Maybe it was that Cyrus had done the wrong drugs in the right order, or the right drugs in the wrong order, but when God finally spoke back to him after twenty-seven years of silence, what Cyrus wanted more than anything else was a do-over.
The quotation highlights a critical moment of disillusionment with faith and divine intervention. Cyrus, a character laden with existential dread, perceives his long-awaited communication with God as significant. However, he is met with dissatisfaction. The plea for a "do-over" emphasizes his internal conflict: he yearns for clarity while being trapped in the chaotic aftermath of drugs and hopelessness. His desire for a "clean slate" implies the complexity of spiritual yearning within the context of a life marred by addiction and existential confusion. The comparison with Biblical figures like Muhammad or Saul illustrates his frustration with his own faith journey.
“Do you have this organ here?” Cyrus asked her, pointing at the base of his throat. “A doom organ that just pulses all the time? Pulses dread, every day, obstinately? Like it thinks there’s a panther behind the curtain ready to maul you, but there’s no panther and it turns out there’s no curtain either?"
This powerful statement captures Cyrus's perpetual sense of anxiety and dread. He likens his dread to an imagined physical entity within his body that throbs incessantly. The reference to a panther behind a curtain reveals the deep-rooted paranoia and fear that plague him. This organ symbolizes the mental anguish that Cyrus endures.
“Recovery is made of words, and words have all these rules. How can anything so limited touch something as big as whatever the fuck a ‘Higher Power’ is? How can it get rid of the big ball of rot inside me? It feels like this giant sponge sucking away anything in the world that’s supposed to feel good. What words can touch that?”
Here, Cyrus touches on two central preoccupations in the novel: seeking meaning and the failure of language. Together, they form a paradox. Despite Cyrus's own passion for language as a writer and poet, he expresses the belief that words cannot come close to actual experience. At the point in the novel where Cyrus shares this sentiment, he has not yet decided to embark on the process of writing a book. Even when he does begin writing, however, he remains aware of the failure of language.
Mostly what Cyrus felt was empty. A crushing hollowness, which governed him. He should have died on the plane with his mother, but he’d been left home. With his father now dead, Cyrus had no parents left to worry over him. What was left of his life had no intrinsic meaning, he knew, since such meaning could only be shaped in relation to other people.
The death of his parents instills in Cyrus a nihilistic worldview. It was only chance that led to his survival when his mother died. Upon his father's death, their combined absence comes to rule Cyrus's life. He does not take people such as Zee, Gabe, and Sad James into account.
“The rules! You’re talking about people who die for other people. Not dying for glory or an impressable God. Not the promise of a sunny afterlife for themselves. You’re talking about earth martyrs.”
Orkideh helps Cyrus understand his own nuanced obsession with martyrdom by giving it a name: earth martyrs. This refers to people who sacrifice for others rather than for an unattainable and immaterial ideal. The concept of earth martyrs also counters the tragic and violent martyrdom that haunts Cyrus—one example being his mother's death in Iran Air Flight 655.
It was like Americans had another organ for it, that hate-fear. It pulsed out of their chests like a second heart.
Again, the image of an organ appears to describe an intense feeling. Whereas earlier in Chapter 1, Cyrus described a pulsing doom organ that jeopardizes his recovery, here the organ is the seat of Americans' xenophobia. Cyrus is forced to navigate the complexities of being Iranian-American and not fully belonging to either group. Since he lives in the United States, he is often exposed to racism and hatred for those deemed un-American.
Before addiction felt bad, it felt really, really good. Of course it did. Magic. Like you were close enough to God to bop him with an eyelash.
Cyrus pinpoints an era on the timeline of his addiction in which drinking and doing drugs made him feel closer to God. This proximity was physical in nature, and Cyrus humorously portrays it with the phrase "close enough to God to bop him with an eyelash." However, this era did not last forever, and Cyrus reached a point where he knew he needed to get sober. In the novel's present day, Cyrus struggles with the doldrums of sobriety.
“What about you though, Cyrus Shams?” Orkideh asked. “If you become a martyr, won’t you be hurting the people who love you?”
Cyrus nodded. “Of course,” he said, then after a beat, “but it’s hard to figure out if that hurt would be worse than the hurt of my being here.”
Orkideh shook her head. “It will be worse,” she said. “I promise. If you let yourself get a little older, you’ll understand that.”
Cyrus claims to be uncertain about whether his absence or his presence would harm his loved ones more. This shows his belief that he might be harming others, as though the "doom organ" he describes having in an earlier chapter might also impact his friends. With the extra insight that comes from being, secretly, Cyrus's mother, Orkideh argues that absence is, in fact, worse. She sees what her own absence did to Cyrus.
How one nation flattened history into a statistical anomaly, collateral damage, and the other minted it into propaganda.
In conversation with Zee, Cyrus analyzes the way that the United States and Iran responded to the US attack on Iran Air Flight 655. The U.S. deflected responsibility while Iran harnessed the attack to fuel nationalism. Before he discovered the truth about Roya's survival and escape, Cyrus believed that his mother had been eradicated in this act of senseless violence.
He wanted, acutely in that moment, to be not-alive. Not to be dead, not to kill himself, but to have the burden of living lifted from his shoulders.
This quote gets at Cyrus's complex desire not to be alive, without having to actually commit suicide. The pressures of living exceed what he can handle, and he craves relief. While it is not clear whether Cyrus actually follows through with this desire, it remains central to the story.
