I feel dangerous. I don’t know how much more baldly I can say it. But how can an Iranian be dangerous without becoming “a dangerous Iranian”? Without becoming dangerous to every other Iranian in the world or contributing to the myth of the pathologically angry Iranian? Coming out of the womb with a burning flag in his teeth?

Any volcano that has erupted since the Holocene, ancient history, is considered active. I haven’t. Does that make me inert? Or overdue?

—from BOOKOFMARTYRS.docx by Cyrus Shams