Mehdi M. Kashani
University of Alberta Press (August 13, 2026)
190 pp. $24.99 (paperback)
We’re now almost through with dinner but our conversation has barely scratched the surface. Of my fish and chips remain but a few mushy fries and a nearly spent ramekin of tartar sauce. Sonia’s father is wolfing down the last bite of a thick burger whose dripping grease has drawn on his plate the outline of an unknown country. His fingers wriggle in the air, ordering his third glass of wine while my first beer is hardly halved. We're in a homey restaurant, east of Toronto downtown, wrapped in warm-colored wooden walls. My second venture here. The last time was six years ago when my father-in-law wasn’t my father-in-law.
Our mostly unidirectional conversation has so far covered a wide range of banalities and I still have no inkling why we’re meeting on such a short notice. And I won’t ask. It’s not in my character to push people, least of all my father-in-law.
“What did you tell Sonia?” he asks.
“I usually work on part-time projects after my office hours. So it wasn’t that hard.”
He nods. Approvingly so, I hope. It feels strange to tell someone how you got away with lying to their daughter.
He rubs his hands together. “So, tell me. How’s married life?”
It’s an odd question. It can’t be generic wondering. He must know the answer after living with his wife for fortysomething years. Neither can it be directed particularly at me and Sonia. Our union is no longer fresh news.
“Can’t complain.”
“So, you weren’t misinformed about the merits of marriage?”
I consider. “It has its moments.”
“You look happy together. I can easily tell when Sonia is happy. And she’s happy. Happy is good.”
I smile, sticking to my silence in case he wants to utter happy once again.
The waitress brings his wine. He slides the glass toward himself and turns it by the stem, amused like a kid with a new toy. It was only last night that my mother-in-law complained to Sonia about her husband’s recently acquired drinking habit. Supposedly a secret, Sonia filled me in anyway. Now, I’m a firsthand witness to the old man’s indulgence.
“And Sonia is successful at work,” he finally says. “She has always been an overachiever. It’s partially my fault and her mother’s.”
“Fault?”
“Well, I mean, when someone overachieves in some aspect of life, they’ll underachieve in others. Inevitably so. It’s the conservation of time principle.”
I hold my beer glass with two hands. “If you’re implying that she’s cutting time from our marriage, I don’t think it’s true.”
“I’m sure it’s not. And that wasn’t what I meant.”
He’s alluding to another aspect of life then, and to break into it, he has to fortify himself with a gulp of his wine.
“Look, son. We’re Iranian, no matter how long we’ve been on foreign soil. Here, we learn to playact, to pretend we’re abiding by the rules of modern life: parents cannot and should not interfere in their children’s lives, especially once they’re married. And sweet as she is, Sonia is not really open to hearing our thoughts and worries.”
Sonia’s parents are indeed discreet, almost to comic effect. Sonia tells me stories about them, often in an endearing voice, how her parents’ criticisms are sugarcoated in indirection and allusion. I imagine this extent of caution doesn’t come easy. It must be the outcome of a sequence of domestic struggles, possibly before my time, out of which Sonia emerged the victor.
“Is it about having kids?”
His eyes shine under their alcohol-induced drooping lids. “This July she’ll be thirty-five. We don’t even know if you two have any plans for it.”
Doing math on age and the looming edges of fertility is mostly a woman’s job. “We means you and Soraya Khanoum?”
He nods. “We’re two retired souls who are supposed to have grandkids at this age.”
Evolutionary-wise he’s right, but what aspect of our hectic lives is in line with the slow pace of evolution? Our daily eight-hour slump over lit screens? Our highly-hormonized diet?
“You know, these things are complicated. Our lives—”
“Son, Soraya gave birth to Cyrus in the middle of the war. And when she was pushing Sonia out of her, Iraqi planes were shelling Tehran, only a few blocks away from the hospital. We raised our daughter in a ravaged, bankrupt country. And she turned out good enough for you to fall for her.” He halts at my sheepish laugh, but his face remains gloomy. “You know, humans are great at procrastination. If I choose not to do something—like cleaning the house—I can spin tens of arguments why I should not—none of them the underlying reason. That’s a principle of life.”
Sonia’s father has this tendency to strengthen his arguments by christening them with immutable principles. I imagine Sonia’s reaction had she been here. She would let him talk his heart out, perhaps with a polite smile, and then in one heart-breaking sentence exit the scene.
“Well, we talk about it once in a while,” I say, which is true. In a sense.
“You sound so casual. It’s not a debate on who’ll win the world cup. Look! After the early years of marriage, whatever childless couples do in their spare time, it’s to fill the void of children.” He must feel he’s overdoing it. His tone shifts, gears toward the avuncular. “I understand that this is unorthodox. It just happens that you’re more approachable. I wish there were a way we could talk to our daughter.”
I know that Sonia wouldn’t allow them, and she’s made me swear to follow suit. So far, my job has been easy. She’s been our front, the one bearing the brunt. But now, they’ve changed tactics, smartly so. They know I’m too polite to dismiss them.
His cellphone beeps. Amused by whatever appears on the display, he starts to type back. He’s pretty quick for his age, using only one finger of a hand.
“Uncle Cyrus says hi,” he mutters, keeping his head down.
Uncle already!
“Is he aware we’re having this conversation?”
“Well, it comes up in our chats. He wants to become an uncle as much as I want to be a grandfather.”
Why don’t they pressure their son to marry, I wonder. At least, Sonia is one phase ahead. Besides, people traditionally worry about their male line. But again, my in-laws seem to be progressive enough to think past that. Yet, not enough to leave the choice of having children to their own children.
“And Uncle Cyrus doesn’t desire to become a father, since that requires him to be someone’s husband?”
My father-in-law puts his phone away. “I know what you’re thinking, son. Cyrus is elusive. But he’s not opposed to the idea of settling down. If he could find the one.”
Sonia and I make frequent trips to Chicago. With the type of girls in Cyrus’s orbit, it’s very unlikely for him to find the one. Also, I have some theories about him (which I never dare to share with Sonia) and, if they’re true, it’d be difficult for him to procreate. I don’t mention anything to my father-in-law, not even lightheartedly. Parents think of their children as saints and it’s not my place, nor the time, to disabuse them of their illusion.
Sonia’s father pushes away the plates between us with the back of his hands and laces his fingers together. “Look! I love my daughter. To tell you a secret, I love her even more than Cyrus. I was the one encouraging her to aim high, to climb ladders. But now, sometimes I feel like she’s so high in the air that I can’t spot her. She’s become the fruit on a branch farthest from my reach. Now, she tells me she’s learning golf, I ask her why, and she says her clients like it, and it helps her career if she entertains them with golf. Golf! Golf? We’re Iranian. We don’t play golf. Hitting a tiny ball with a stick.” He drains his wine and raises his free palm to indicate he’s not finished. “And of course we love to have grandchildren. That’s all Soraya wants at this stage of her life. But there’s something I’m thinking about that Soraya isn’t. This is a man-to-man conversation we’re having, right?” He leans in, drops his voice to a whisper. “I’m afraid of the day that Sonia will become a fruit that not even you, her husband, can reach. And that’s where I think kids can help. Playing the mother instinct card. I hope you don’t take this wrong.”
He throws back his head, but his gaze remains on me, studying my reaction. His lips form a hint of smile, a sign of relief. This is the point of departure for him, where his path and his wife’s diverge. His concern is now less a parental worry than a gender power game. I teeter on the verge of anger over the insensitivity of his remarks, teaching me how to rein in my wife. And yet, he is her father; we’ve always maintained a peaceful rapport. Crossing that line feels like an excruciating ordeal that I might or might not be able to brave and the timely arrival of the waitress lands me on the “might not” track.
She towers over us to recite the options for dessert. I guzzle the rest of my beer like it’s a prerequisite for the next stage. My lucid state is soon replaced by nausea. No, I’m no stranger to indulgence in food or drink. My queasiness is the by-product of the situation I’ve been put in: how Sonia is the subject of the discussion of the men closest to her, a collusion I’ve been a reluctant part of.
“Have you tried their sticky toffee pudding, son?”
I shake my head, showing little passion. He orders one with two spoons. The waitress assures us it’s a smart choice, turns on her heels and marches off.
“It appears you come here often,” I say once I regain my balance.
“Used to, but it remains my favorite spot and it’s all thanks to you.”
I blush, less because of the credit than the occasion he’s reminding me of. Six years ago, I invited him to this very restaurant, and after dinner and two glasses of wine (then, I was the one in need of fortification), I asked for his permission to propose to his daughter. I didn’t know I was repurposing this restaurant into a cathedral where people confessed things about Sonia.
The dessert arrives. A brick-like sponge cake baked with toffee and crisscrossed by vanilla. We start digging from either side. For a minute or so, we’re savoring the delicacy until there remains only a thin wall of cake none of us dares to cut through.
My father-in-law sets his spoon aside. “There’s one other thing.”
“Sure.”
He wipes his mouth with his napkin, rotates his phone to make it parallel to the edges of the table, turns his head to make sure no one is in his earshot.
“I’ll die in six months. Six months is if I’m lucky.”
His eyes escape my gaze. A crumb lodges at the corner of his mouth, somehow escaping his hurried scrubbing. I want to point it out to him, as if to fix these problems one by one, starting with the easiest.
Instead, I utter something equally dumb. “For real?”
“If doctors are to be trusted.”
“Who else knows?”
He shakes his head.
Even in relaying such news, he’s keeping his composure. Myself, I’m not a weepy person, but I could easily burst into tears if he started it. I’m at a loss for words, not yet understanding the full scale of what I’ve just heard. I think about his greasy food, his new drinking to excess, and the sweet dessert he consumed, possibly the microcosms of a decadent lifestyle. But I’m not the right person to comment on diets. My knowledge of human body is minimal. I’m the sort of person who needs to maneuver his palm on his chest to find where his heart beats. So, if I inquire about the name of the disease, it’s only out of politeness.
“Glioblastoma multiforme.” He taps his temple. “Brain cancer, in layman’s term.”
“Oh,” is all I manage to say to a sentence loaded with brain and cancer.
Poignant as it is, my mind is still stuck on the conversation we had before dessert, trying to reconcile it with the revelation that comes after. If what he says is true, he would never see his hypothetical grandchild. The hypothetical cells that multiply to make a hypothetical baby will never catch up with the malignant tumor that’s eating up his brain. Was that earlier discussion merely an excuse? An opening to the real issue?
The waitress scampers in our direction, taking advantage of the silence. “Anything else you’d like?”
Once she sees my father-in-law’s shake of head, she places the bill on the table with a flourish. In light of the news, it’s only fair to treat the dying man. But once I produce my wallet, he shows his discontent by a vehement wave of hand and places two fifties on the plate.
He waits until we’re alone again. “I just wanted to say it to someone, to see how it sounds. A rehearsal before breaking it to Soraya and the kids.”
I nod, glad that I was helpful without really being helpful. “There might be a chance.”
“Don’t even go there. False hope is the last thing I need right now.”
He grabs his jacket, takes his time to slip into it, and I watch him in silence. Then, I stand up, slinging my laptop bag. “Would you like to hop in my cab? You’re on the way.”
“Nah, I need to walk. But…” he raises a finger. “We should do this more often. Not every six years. Some of us won’t be around.”
He laughs at his own joke, grim as it is, inviting me to join in. Instead, I stare into his eyes, a man who has fathered my wife, who found me a close enough relation, even if momentarily so, even if only because he couldn’t talk to his real close ones, to impart his worries and secrets. He takes my silence as the end of the meet-up and struggles to slide out of the length of the booth.
“Sonia can’t have children.”
His awkward posture freezes in the middle of erecting his back, and his expression softens as he mumbles, “Doesn’t want to?”
A smile creeps onto his face, faint and uncertain, as if he already knows his hope is to be crushed by the truth.
“She actually does but can’t. Something with her ovaries, prematurely defunct.”
He slumps back, deflating. “Oh…”
Now, I’m the one awkwardly on my feet, bending my head to diminish the difference in our heights. He points to my seat and I oblige. He doesn’t inquire any further. No question about surrogacy, in vitro or adoption. In this family’s perfectionist worldview, as long as natural birth isn’t an option, nothing is.
“In fact, that sentence you said about couples filling the void, I first heard it from Sonia.”
“Yeah, her mother used to say it when the kids lived with us.”
The waitress glares at us from the other side of the room, as she offers the last free table to a group. The restaurant is getting busier. After-work socializers are being replaced by serious diners and drinkers. My companion doesn’t seem aware of the turnover. His wistful eyes are leveled at a neutral corner on the wall.
The waitress materializes, rousing my father-in-law out of his reverie. “Still thirsty?”
“Tequila double shot.” He casts me a sidelong glance. “Make it two.”
“What are we celebrating?” she asks, totally ignoring the grim aura governing our table.
I can’t help the chuckle I let out. Before I say anything though, my father-in-law takes the floor by his nonchalant response: “A new life.”
Accustomed to such announcements in her profession, she unleashes an excited scream and turns to me, “Boy or girl?”
“We still don’t know,” I hear myself say.
“Tequilas will be on me. A gift for the little one.”
She heads to the bar, and I wait to receive some sort of explanation from my father-in-law, to frame what just happened into something that could range from a crude joke to a wistful blurt. Neither of which I receive.
“So, all this time, she wanted what we always desired. She drew further away from us because she didn’t want us to see her defeat.” And he starts enumerating the occasions in the past, where they pressed her, directly and indirectly, and how she reacted, how she must’ve secretly suffered. “And all this passion for her career, her taking up golf—”
“Actually, it happens that she enjoys golf.”
He glares at me for interrupting his train of thoughts but is forgiving when his order arrives. He slides one drink in my direction and downs the other. The forty-percent alcohol does little to alter the composition of his facial muscles.
“She’s proving a point. My daughter is proving a point. And it’s all my bad. Soraya’s too. Maybe more so. She was the one who was robbed of sleep when the kids didn’t get full marks on math or physics. We shoved it in Sonia’s head, to be the best, the strong, the invincible.”
I don’t argue with him. He’s on the right track, summing it up nicely. Whatever I add, does nothing but worsen the pain, and by pain I mean his and mine. I won’t tell him how hard I tried to cajole Sonia into considering the possibility of having a child; how, two years ago, she surprised me on my birthday by announcing that she was on board, that she dragged me by the collar of my shirt to the bed; how her maternal instincts were summoned to the fore by the sight of any random baby; how, at work, I answered her calls with the anticipation that this must be it, the news of my imminent fatherhood; how she grew withdrawn by days and weeks, resigned to see a gynecologist, and received the news with heroic grace.
My father-in-law’s hand touches the back of mine. He never struck me as a tactile person, so this must mean something. “I’m sorry you can’t have children.”
I put my other hand on top of his. “I’m sorry you’re dying.”
Our sorrows are muted, intertwined. There’s a soothing quality to the moment, to our depleted secret machines. And we know better than to ask each other for secrecy. The world around us whirls in the motion of drunkards as they huddle at the bar and then disperse. The waiters scuttle constantly in the corner of my eye. The music grows louder, drowning out shouts and guffaws. The interior darkens to set the mood. And our phones begin to light every so often with worrying messages and calls from our wives wondering what’s taking us so long.
“The Fruit on the Farthest Branch” from A Tehran So Quiet and Other Stories by Mehdi M. Kashani, published by the University of Alberta Press in August 2026. Copyright © 2026 by Mehdi M. Kashani.
