chelsea’s Reviews > Martyr! > Status Update

What I want to say is that I was happy. Not always, not even mostly. But I did know real, deep joy. Maybe everyone gets a certain amount to use up over a lifetime, and I just used my lifetime's allotment especially quickly, with Leila. But I don't think it was a tragedy, my life. Tragedies are relentless. Nobody could ask for more than what I've had.

If the mortal sin of the suicide is greed, to hoard stillness and calm for yourself while dispersing your riotous internal pain among all those who survive you, then the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe not only that your death could mean more than your living, but that your death could mean more than death itself-which, because it is inevitable, means nothing.

“A child named Nas-sir, a child named Sohrab, named Houshang named Abbas named Pouyan, children walking around puffed up like men in men's clothes and men's names, as if the names made them men, as if wearing a man's boots could, and I ride around them as they die to keep them from cutting open their throats in their final moments, to remind them to suffer manfully, men like me preserve for them their hereafter.”

“We won’t grow old together, Cyrus. But can’t you feel this mattering? Right now?”