The spectre of death looms large over the life of Cyrus Shams, son of Iranian immigrants and an aspiring poet. He lost his mother as an infant when the Iran Air plane she was in was shot down by US forces who mistook it for a fighter jet, killing almost 300 passengers. A month later Cyrus’s father Ali moved with him to the country that annihilated his wife. The novel begins a few years after Ali’s death from a stroke plunges Cyrus into the deep end of addiction to fight the “crushing hollowness, which governed him.”
His decision to work at a hospital acting as a dying patient for the doctors-in-training is a bone of contention between him and his best friend and roommate, Zee. Recovering from addiction and on the cusp of turning 30, he is unable to chase away “the big pathological sad”. Stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage involving relapses and fraught relationships, Cyrus is desperately seeking his purpose in life. He becomes fixated on martyrdom and the heroic deaths of historical figures such as Joan of Arc, Bobby Sands and Hussain, the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad who was martyred in the battle of Karbala.
The genesis of this idea traces back to him trying to make sense of his mother’s death. “Was she a martyr or not?”
His quest leads him to terminally-ill Iranian-American artist Orkideh, who is presenting a piece called DEATH-SPEAK by spending her last days at the Brooklyn Museum, which seems to be inspired by Marina Abramović's interactive performance art that allows audience participation. She brings Cyrus down to earth by asking him directly if he worries about being a cliched, death-obsessed Iranian man, propelling him to reflect upon how much being a martyr has to do with hubris and his ego-driven fear of being forgotten. His interactions with her lead him down a rabbit hole which makes him question everything he knows about his mother.
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Akbar’s writing is reminiscent of another stellar poet turned novelist, Ocean Vuong – deftly executed autofiction with prose that is ethereal and introspective. There is an earnestness in the way Cyrus challenges the incongruent aspects of his identity to arrive at the intersection of his Iranian and American selves. By the end of Martyr, Cyrus’s fragmented self finds a cohesive self-narrative once he confronts hard truths about his grief, identity and queerness.
