Orkide­h’s sto­ry is a deeply emo­tion­al explo­ration of grace, death, and iden­ti­ty through the lens of Roya Shams, who reflects on both her painful past and the unearned gift of life she finds her­self car­ry­ing after sur­viv­ing a trag­ic plane crash. The crash, caused by the USS Vin­cennes misiden­ti­fy­ing her flight as a threat, took away so many lives, includ­ing that of her lover, Leila. In the after­math, Roya is left to reck­on with her sur­vival and the sense of grace she feels, won­der­ing why she was grant­ed life when oth­ers, like Leila, were not. The sto­ry begins with Roya com­ing to terms with her grief, not just for the loss of Leila but for the injus­tice of being the one left behind, alive but bur­dened with the mem­o­ry of her love and the weight of her sur­vival.

Roya comes to real­ize that grace is, in many ways, a gift that is not earned. She is haunt­ed by the con­trast between her sur­vival and the fate of those who didn’t make it, espe­cial­ly Leila, who deserved to live but lost her life trag­i­cal­ly. This sense of guilt leads her to ques­tion why she is allowed to con­tin­ue liv­ing while oth­ers, per­haps more deserv­ing, have per­ished. As she wres­tles with these feel­ings, the emo­tion­al weight of her con­tin­ued exis­tence makes her ques­tion whether she is tru­ly wor­thy of the sec­ond chance at life she has been giv­en. Roy­a’s nar­ra­tive is filled with lay­ers of sor­row and an inter­nal strug­gle, where she nav­i­gates a com­plex web of self-worth, sur­vival, and the human con­di­tion.

Roy­a’s jour­ney is not just about sur­vival but about find­ing a way to escape the harsh real­i­ties of her past, includ­ing the oppres­sive regime of Iran. In her jour­ney to New York, she takes sig­nif­i­cant risks—bribing a bor­der guard and scrap­ing togeth­er just enough mon­ey for a plane ticket—symbolizing her des­per­ate desire to leave behind the painful mem­o­ries that have defined her life. Once in New York, she embarks on the dif­fi­cult process of rebuild­ing her iden­ti­ty, which involves both embrac­ing her past and reimag­in­ing her­self in a new world. The act of adopt­ing Leila’s name becomes a cathar­tic ges­ture, one that allows Roya to heal from the trau­ma of her loss while also tying her­self to the per­son who shaped much of her ear­ly life. This act of rein­ven­tion is both empow­er­ing and lim­it­ing, as it ties her iden­ti­ty to some­one else’s, mak­ing her ques­tion if she can ever tru­ly be her own per­son in a world so shaped by her past.

As Roya begins to find her­self through her art, the chap­ter empha­sizes how her paint­ings become an out­let for her grief and mem­o­ries. Despite strug­gling with a menial job to sur­vive, she finds solace and pur­pose in paint­ing, using each brush­stroke to chan­nel her emo­tions and inner tur­moil. Her pas­sion for art becomes a path­way to self-dis­cov­ery, and through Sang, an art gallery own­er who sees her poten­tial, Roya starts to step into her new iden­ti­ty as an artist. With Sang’s encour­age­ment, she slow­ly peels away the lay­ers of trau­ma that have held her back, trans­form­ing into some­one who not only sur­vives but also thrives through her cre­ativ­i­ty.

Ulti­mate­ly, this chap­ter is a pow­er­ful med­i­ta­tion on the com­plex inter­play between love, loss, and per­son­al growth. It reveals how the absence of loved ones—especially those lost too soon—can pro­found­ly affect one’s iden­ti­ty and how that loss shapes the very art we cre­ate. Roya’s strug­gle is one of resilience and sur­vival, find­ing a way to keep mov­ing for­ward while con­stant­ly being defined by the shad­ows of her past. Her jour­ney is an explo­ration of the com­plex­i­ties of self-real­iza­tion in the face of grief and the heal­ing pow­er of art. Through her, read­ers come to under­stand how sur­vival and suf­fer­ing inter­twine to cre­ate the per­son we become, ulti­mate­ly reflect­ing the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of human expe­ri­ence amidst the tur­moil of life and death.