover (which in fact is disturbingly fluorescent and unattractive) or even that I read disgruntled reviews, but more than anything, just a strange sort of vibe I got from the opening pages of petulant drug abuse. That's surely why it took almost a year since I got this book, for me to finally start reading it seriously. But I quickly learned that it was going to be nothing like I had expected it would. Now, of course this doesn't mean I didn't have my qualms about it, but, to say the least, Martyr! was full of surprises.

Cyrus Shams is an Iranian-American, recently sober poet and writer. After having lost both his parents in radically different yet equally meaningless deaths, and himself walking the precipitous edges of relapse and wanting to die, Cyrus decides to write a book about martyrs. People who made their deaths mean something. He wants to make his death, unlike his parents', matter. And to that end, he begins a journey of discovery that would quite literally change everything he had ever believed about love, art, life, and yes, death. The four days that Cyrus spends in New York are loosely the nucleus of this book, but really, the story is made up of people and points of view interwoven across decades and countries. This book explores a multitude of themes, and handles them with authenticity. 

The vicissitudes of sobriety

Cyrus, newly sober, navigates a tumultuous relationship with alcohol. We see him at first, mocking the AA, the steps, lashing out at his sponsor, and through him we see the unnatural prowess of alcohol in giving one a sense of constancy and belonging, often times even the sense of actually living and eventually transforming into a relentless instinct to keep coming back to it. He talks about alcohol as the crowned king of all the substances he's built his life around using, and how that makes it that much more harder for him to stop drinking. "To a drunk, there is only the drink", he says. Cyrus talks about teetering constantly on the edge of giving in. As his life unravels around him, his addiction roils at the back of his mind, ready to pounce and take charge.  

Finding a footing in a world of "in-betweens" 

Being born in Iran and raised Iranian is a fact of life for Cyrus, but for all intents and purposes, he is an American. We get to see this position up close, where he feels a sense of being too far away literally, as well as in spirit, from his home country, but neither fully belonging in the country he grew up in, the country that was responsible for the senseless death of his mother. Throughout his life, having to deal with casual racism on the one hand is juxtaposed with his guilt at the gaping void between him and his homeland. He is also stuck between being unable to find any meaning to his life, and wanting to make his death amount to something good. That uncertainty and dubiousness is the big premise on which his book takes its foundation.

The shifting nature of family and filial ties

Throughout this book, we see instances and experiences from the pasts of several of Cyrus' family, and what they have meant to Cyrus and to each other at different points in time, as they are brought together and torn apart by love and duty. While the idea of the abandonment of a child by a parent will never sit well with me no matter the circumstance, are there exceptions to this rule in the face of impossibilities? The author shows us in Cyrus' two parents, two polarizing realities - his father Ali who lived in filth and misery until he could give his son a shoulder on which to climb and escape those very circumstances, and his mother Roya who took the heavy step of leaving her son behind for the sake of her own life - and in doing so, asks an important question: Is a parent's life supposed to be no more or less than in connection to the child's?

Is art the answer? 

The question, of course, being: "What is worth living for, and dying for?" What is worth doing even when the world kicks you in the face and then some? Martyr! is filled with folklore and poetry and musings on art. It is filled with overwhelming experiences of its characters trying to make sense of living through art. That's their reason for living on, for trudging through muck. Life transforms imperceptibly as time marches past with its cruel scepter, and the only thing that lives forever is art. Which brings me to Orkideh, and without giving much away, I want to only say that she considered her life full and well lived, because she was able to paint. She was able to be an artist, even in her dying moments. Especially in her dying moments. What I found most poignant in the discourse about art that this book offers, is one particular conversation, in which an art gallerist speaks about her past working for two decades cleaning toilets in a factory. And yet, the one thing she holds on to, is that she's an artist. And that that passionate belief is the driving force that bolsters her on, cleaning the toilets every day for twenty years. You are what you love.   

 

Kaveh Akbar writes with a surprising lightness but interspersed with meaning, that sometimes hits you with the full force of a wrecking ball. The sentences are poetic, lyrical almost. That being said, I have to admit I did have a hard time getting accustomed to the multitude of analogies and similes, that struck me as redundant, unnecessary and even jarring, at times. I also didn't know what to make of Cyrus' strange dream sequences. At no point did I particularly feel like I could understand him better because of them. They seemed to serve no apparent purpose, honestly. The multiple points of view were very exciting to read, and I found myself especially looking forward to reading of Roya's experiences. I also specifically liked that the author doesn't center the whole story around the characters' sexuality. Yes, it is an important aspect of their person, and the author treats it as such without overdoing it and asking for too much from the reader. I underlined many passages, and took many notes in the margins, talking to the author and the characters as I went. It was a beautiful way, and a beautiful time spent with it.