Martyr!
Chapter Three
by Kaveh AkbarThe chapter explores Cyrus’s lifelong struggle with sleep, framed as a paradoxical and involuntary performance. From childhood, he finds it absurd that sleep requires pretending—a nightly act of faith rather than a natural bodily function. Unlike eating or breathing, sleep demands surrender to an unreliable process, rewarded with dreams but threatened by nightmares. Cyrus views wakefulness as a corrosive force, a “poison” that erodes cognitive clarity until sleep becomes unavoidable. His resistance to sleep begins in infancy, where he fights rest with “angry old eyes,” as if questioning the necessity of this biological mandate.
Cyrus’s sleep disturbances escalate into violent night terrors, leaving his father, Ali, exhausted and desperate. Ali’s attempts to soothe his son—through rocking, singing, or late-night drives—often fail, culminating in hours of screaming or thrashing. These episodes strain their lives, adding practical burdens like extra laundry and expenses. Ali’s grief is compounded by the loss of his wife, Roya, who died in the 1988 Iran Air Flight 655 disaster, shot down by a U.S. Navy missile. The tragedy haunts Ali, who resents the universe for denying him both a peaceful child and a partner to share the burden.
Roya’s backstory reveals her reluctance toward motherhood, contrasting with Ali’s desire for a child. She feared she could never match her own mother’s nurturing warmth, a sentiment exacerbated by postpartum exhaustion. Her death—aboard a plane filled with gifts for her brother—adds layers of irony and sorrow to Cyrus’s fractured upbringing. The chapter underscores how Ali’s grief and Cyrus’s sleep struggles intertwine, each amplifying the other’s suffering.
The narrative juxtaposes Cyrus’s existential musings on sleep with the raw, unhealed trauma of his family. His night terrors mirror the unresolved violence of Roya’s death, both abrupt and senseless. The chapter paints sleep as a battleground—one where biological necessity clashes with psychological resistance, and where personal and historical tragedies collide. Ali’s helplessness and Cyrus’s defiance create a poignant cycle of longing and loss, framed by the inescapable demands of the body and the cruel whims of fate.
FAQs
1. How does Cyrus view the biological necessity of sleep, and what metaphors does he use to describe this relationship?
Answer:
Cyrus views sleep as an unnatural and strange performance rather than an automatic bodily function. He compares it to “a lie you practiced nightly” or a performance that changes sincerity, contrasting it with more straightforward biological processes like eating. He metaphorically describes wakefulness as “a kind of poison” where dreams serve as the only antidote. This perspective highlights his struggle with sleep’s non-negotiable demand and his frustration with its performative aspect, which he finds uniquely embarrassing compared to other bodily needs.2. Analyze how Cyrus’s childhood sleep struggles affected his father Ali, both practically and emotionally.
Answer:
Cyrus’s severe sleep terrors created immense practical and emotional burdens for Ali. Practically, Ali had to manage nightly crises—rocking Cyrus, changing soiled sheets, and making extra laundromat trips (costing time and money). Emotionally, Ali felt the situation was profoundly unfair, compounding his grief after losing his wife Roya. The text describes this as “injury to injury,” with Ali viewing Cyrus’s difficulties as additional suffering layered onto his existing trauma. The sleep struggles became “the god to whom he prayed,” illustrating how Cyrus’s condition dominated Ali’s life and emotional resources.3. What critical historical event shaped Cyrus’s family history, and how does the narrative present its emotional impact?
Answer:
The downing of Iran Air Flight 655 by a U.S. Navy missile killed Cyrus’s mother Roya, along with 289 others. The narrative emphasizes the brutality of the event (the plane was “turned into dust”) and its cruel irony—Cyrus would have been onboard had Roya not deemed him too young to travel. The description focuses on sensory details (Roya’s favorite outfit, the gifts she packed) to underscore the loss’s intimacy, while the clinical “dust” metaphor contrasts with the visceral grief. This event left Ali as a sole parent to a difficult child, framing their relationship through layers of trauma.4. How does the chapter contrast Roya’s potential parenting style with her mother’s, and what does this reveal about her character?
Answer:
Roya’s mother is depicted as an instinctively nurturing figure who “quivered with love,” creating a home filled with crafts, meals, and art. Roya, however, recognized she couldn’t replicate this intensity—she struggled even to care for herself, let alone a child. This contrast reveals Roya’s self-awareness about her limitations and her resistance to societal expectations of motherhood. It also foreshadows her postpartum distance from Cyrus, suggesting her initial reluctance about parenthood (stemming from her own upbringing) may have contributed to her emotional withdrawal after his birth.5. Evaluate how the chapter uses sleep as a lens to explore broader themes of control and vulnerability.
Answer:
Sleep becomes a metaphor for life’s uncontrollable demands. Cyrus resents sleep’s power over his autonomy (“Who thought of this?”), mirroring how larger forces (like geopolitical violence that killed Roya) dictate human lives. The “non-negotiable” nature of sleep parallels the family’s helplessness against trauma. Meanwhile, Ali’s nightly struggles with Cyrus’s terrors reflect the vulnerability of caregiving—his pleas (“Just sleep”) echo his broader powerlessness. By framing wakefulness as “poison,” the chapter suggests consciousness itself is fraught with fragility, connecting personal and historical scales of suffering.
Quotes
1. “For as long as he could remember, Cyrus had thought it unimaginably strange, the body’s need to recharge nightly. The way sleep happened not as a fact like swallowing or using the bathroom, but as a faith.”
This opening reflection captures the chapter’s central meditation on sleep as a paradoxical, almost performative act. It introduces Cyrus’s lifelong struggle with sleep and the philosophical weight he assigns to this basic biological function.
2. “Being awake was a kind of poison, and dream was the only antidote. What if everyone was more conscious of this? How would it charge, make more urgent, their living?”
This quote represents Cyrus’s radical perspective inversion - framing wakefulness as the harmful state rather than sleep. It shows his tendency to reframe universal human experiences through a unique, almost poetic lens of existential urgency.
3. “Ali would rock his son back and forth, rub finger circles in his scalp, sing to him, take him on late-night drives, but still Cyrus held on to his waking with desperate ferocity, a tiny horse trying to climb out of a muddy lake, only to sink further and further in.”
This vivid metaphor illustrates both Cyrus’s childhood sleep struggles and Ali’s desperate attempts to help, establishing their fraught relationship dynamic. The imagery powerfully conveys the exhausting, cyclical nature of their nightly battles.
4. “A U.S. Navy warship, the USS Vincennes, fired two surface-to-air missiles. One hit the plane and instantaneously turned it, and the 290 passengers on board, into dust.”
This stark, factual account of Roya’s death delivers the chapter’s emotional turning point. The clinical description contrasts brutally with the personal tragedy, highlighting how geopolitical violence intersects with intimate family loss.
5. “Roya knew she would never be able to be the sort of mother her own mother had been, the kind who quivered with love like a wet branch. Even as an adult, Roya could hardly be bothered to feed or bathe herself.”
This insight into Roya’s character adds tragic depth to the story, revealing her self-awareness about her limitations as a mother and foreshadowing the complicated legacy Cyrus inherits from both parents.