In “Cyrus and Ali Shams,” the nar­ra­tive unfolds in Indi­ana, USA, focus­ing on the com­plex rela­tion­ship between Cyrus and his father, Ali. As a child, Cyrus is trou­bled by insom­nia, which replaces his broth­er Ali’s child­hood sleep ter­rors. While Ali finds solace in sleep, Cyrus expe­ri­ences a tumul­tuous men­tal cycle, replay­ing dai­ly inter­ac­tions and wor­ry­ing about his uncer­tain sta­tus as an Iran­ian immi­grant. He often fears depor­ta­tion and grap­ples with the bur­den of his father’s pre­car­i­ous visa sit­u­a­tion, push­ing him to mask his iden­ti­ty out of con­cern for safe­ty.

Ali works dili­gent­ly at a local chick­en farm, where he earns addi­tion­al income by arriv­ing ear­ly, pro­vid­ing for the two of them. Their rela­tion­ship is marked by small joys—like the infa­mous Big Mouth Bil­ly Bass that brings laugh­ter amidst their chal­lenges. Every Nowruz, they con­nect with Ali’s broth­er-in-law Arash, who car­ries the weight of trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences from the Iran-Iraq War. He played a unique role, pro­vid­ing com­fort to dying sol­diers by appear­ing as an angel, but his wartime trau­ma has left him iso­lat­ed in his own strug­gles with PTSD.

Ali’s cop­ing mech­a­nism involves gin, con­trast­ing with Cyrus’s sleep­less nights, where he finds ways to keep his mind occu­pied through imag­i­na­tive dia­logues with char­ac­ters he admires. These men­tal exer­cis­es help him drift into sleep, offer­ing a tem­po­rary escape. When Cyrus leaves for col­lege, he ini­tial­ly avoids drink­ing but soon suc­cumbs, using alco­hol to bridge the gaps of lone­li­ness and grief fol­low­ing his father’s sud­den death dur­ing Cyrus’s sopho­more year.

Posthu­mous­ly, Ali’s pres­ence haunts Cyrus, who dis­cov­ers that his father’s pur­pose revolved around pro­vid­ing for him. The memo­r­i­al at the chick­en farm is a painful reminder of his soli­tude. As Cyrus spi­rals deep­er into sub­stance use, his rela­tion­ships blur, but alco­hol remains a steady, com­fort­ing pres­ence in his life—a “faith­ful soul­mate.” After years of depen­den­cy, Cyrus’s strug­gle with insom­nia resur­faces, forc­ing him to revis­it cre­ative out­lets from his past to regain some sem­blance of peace and recon­nect with lost mem­o­ries, includ­ing those of his par­ents. In the midst of dark­ness, this jour­ney becomes a piv­otal explo­ration of iden­ti­ty, trau­ma, and the quest for belong­ing .

Wait­ing ai