Trying Really Hard To Be Good

MARTYRS HAVE IT easy, thinks Cyrus Shams, the 20-something protagonist of Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel. “Why should the Prophet Muhammad get a whole visit from an archangel? Why should Saul get to see the literal light of heaven on the road to Damascus?” At least they had clarity and purpose, Cyrus reasons.

In Akbar’s Martyr!, Cyrus, a first-generation Iranian immigrant, is an aspiring poet and martyr. His problem, he thinks, is that he doesn’t know what to die for.

Cyrus’ mother Roya was killed when she was a passenger on a jet that was shot down by a U.S. warship (inspired by the real-life downing of Iran Air Flight 655). Her death leaves a gaping wound in the Shams family: Cyrus is haunted by survivor guilt and his father self-medicates with alcohol. Martyr! is in part a meditation on the inherited weight of history and grief.

This burden seems particularly true for immigrants in the U.S. — or anyone who carries the weight of multiple identities. Sociologist and activist W.E.B. Du Bois wrote about the “double consciousness” of Black Americans, who have historically carried within themselves at minimum two narratives: the American dream as well as the nightmare.

Cyrus is Iranian, American, male, queer, an artist, addict, lover, son. Like a traditional form of Persian art created from countless broken shards of giant mirrors, these identities refract and reflect off each other throughout Akbar’s fractured narrative.

Readers may be challenged by the apparent nihilism in the story, but Akbar’s magic trick is that even when his characters are at their most selfish — their most human — his writing takes a warm and generous view of humanity itself. It’s summed up in the words of Cyrus’ lover, Zee: “All those severe poets talking big about the wages of sin all the time,” he says, “but nobody ever brought up the wages of virtue. The toll of trying really really hard to be good in a game that’s totally rigged against goodness.”

Yet for most of the novel, Cyrus is less focused on goodness than on suffering. Early on, he receives a wound on his foot that throbs and pains him; he interprets this as a visible sign of his need for penance and martyrdom. But, like the senseless death of his mother, he can’t find any meaning to glean from the pain. Similarly, Cyrus’ martyr aspirations aren’t born of a great conviction worth dying for, but from his own ego; by starting with a death wish without knowing what he wants to live for, his attempts at “martyrdom” are no more than an act of narcissism.

Cyrus’ journey shifts his perspective. Through this shift, Martyr! argues that suffering for the sake of suffering is egotism; martyrdom can only come from a place of love. Akbar drills home this theme by illustrating the contrast between Cyrus’ hollow martyr complex and his decision to instead choose to live a full life — even with all its lack of narrative closure. He lives in the mystery of grace; he lives, as Cyrus says, in “the mess of it.”

The novel’s resolution is reflected in Akbar’s dedication: “for the martyrs, who live” — and, it might be added, who love.