Roya Shams (Orkideh) in Martyr!: A Full Character Analysis
Overview
Roya Shams is Cyrus's mother, a woman whose life is revealed through her own first-person chapters set in Tehran in August 1987 and, later, through her perspective as the celebrated artist Orkideh in New York. The novel establishes that she survived the 1988 shootdown of a civilian airliner by swapping passports with her lover Leila, fled to America, and reinvented herself as a visual artist. Her decision to stage a public death in a museum becomes the event that draws Cyrus toward her story. Her chapters offer the novel's most sustained meditation on survival, identity, and the cost of living on after others have died. For the full arc of how her story intersects with Cyrus's, see the book overview and the ending explained.
Plot Role
Roya's chapters function as a counterpoint to Cyrus's present-day narrative. While Cyrus searches for meaning in martyrdom and death, Roya's story shows a woman who has already confronted mortality in the most extreme way—surviving a mass killing by assuming another person's identity. Her transformation into Orkideh, and her eventual public death performance, provide the novel's central exploration of what it means to choose one's death. Her story also grounds the novel's themes of martyrdom and the meaning of death in lived experience rather than abstraction.
Motivations and Traits
Roya's own words in chapter 23 establish a crucial baseline: she says she never really loved being alive. She describes her life before Leila as one of self-lessness, where even small stolen pleasures—a half hour of tea, mindless doodling—only felt meaningful in contrast to the endless cooking, cleaning, and shopping that filled her days. This is explicit self-characterization, and it explains much of what follows.
Her marriage to Ali was not oppressive in the way of some marriages she observed—she notes that some wives couldn't use the bathroom without permission—but she found being perceived, all the time being perceived, exhausting. This exhaustion with being seen, with performing a role, becomes a defining trait. It's notable that her eventual art career involves being seen constantly, but on her own terms.
Roya also values autonomy fiercely. When Leila first arrives, Roya resents the intrusion on her precious alone time; she begged Ali with her face to say no to hosting Leila. This initial resistance makes her later transformation all the more striking.
Chronological Arc
Tehran, August 1987. Roya is pregnant with Cyrus, though she hasn't confirmed it with a test, not wanting to make it real. Her husband Ali and his friend Gilgamesh leave for their annual camping trip, and Gilgamesh's new wife Leila stays with Roya. Over the course of a few days, Leila's boldness—pressing her ear to the asphalt and claiming she hears angels drumming, asking startling questions like who has seen you cry naked—breaks through Roya's reserve. Their first kiss happens in an alley off the bazaar, and Roya describes it as flipping her life right-side up.
The shootdown and its aftermath. The novel establishes that Roya survived the 1988 shootdown by swapping passports with Leila. This is the pivotal event of her life: she lives, but under Leila's name. In chapter 47, she says she hadn't been Roya in years; she'd been Leila. She fled to New York, where she worked in a dumpy Greek nostalgia diner and lived in a tiny apartment in the meatpacking district.
Becoming Orkideh. At the diner, Roya's sketching became more interesting and free. She began buying oil paints and experimenting. When she met the gallerist Sang Linh, she initially resisted showing her work—she wondered why anyone would want to show their lifeboat to strangers—but eventually brought in a large painting of a battlefield with boy soldiers, featuring her brother Arash's face. When Sang asked her name, she said Orkideh, a name she and Ali had chosen for Cyrus when an ultrasound incorrectly predicted a girl.
The artist's life. By 1997, Orkideh's third exhibition at Sang's gallery was a sellout. Her first major installation, Comprehension Density at the Detroit Institute of the Arts, featured two copper slabs facing each other with a small television between them, playing a fifty-six-hour video of her reading the Shahnameh in English and Farsi.
The public death. The novel's premise is that Orkideh stages a public death in a museum. This is the event that brings Cyrus to New York, and it's the culmination of her artistic and personal journey.
Relationships
With Leila. This is the central relationship of Roya's life. The evidence shows Leila as taller, bolder, more reckless—a woman who pretends to be a soldier to a security guard, who asks strangers if they're famous, who kisses Roya in public alleys. Roya describes their connection as erasing all separation: not music or country or clothes, not fear, not even history. In chapter 48, Roya says she used her lifetime's allotment of joy especially quickly with Leila, but insists her life wasn't a tragedy: nobody could ask for more than what she's had.
With Cyrus. Roya was pregnant with Cyrus during the affair with Leila. She left him when she fled to America. The name Orkideh itself is a connection to Cyrus—it was the name she and Ali had picked for him before his birth. This suggests that even in her new identity, Cyrus remains present in her life's architecture.
With Sang Linh. Sang is the gallerist who discovers Orkideh. Their relationship develops from Sang's persistence—she tells Roya to bring in a painting when she can, that she's not going anywhere—to a working partnership that lasts years. By 1997, they're staying up all night together taking down exhibitions, singing and dancing.
With Duy. The novel mentions her oldest son Duy, who helps at the gallery. This indicates Roya has another son, older than Cyrus, though the evidence doesn't elaborate on this relationship.
Key Decisions and Consequences
Swapping passports with Leila. This is the decision that defines everything. Roya survives the shootdown but inherits Leila's identity. The consequence is a double separation: first from her country, then from her own name. In chapter 47, she describes the dream where Leila speaks English as the most vicious of so many little dyings in this country.
Taking the name Orkideh. When Sang asks her name, Roya says she hadn't been Roya in years. She recognizes that her art could not be Leila's and that she couldn't put dead nowhere Leila's name on work made with her own oniony blistered hands. The name she chooses connects her to Cyrus, the child she left behind.
Showing her work to Sang. This decision transforms her from a diner worker who sketches in the dishroom to a celebrated artist. The consequence is a new life, but also a new kind of visibility—the very thing she once found exhausting.
Staging a public death. This is the novel's central event. Roya's chapters show a woman who has thought deeply about death, survival, and the meaning of a life. Her public death is the culmination of her artistic project—taking control of the one thing no one can control.
Themes and Symbol Connections
Roya's story connects directly to several of the novel's central themes:
Martyrdom and the meaning of death. Roya survived a mass killing by assuming another's identity. Her public death in a museum is a deliberate inversion of martyrdom—not dying for a cause, but choosing how and when to die, making death itself an artwork. This connects to the martyrdom and the meaning of death theme page.
Immigrant identity and the burden of representation. Roya's experience of being twice separated, first by a nation and then by its language, speaks directly to the immigrant experience. Her art—reading the Shahnameh in English and Farsi, painting battlefields with Iranian imagery—carries the burden of representing a culture she left behind. See immigrant identity and the burden of representation.
Grief, state violence, and historical accountability. The shootdown was an act of state violence that killed hundreds of civilians. Roya's survival is inseparable from that violence. Her art repeatedly returns to war, soldiers, and death—the battlefield painting with boy soldiers, the Shahnameh with its tales of warriors. See grief, state violence, and historical accountability.
Art as a response to mortality and trauma. Roya's art is explicitly a survival mechanism. She paints because she needs to. The act of making something that would never have existed in the entirety of humanity had she not been there is her answer to death. See art as a response to mortality and trauma.
Addiction, sobriety, and the reconstruction of self. While this theme is most directly explored through Cyrus, Roya's story of reconstructing herself after trauma—from Roya to Leila to Orkideh—offers a parallel narrative of self-reinvention. See addiction, sobriety, and the reconstruction of self.
Questions and Answers
1. Why did Roya take the name Orkideh?
Roya chose Orkideh when Sang Linh asked her name. The evidence shows she hadn't been Roya in years and had been living as Leila. She recognized her art couldn't carry Leila's name. Orkideh was the name she and Ali had chosen for Cyrus when an ultrasound incorrectly predicted a girl. The choice connects her new identity to her son, the child she left behind.
2. What does her relationship with Leila reveal about her?
Leila represents everything Roya's life before her wasn't: bold, reckless, free. Leila asks startling questions, pretends to be a soldier, kisses Roya in public. Roya describes their connection as erasing all separation. The relationship reveals Roya's capacity for profound love and her willingness to risk everything for it.
3. Why did she stage a public death?
The novel presents this as a deliberate choice. Roya's chapters show a woman who has survived death, lived under another's name, and built an artistic career around mortality. Her public death is the ultimate artistic statement—taking control of the one thing no one can control. It's also a reunion of sorts with Leila, who died in the shootdown.
4. How does her art reflect her trauma?
Roya's art is saturated with death and war. Her first major installation featured her reading the Shahnameh—an epic of Persian warriors—for fifty-six hours. Her painting for Sang showed boy soldiers on a battlefield, including her brother Arash's face. She describes painting as something she needed to do, suggesting art is her way of processing what she's witnessed and survived.
5. What does her survival mean for her identity?
Roya's survival came at the cost of her identity. She lived as Leila for years, then became Orkideh. She describes the dream of Leila speaking English as the most vicious of so many little dyings in this country. Her identity is layered: Roya, Leila, Orkideh—each name carrying a different history. Her story raises the question of whether survival itself can be a form of martyrdom. For more discussion, see the questions and answers page.