The Dudusch Painting in Martyr!: Brotherhood, War, and Hidden Family History

What the Dudusch Painting Is

The Dudusch painting is a work by the Iranian visual and performance artist Orkideh, encountered by Cyrus Shams in chapter 31 while browsing the Sang Linh gallery website. The title is Farsi for “brother.” The painting depicts a battlefield strewn with dead soldiers—many mustached, many wounded, lying in puddles of blood. At the center stands a giant black horse bearing a rider in long black robes, haloed in yellow light. A large silver zipper runs up the front of the robe, and the halo creates an X-ray effect that lets the viewer see through the robes to the body of a scared naked little boy curled tight, holding desperately onto the horse. The boy’s face is twisted in pure agony, and the text emphasizes that this is not a mask—it is the rider’s face, the “man-boy” naked beneath the black robes.

The painting is one of several works listed on Orkideh’s page at the Linh gallery, alongside earlier exhibits such as Jigaram, Minus Forty, and Comprehension Density. Cyrus finds it while researching Orkideh after their first meeting at the Brooklyn Museum, scrolling through her gallery page after reading her sparse Wikipedia entry.

Where Dudusch Appears in the Novel

The painting appears in two key moments. First, in chapter 31, Cyrus discovers it online and shows it to Zee Novak, telling him about his uncle Arash Shams’s wartime role—riding among the dead in the Iran-Iraq War wearing a black robe. Zee’s reaction—“That’s fucking wild”—underscores how extraordinary this history seems from outside the family.

Second, in chapter 34, Cyrus calls Arash via WhatsApp and mentions the painting. Arash initially laughs it off, joking about a soldier with a flashlight, then pivots to a long story about his Paykan sedan and the stuck cassette of Allegri’s Miserere. When Cyrus finally names the painting—“It was called ‘Dudusch’… ‘Brother’”—Arash deflects again, insisting that many men did what he did, one in every company.

The Painting’s Internal Tension: Warrior and Child

The most striking feature of Dudusch is its internal contradiction. The rider presents as a fearsome warrior—black robes, black horse, halo of yellow light—but the X-ray effect reveals the truth beneath: a naked, terrified child. The zipper running up the robe literalizes the idea of a costume, something that can be opened to reveal what is hidden underneath. The text is explicit that the agony on the boy’s face is the rider’s own face; there is no separation between the warrior and the child. The warrior is not a disguise worn by a child but a child who has become a warrior, or a warrior who has always been a child.

This duality resonates with Cyrus’s understanding of his uncle. Arash was a “war hero” who rode among the dead, but he is also, in Cyrus’s telling, a man who has been marked by that experience—described by others as “crazy,” living in Alborz, awake in the middle of the night. The painting gives visual form to the idea that the soldier’s exterior conceals a vulnerable interior, and that the two are inseparable.

How the Painting’s Meaning Shifts

The painting’s meaning changes across the novel. For Cyrus, it begins as a discovery—a visual echo of his uncle’s wartime stories that he has heard secondhand from his father. It then becomes a bridge to his mother: when he calls Arash, he says the painting made him think of both his uncle and his mother, activating a buried awareness of Roya Shams’s relationship to the war and to loss. For Arash, the painting is something to be deflected. He jokes about it, tells the Miserere story, and insists on its generality. The painting’s meaning is thus contested: Cyrus wants it to be personal, Arash insists it is universal.

Arash’s Deflection: The Miserere Story

Arash’s response to the painting is a masterclass in deflection. He first jokes about it, then launches into the long story of the Miserere—the Renaissance choral work that Mozart supposedly transcribed from memory after a single hearing. Arash describes listening to the tape thousands of times in his Paykan, hearing something new each time, and finally destroying it with a screwdriver, hearing “giggling” as the cassette cracked.

The Miserere story functions as a parallel meditation on beauty, repetition, and trauma. Arash’s obsession with the piece—“It felt like a miracle every time”—mirrors the way trauma repeats and re-presents itself. His destruction of the tape, and his interpretation of the giggling as the devil’s laughter, suggests a man who has tried to destroy what haunts him and found that it fights back.

When Cyrus finally names the painting, Arash’s response is telling: he insists that many men did what he did, one in every company. This is both a dismissal and an acknowledgment. Arash refuses to let the painting become a personal symbol, insisting instead on its generality. But the very insistence suggests the opposite: that the painting has struck a nerve, that Cyrus has touched something Arash does not want to examine.

Thematic Connections

Dudusch connects to several of the novel’s central themes. It is, most obviously, a meditation on martyrdom and the meaning of death: the battlefield is strewn with the dead, and the rider moves among them, haloed like a saint or a martyr. The painting asks what it means to be both the one who dies and the one who survives, both the child and the warrior.

The painting also speaks to art as a response to mortality and trauma. Orkideh, herself dying of terminal breast cancer, created a body of work that repeatedly returns to themes of war, exile, and identity. Dudusch is one of several pieces that transform historical and personal trauma into visual form.

For Cyrus, the painting is a gateway to grief, state violence, and historical accountability. The Iran-Iraq War is the backdrop of his family’s history—his uncle’s service, his mother’s hidden past—and the painting forces him to confront that history more directly than he has before. It also connects to immigrant identity and the burden of representation: Cyrus, raised Iranian in the American Midwest, carries a family history that most Americans cannot imagine, and the painting gives that history a visible form.

Finally, the painting resonates with addiction, sobriety, and the reconstruction of self. Cyrus encounters Dudusch two years into his sobriety, at a moment when he is actively trying to rebuild his life and understand his past. The painting’s image of a warrior who is also a scared child mirrors Cyrus’s own struggle to reconcile the person he has been with the person he is becoming.

Study Questions

1. What does the zipper and X-ray effect in the Dudusch painting suggest about the relationship between the warrior exterior and the inner self?

The zipper running up the front of the rider’s robe literalizes the idea of a costume that can be opened. The X-ray effect, created by the halo, reveals what is hidden beneath: a scared naked little boy curled tight, holding desperately onto the horse. Crucially, the text emphasizes that the boy’s face is the rider’s face—“it was no mask.” The warrior and the child are not separate entities but one being. The painting suggests that the soldier’s fearsome exterior does not conceal a different person; it is the same person, and the vulnerability is always there, visible to those who can see through the surface.

2. Why does Cyrus connect the painting to both his uncle and his mother?

Cyrus tells Zee about Arash’s wartime role—riding among the dead in a black robe—which directly matches the painting’s imagery. But when he calls Arash, he says the painting made him think of both his uncle and his mother. The connection to Roya is less explicit in the text, but the novel establishes that Roya died in a plane crash that the Iranian government exploited for propaganda, and that her past is largely hidden from Cyrus. The painting seems to activate a buried awareness of his mother’s relationship to the war and to loss. It becomes a hinge between the known figure of Arash and the unknown figure of Roya, suggesting that both carry the war’s trauma in different ways.

3. How does Arash’s response to the painting function as a deflection?

Arash initially jokes about the painting, then pivots to the long Miserere story, which occupies most of the conversation. When Cyrus finally names the painting, Arash insists that many men did what he did, one in every company. This is a dismissal that insists on the painting’s generality rather than its personal significance. But the very insistence suggests the opposite: that the painting has struck a nerve. Arash’s refusal to engage with the painting’s personal meaning, and his turn to the Miserere story, functions as a way of avoiding the direct confrontation the painting invites.

4. What does the title “Dudusch” (Brother) suggest about the painting’s meaning beyond Cyrus’s family?

The title extends the painting’s meaning beyond any single family. “Brother” can refer to biological brotherhood, but it also carries the sense of comradeship—the men who fought alongside each other, the “one in every company” that Arash mentions. The painting depicts a battlefield where the dead are brothers in a shared fate, and the rider moves among them as a brother to the dead. The title also suggests the novel’s broader concern with the bonds that connect people across generations and nations—the brotherhood of the living and the dead, the family and the nation, the artist and the viewer. For Cyrus, the title resonates with his own search for connection to a family history he only partially understands.