Cyrus and Amir Walk to the Pond: A Short Story

The Soltani’s kitchen.

While deep in thought and as Cyrus enjoyed his morning coffee in their parent’s open-plan kitchen, Amir interrupted him. His older brother had sprung a sliver of freedom from his two rambunctious kids under six.

“Let’s take a walk; you look like you could use one,” Amir said. As the older sibling, it came off as more of a command than a request. He meant it that way, too.

“Sure, I think I’d like that,” Cyrus said. He wasn’t lying. The night before, he downed six IPAs at a local brewery and was nursing a mild hangover. Those eased with a brisk morning walk, especially in winter.

Cyrus put his coffee on the wooden countertop and grabbed two Yeti thermoses. He filled them with fresh coffee from his parents’ Breville coffeepot, then headed down the short hallway to the well-insulated mudroom just outside the four-car garage. His Black Patagonia winter jacket hung on the same hook he used back when this was his permanent residence.

Amir was waiting, his winter jacket zipped, scarf loosely wrapped around his neck, and boots tightly laced. He was pulling on his red University of Louisville beanie and, with a gloved hand, was reaching out for his coffee-filled Yeti.

“I thought about bringing a flask of bourbon but decided against it,” Amir said ruefully as Cyrus donned his winter attire.

“Ah, you couldn’t find them, could you?” Cyrus responded with a teasing tone.

“How did you guess?”

“I’ve been here for ten days and still can’t find ‘em.”

“Our parents, man. What are they up to?”

“Who knows? Baba said something about cutting back on drinking, but it’s not like he drank that much, to begin with.”

They both shrugged and shook their heads.

“Shall we?” Amir said as he opened the mudroom door and hit the garage opener, exposing them to the dreary mid-winter morning.

“Sanaz seems nice,” Amir said, breaking the silence as they walked along one of the trails they hacked out as kids on their parent’s enormous estate.

Trail on the Soltani Farm

It was one of those typical February mornings in Kentucky. Not quite cold enough to freeze the dew but enough to cut deeply to the bone. The wind never strong enough to bowl you over but just biting enough to prevent you from getting comfortable. It was the type of morning folks yearned to forget–too warm for snow, too cold for budding flowers. The farm was still, the wild animals inhabiting the valleys and thickets unwilling to do more than congregate to stay warm. Only a handful of birds chirped. Cyrus and Amir’s breaths were visible as they walked along the trail. Steam was rising from their Yetis. The ground was still packed hard from the cold winter making soft thuds with each of their strides.

“Yeah, she is,” Cyrus said, still in a contemplative mood.

“What are your plans with her?”

“Wha..what do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean?”

“Honestly, that’s a really broad question, so no, I don’t.”

Neither had made eye contact. Each spoke out into the cold winter air, concentrating on the path before them.

“Is this something you’re going to take seriously? You’ve never dated an Iranian woman before. There’s a whole different level of responsibility here.”

Amir didn’t believe this because non-Iranian women were inferior but because of community dynamics and old family history. Before dating and marrying Lindsay, Amir had a serious relationship with an Iranian woman. They had different priorities, and the relationship ended in flames. Amir had burnt a few bridges and let down their parents, whose reputation had only fully recovered a few years ago. It’s one of the vestiges from the old country that hung around in the diaspora. It was one of the many pieces of ancient luggage often imposed upon the unwilling bicultural offspring of immigrants. It was the sort of old cultural relic that died a long, torturous death, usually in prolonged battles with the second and third generations.

“Amir, of course, I’m going to take this seriously. I do like Sanaz. But I also don’t know what I’ll do next.”

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“So you haven’t decided yet?” Amir said, switching lanes effortlessly.

“Well, if I’m being honest, I haven’t.”

“What’s the hang-up?”

Cyrus stopped and turned toward Amir. Their parents’ stone house mansion remained visible in the distance. It peeked out between the oak, hickory, sycamore, and cedar trees that dotted the farm.

“I’m thirty-four years old, and I’ve been going non-stop for twenty years. I don’t have to tell you that. I’m exhausted, burnt out. My Persian is getting worse. And I feel fucking detached from everything–you, Sarah, Mother, Baba, Bardstown, our Iranianness. All of it. I’ve missed things. And I want to learn more about our family history. The Holmans. The Soltanis. The Millers. The Hakimis.”

“I always saw you as this kid who never stopped. Who always had things sorted. It was impressive. I suppose you’re entitled to a rest. Twenty fucking years…yeah man, you’re right…Fuck…Have you been feeling this way for a long time?”

“Yeah, it started last year when the primaries kicked off, and I realized that no matter what happened, I’d likely be out of a job. I wasn’t sure I wanted to work for any of the candidates and was ready to move on. It just hit me that I was exhausted—crisis after crisis. There’s no time to rest, to catch a breath. But I told myself just get through to inauguration and sort things after that.”

“Did you chat with anyone?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like a friend, mentor, or therapist.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“Amir, you can’t talk to people about being burnt out. It’s just not something you do in that environment. Surely you understand?”

“I suppose. Finance is a bit cutthroat like that. It’s non-stop. And you can’t show your vulnerabilities.”

“But at least you get the weekends off. And no one’s going to really ding you for speaking with a therapist. Can’t say the same for the White House.”

Cyrus turned and started walking again. The path they followed led to a large pond. It was still surprisingly well-marked after years of neglect. The Soltani kids had carved it out decades before when they wanted a quicker route to the artificial pond their dad had built with their mother’s brothers.

“Can you tell me what the job offers are?” Amir asked. He knew Cyrus’s work over the last eight years would make him attractive to some three-letter agencies and defense contractors.

“Yeah, sure. Nothing too sensitive. My mentor runs the Middle East Center at the Foreign Policy Institute. He wants me there. The salary is better than the White House, and I can earn some supplemental income writing a book or op-eds and media appearances.”

“What about the other offers?”

“Uh, one is working for a tech firm in Silicon Valley; I’d be the director of their government relations department. The salary would be astronomical, but it’d be a miserable work/life balance. The second was from a lobbying firm on K Street. I’d have a bit more flexibility, less responsibility, and slightly less salary than the tech job, but still, the work-life balance wouldn’t be where I wanted it to be.”

There was a pause in the conversation as Amir absorbed Cyrus’s choices, and they started to walk again.

“Well, little brother, here’s my unsolicited advice, even though it sounds like you’ve figured it out. Not that I doubted you at all. But, fuck the compensation,” Amir said a few moments after they started to walk again. “One of the great things about our family is that we have the money to make decisions without that in mind. We will be well off regardless of what we do; hell, none of us have to work. You could spend the next few years traveling, doing fuck all, and it wouldn’t matter. Grandpa Holman made certain of that. Dad’s work too, but more so the Holman Distillery and the money it made. Find work that keeps you going, that makes you happy, that allows you to be your own person. Don’t chase the things you already have.”

“Maybe that’s why the other jobs just didn’t feel right for me. When I said no the first time around to both of the other two jobs, they kept upping the salary range. They didn’t understand that that wasn’t my hesitation. I needed a lifestyle change.”

“Are you leaning towards the think tank?”

“Yeah, it’s fairly obvious that’s where I should be. But I want to work from here for a bit.”

“Because of Sanaz?”

“Ehh, I don’t know. Maybe? But, I just miss being here. Miss our parents, even if Baba can be a pain in the ass. And I miss you, Sarah, your kids, and Lindsay, too.”

“Is Cyrus getting sentimental now,” Amir said with a smirk and a light jab on his brother’s shoulder.

The Soltani Pond.

The conversation ended as the Soltani boys came to the large pond where they swam, fished, and spent endless afternoons playing as kids always do. They paused and took it all in. It was too early for ducks and geese to drop by on their way north. Though, it wasn’t entirely out of the question for a handful to make their home there through winter. The water was still, and the tall grasses found along portions of the pond’s bank remained unmoved by the light wind, no matter how cold. The only sound came from the water trickling out of the small drainage pipes along the western edge.

When they were both too young to remember details but old enough to have the snapshots of memories, their father had set about building the pond. A natural spring at one end of a small valley formed a perfect base for an artificial reservoir. He enlisted the help of his brothers-in-law, all of them either engineers or had worked in construction most summers through high school and college. It was ambitious, but that’s what the Holmans did and likely how Karim Soltani endeared himself to his in-laws.

Nearly thirty years later, the pond had revitalized the ecosystem of the small floodplain–exactly what their father had imagined. It was thriving with mosses, cattails, and several different types of fish, waterfowl, frogs, and turtles that loved to sun themselves on the banks or fallen logs. The island they built in the middle remained there, the small trees they planted in those first few years now fully grown and likely in need of thinning out.

Karim and his brothers-in-law had purposely built the pond along an east-west axis. One that would maximize the beautiful colors of a Kentucky sunrise or sunset to reflect off a shimmering pond’s surface. It was striking any time of year.

A fish of some kind leaped from the water as it chased a bug or some other critter it deemed as a snack. The loud splash drew Amir and Cyrus from their reflective moods.

“Do you remember how bad we were at fishing,” Cyrus asked.

“Dude, I’m fucking scarred from it,” Amir said as he chuckled.

“Why the fuck were we so bad? All of our cousins were naturals.”

“I guess it’s like an inherited thing passed down from fathers to sons because it doesn’t make sense otherwise.”

“Baba literally squeezing the shit out of that fish trying to get it off the hook was fucking classic. Chuck and Ronnie laughing their asses off. Then Baba giving a lecture on why catch and release is cruel. Something about scarring the fish half to death and then letting it live only to do it again in a few weeks is pure torture.”

They both laughed and shook their heads.

“I miss this place,” Amir said after several minutes of silent reflection. “In the most difficult times in my childhood and even as I got older, I came to this spot. It was my safe space.” There was a catch in Amir’s voice. He recalled the most challenging moments growing up, as he always did when he came home and came to this pond. It was the place he could empty his troubles and leave them behind.

“I didn’t realize you came here as you got older,” Cyrus responded.

“Definitely. Sometimes, I’d come home from college without telling Mother and Baba. I just needed to escape it all. An hour or two would be enough.”

“Have you ever told them?”

“Yeah, I told Mother once because I didn’t want her worried if she saw my car or heard someone coming up our driveway, but I don’t think I’ll ever tell Baba. I feel like it would taint this space for me somehow. Like he would come here and swim in it just to fuck with me and then act like I was overreacting.”

Dr. Soltani would often do that in other realms, too. Finding ways to inject himself into their lives in spaces they had carved out for themselves. He did it in the moments they’d most desire to be alone. It happened so frequently that they just thought that’s how it was for everyone else. Dr. Soltani would show up to Sarah’s piano lessons and try to sign up for joint classes. Or he would attend Amir’s tennis camps and try to build relationships with the coaches. And for Cyrus, it meant being at soccer practice in Louisville and barking orders from the sideline. Amir bore the brunt of it, though, their mother, stepped in to stop him from doing as much with Cyrus and Sarah.

“It wasn’t easy being the firstborn son,” Amir continued, “He had a vision of what I should do, where I should go, how fast and when. There was to be no deviation and no rebellion. When I couldn’t handle it, when it all became too much, I came here to escape. When I couldn’t escape, we’d have drop-down drag-out fights. Do you know how many times he told me he’d be okay with never seeing me again?”

That was another point of tension. Karim would pull the trigger on that phrase quickly–often immediately upon any resistance to his demands. His children would later find out that it was common for Iranian parents to say some variation of that to their kids. Not all Iranian parents, of course, but enough to where it was a thing they’d hear their Iranian friends talking about.

“Amir, he’s told that to all of us.”

“I know he has, but in a way, it was easier for you all because you all weren’t the first. And Mother forced him to dial it back. There was so much venom in the early years. He wanted the old world respect and patriarchy to reign here in America. And any pushback was seen as a rejection of his entire essence, his very being, his masculinity. Combine that with the pressure he put on me to be and do what he wanted and envisioned for me, I’m surprised I didn’t burst into flames. It was all that aberoo bullshit.”

“But you turned out okay, Amir. You’re successful.”

“Yeah, because I got out, I rebelled, and I spent years in therapy working out the baggage from my childhood. Therapy works, by the way; I highly recommend it,” Amir said.

“I’ll have to remember that,” Cyrus responded after taking a sip of his coffee, surprised that even after all this time outside on a cold February morning, the beverage was still piping hot.

“Do you mind if we just sit here for a moment longer before we head back to the house,” Amir asked.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.”

Amir plopped down on the nearest tree stump at the pond's edge. A smile slowly crept across his face. It was the first time in months he’d been at peace. Finally, getting that off his chest immediately did wonders for his soul. There was never enough time with his siblings to have these sorts of talks.

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Cyrus wasn’t one to do his thinking sitting down, thus the long walks over the last week. He strolled along the shore, inspecting every nook and cranny that had been a former hiding spot or raft launch. He had known his brother’s relationship with their father was tumultuous, but he didn’t realize it had had that sort of effect on Amir. They loved their father. There was no doubt about that. They had forgiven him, but some unhealed wounds continued to fester even in adulthood. Those open emotional scars made their father’s transgressions hard to forget. But it was their father’s refusal to acknowledge the pain he had caused that compounded chinks in their psyche and kept their relationship with him lukewarm in the best of times. Amir’s revelation, though, was yet another reason for Cyrus to figure out how to spend more time here. He and his siblings needed each other.

“So tell me what your plans with Sanaz are,” Amir said as Cyrus finally finished his lap around the pond.

“This again?”

“Yes, this again.”

“Amir, I don’t know. She and I need to talk about what we’re doing, but beyond that, I’m not sure.”

“Okay, okay, little brother, I’ll let it be for now.”