In Indiana, Cyrus's childhood sleep terrors faded but were replaced by chronic insomnia. He lay awake reprocessing social slights and worrying about his father Ali's precarious visa status, having been coached to deflect questions about his Iranian origins. Ali worked at an industrial chicken farm, rising at 4:30 a.m. for an extra $1.25 an hour, and once splurged on a Big Mouth Billy Bass that became a cherished keepsake.

Each year on Nowruz, Ali and Cyrus called Roya's brother Arash in Iran. Ali explained that during the Iran-Iraq War, Arash had ridden a horse through battlefields dressed as the Angel Gabriel to inspire dying soldiers, leaving him permanently traumatized and haunted by visions. Ali coped with sleep by drinking gin nightly, distinguishing his "controlled" use from the "low people" who drank recreationally. A rare violent outburst, when Cyrus woke him by knocking over grapes, taught Cyrus to stay quietly in bed.

To manage insomnia, Cyrus invented an internal game: scripting dialogues between his heroes (Michael Jordan, Madonna, Marie Curie, his mother), which sometimes carried him into dreams where he could finally hear Roya's voice.

Arriving at Keady University, Cyrus immediately began drinking despite Ali's warnings, then quickly added weed, benzos, and even heroin. Early in his sophomore year, Ali died of a sudden stroke. Cyrus felt mostly hollow, believing Ali had lived only to deliver him into adulthood. He took grief leave, manipulated counseling services for prescriptions, and built an economy trading drugs, settling into alcohol as his steady companion.

Years later, when Cyrus got sober, his insomnia returned worse than ever. Nothing helped except resurrecting the childhood dialogue game, which gradually let him commune again with Scheherazade, Rimbaud, his father, and—most importantly—his mother.