Martyr!

by Kaveh Akbar

He liked how the Quran put it that way, not “until you die” but “until you are of those who perish.”

“Can you imagine having that kind of faith?” Cyrus asked. “To be that certain of something you’ve never seen? I’m not that certain of anything. I’m not that certain of gravity.”

Why would anyone choose feeling shitty when feeling good was an option?

in Iran, there are these schools for the children of men killed in the war, who they call ‘martyrs.’ Those martyr schools are the good schools, the fancy schools, you try to get your kids into them. Kids with healthy parents grow up jealous of orphans, because the children of martyrs get automatic college admission, all this special treatment. I’ve heard of children of martyrs trying to hide it, like they’re ashamed of all the privilege.

“But you want to die. And you want for that death to be glorious. Like all Iranian men.”

Gilles Deleuze called elegy la grande plainte, “the great complaint,” a way of saying “what is happening is too much for me.”

“What I mean is, I think maybe you’ll find your real ending once you stop looking for it,” Orkideh said. “I think real endings tend to work their way in from the outside.”