Sunaina Luthra ON June 18, 2024, IN Book Review, Martyr by Kaveh Akbar–FICTION
Rating: 4/5
Imagine standing at crossroads of your life feeling utterly alone with no one to seek solace from? You find yourself entangled in a quagmire of conflict emotions- melancholy, hopelessness and intermittently entangled in the relentless grip of bygone events.
What path would you tread?
Would you delve into deep self-reflection, striving to untangle the past to enhance the present and leave the darkness behind? Or would you plunge into the depths of addiction, propelling yourself towards a tragic demise?
Cyrus Shams choses the darker path. Confronted with his own abyss, he succumbs to his inner demons. Orphaned at an early age, he first loses his mother, Roya Shams when he is just an infant. She dies on a plane to Dubai when it is accidentally shot down over the Persian Gulf by US navy warship. After the gruesome incident his father, Ali, moves to America with infant Cyrus. Cyrus’s youth too finds the obnoxity of life crushing hard on him when his father dies. What is left now in the body and soul? The absence of his parents makes him grapple with grief and depression. The existential being in him is dreadful of survival, and to find solace thus turns to alcohol to numb the pain, and the antipathy of mind finds sleeplessness to guard its effrontery.
Tormented by demise of his parents, he becomes fixated with martyrs immersing himself in the tales of historical figures like Bobby Sands, Joan of Arc and Bhagat Singh believing that their death sparks transformation. He sees no purpose in his parents’ death and searches for meaning in his own life and death and begins writing ‘The Book of Martyrs’ to explore the significance of martyrdom. Upon completing the book, he decides with full conviction to end his life.
However, Cyrus story does have a glimmer of hope. He stumbles upon an advertisement about an Iranian artist Orkideh ravaged by cancer who spends her final days at the Brooklyn Museum New York inviting visitors to converse with her. Drawn by this thought, he embarks on a journey to meet her and to encounter a pivotal moment of truth.
Will this opportunity provide him with a turf to level across what has been lost and sufficed or help him find a new perspective and perhaps reconcile with his past?
‘Martyr’ by Kaveh Akbar explores facets of human emotions and highlights the transformative power of art be it music, visual art or writing, each possessing immense potential to bring across clear perspectives of what is lost. The book underscores that the quest for meaning in life can be fraught with pain and uncertainty, but sometimes through art people like Cyrus can reconstruct their lives.
For Cyrus, the medium is his poetry; find yours and it may help you to discover purpose amidst chaos.
TAKE AWAY
A somber read…….