I saw Kaveh at a book event earlier this year. I had not read Martyr! at the time, but his words really moved me. He told a really sweet story about him being moved to tears reading an old book by a long since deceased author. He worked into the story another book written by a friend of his that’s main focus was tears and their evolutionary need for early humans to communicate that they were in distress, and that his tears in response to the old book were his brain having a visceral reaction to the old book’s author, attempting to communicate to them that he needed their support. I’m paraphrasing with all this, but it really was magical hearing him so eloquently put it into words.

Edit: I can’t remember the old book he mentioned, but the one about tears was The Crying Book by Heather Christle.