A Charitable Comedian
A CHARITABLE COMEDIAN
It is two days later and Shirin is on the Central line with Mariam. They have just had dinner at a pancake restaurant in Soho. The decor was minimal and chic, the prices hiked up. And as with most gimmick restaurants, the food was mediocre, though they both said in the restaurant that they enjoyed it. They went, in part, to soothe their wounds after what happened in the diversity and inclusion meeting.
“I can’t wait for the Christmas break and to just be away from all of this,” Mariam had said between bites of dry pancake. Christmas was the only time in publishing when everyone was offline and there was momentary peace.
“I’m going to Tehran over the break, you know,” Shirin said. “To see my mum and grandma.”
Her mother was meant to come back during the Christmas break but she implored Shirin to visit her instead. “You’ve never had Christmas in Tehran!” she had exclaimed over the phone.
“They don’t celebrate Christmas there,” Shirin had responded.
“We aren’t Christians anyway,” her mum retorted, crumbling her own point entirely.
Shirin hadn’t left the country in years—so despite being resentful of her mother leaving her, she booked a flight to Tehran, reasoning that seeing her maman bozorg would soothe her anxieties. And beyond that, she missed her grandmother. She was more like a mother figure to Shirin and she needed that comfort. Sometimes phone calls were not enough.
On the Tube, Shirin thinks about her attempts to recount the events of the work meeting to Hana, an outsider to publishing. Though what had happened had sounded so inconsequential out loud. “They gaslit us,” she had said to Hana, in a high-pitched tone to get her point across. She had found herself wanting to exaggerate, to really hammer home how it had affected her.
“Wow, that sounds rough,” Hana had said.
“Like, Mariam was nearly in tears,” Shirin had continued. The words had sounded dramatic, like Mariam and Shirin were being childish, and though Hana hadn’t said so, Shirin could tell the gravity of the moment was not fully registering. She’d realized then that it’s only through experiencing the specific publishing microaggressions that one can truly understand them and their capacity to wound.
The windows between the carriages are open, and the Tube shrieks as it moves, getting increasingly intolerable. They are unable to talk due to the noise, so Mariam shuts her eyes, her hands resting on her lap like she is about to sleep.
Shirin looks across from her and sees someone holding open a newspaper. There is a picture of Rob Grayson. Atop the picture is the headline:
ROB GRAYSON DONATES ALL PROCEEDS FROM UPCOMING SHOW TO HOMELESS CHARITY
She stares at the page, the words in the article too small to read, though she squints to try and make them out anyway. When the person across from her gets off, he leaves the newspaper behind. She reaches for it, even though she knows it will only anger her.
The piece goes into great detail about Rob’s charitable acts, mainly tackling homelessness and poverty. He is called an “inspiration” and his upbringing as a working-class boy from Hull, who knows what it’s like to struggle financially, is mentioned, as it always is. The charitable work he is doing is good and worthy, but that doesn’t make him a good person, not like the article would want the reader to believe.
The piece quotes Rob saying, “Britain needs to help their own people. The government have failed so many rough sleepers and families living in poverty, and I urge everyone to donate and do their bit.” There is no mention of his comments online about England letting in too many refugees, or of his sketch that laughed at migrants dying in oceans as they attempted to flee their countries. Of course not.
Shirin nudges Mariam, who jolts into alertness and looks down at the paper in her hands. “Does this sound racist to you?” Shirin shouts over the screeching train tracks. She angles the newspaper so Mariam can better see what she is referring to.
It takes her a moment to read the piece, and then Mariam says, “Maybe? I mean, he is racist, so he probably does mean ‘own people’ to mean white people, so yeah. Are we surprised?” She takes the newspaper from Shirin’s hand, folds it, and places it on the empty seat next to her. “I love how he’s being lorded as a man of the people. He’s rich—he gets paid for one show what we’d only dream to get in a year.”
Shirin thinks: If only Mariam knew everything. If she’s outraged as an onlooker at Rob’s fandom despite the vitriol he spews, imagine if she knew what he did to Shirin and Kian all those years ago. She always thought the bullies and racists from school would grow up to be unsuccessful and pathetic—like Jordan, who’s now in prison—not celebrities who continue their hate speech on a public scale, who have adoring fans and an abundance of wealth. It’s like with every passing day he’s becoming bigger and bigger, and she is forced to just accept that she will see his face around—and thereby forever be confronted with a time, a moment, she wants so desperately to forget. But she can’t. That is, unfortunately, not how life works. So she finally replies to Kian’s message.
If you’d told Shirin a year ago that Kian Rahimi would be sitting in her damp living room drinking a cup of tea from her Kiki’s Delivery Service mug, she would not have believed it. But here he is. She apologizes that the room is ugly and cold, and he says it’s neither and not to be silly.
They only have one sofa. It is a strange maroon color and faux leather. When Shirin first moved in she attempted to make it cozier by adding a cream fleece blanket on the seat cushions. Her brain is whizzing between different things because she is not sure how it got to this—how Kian ended up at her flat at 9 P.M. on a Thursday.
He removes the beanie atop his head and shrugs out of his borg jacket, which he folds and places on the arm of the chair. There is something so satisfying in how well he dresses now. She is superficial in this way.
“I’m sorry if I seemed dramatic in my text,” she says to him.
His lips curve marginally at the sides. “You didn’t seem dramatic.” He puts the mug down by his feet without drinking from it. He turns to her and leans a little closer. “I was surprised you texted me though. You’ve been ghosting me since Millie’s birthday.”
Shirin lets out a little lighthearted gasp at this. “I wouldn’t say ghosting…”
“Okay, you didn’t reply to my message. Is that better?”
“I just said things I shouldn’t have. I was drunk.”
“I gathered that,” he says. “It’s okay. I get it.”
“You do?”
He nods. “I think we always suited being friends.”
“Really?” The conversation is not going in the direction she hoped it would, but she has only herself to blame. “And that’s why you came round then, when I said I was upset about Rob—because we’re friends?”
She notices the way his eyes go doe-like and less focused, how he bites his bottom lip. She notices this and so she isn’t expecting him to say, “Yeah, exactly that. I was heading east anyway when you messaged, so popping round was no bother.”
“You were?”
“Yeah, Salma lives round here.”
“Oh,” she says, pausing, processing, until she eventually asks, “You’re still seeing each other then?”
“We’re exclusive now, yeah.”
She nods. It has only been a week. Of course their relationship escalated that quickly. “I bet you have loads in common,” she says. “Lots of art chat.”
He leans back, scratches his forehead, and lets out a long breath. Like he is relieved he has told her. Like he thought she’d be upset or something. “I forgot how much you deflect sometimes,” he muses.
She looks at him like he has shoved her. “I don’t deflect.”
“You do—you’re allowed to be upset about Rob. It’s shit. But come on, you don’t care about Salma. It’s obvious you don’t like her.”
“I like Salma.”
“She said you were giving her bitchy looks at Millie’s,” Kian says, though he is smiling, while she is aghast.
“I definitely wasn’t. It’s just my face.” He does not look convinced, which makes her smile back, despite everything she has just heard. “I have resting bitch face. You know this.”
“I mean, I did tell her that.”
“Good. And why aren’t you annoyed about Rob? You’re so chill about it all the time. I don’t get it.”
“I love how you said we can’t talk about school anymore, and yet here we are again,” he jokes.
“I created the rule, I can break it,” she retorts.
He sighs, realizing he can’t get away from the conversation. “Well, I’m not chill about it, Shirin. I fucking hate him.” He lets out a short, somber laugh. “You know, a few years ago after a night out in Manchester I saw his face on a poster. Then I turned the corner and there were at least twenty of them, all in a row, advertising one of his shite shows. I ripped them off, one by one. I’m pissed off too, but sadly, terrible people will continue to be successful and we have to make our peace with it.”
Shirin’s phone buzzes and she sees it is her dad. She rejects the call. He rings again, this time requesting to FaceTime. He only calls when he wants something. When he wants a chat about his mental health. Or how he misses her mum. Or when he wants her to order something for him online. There is something building within her. It happens often, like she is a glass and each issue in her life fills her up, and now she is at risk of overflowing. Though she’s not sure why she feels this way. She knows she needs to get over seeing Rob everywhere. But it’s not just that—it’s that nothing about life in her twenties is how she imagined it would be. She is unhappy and does not know how to make herself happy. All she does is make herself feel worse.
“It’s my dad,” she explains.
“He’s still being useless?” Kian says, even though she hasn’t told him about her dad recently. He remembers from when they were younger and she would complain about her parents. Though Shirin and Kian’s dynamic has changed now. When she was younger she had so much energy, would give him advice with such confidence, and now it is like the life in her has gone.
“Nothing new,” she says, though she feels her eyes tearing up; even as she tries to laugh it off, it comes out shaky and strange.
Kian is looking down at her intently, trying to catch her eye. “Do you speak to your mum much?”
She doesn’t answer because she doesn’t want to cry. She doesn’t want to be tipped over the edge, though she hasn’t realized until now that the topic of her family has the ability to do so. Instead of replying she looks up at him, pushes her lips downward in a What do you think? expression.
Her dad tries to call her again, and she mutters something like fuck off before throwing her phone across the room. The outburst is unexpected, but she is shaking and has the urge to scream and break something.
Kian’s arms are around her now, tight and warm. Her face is pressed against his chest and she is paralyzed, stock-still. His jumper is scratchy against her face, but she does not move. “It’s okay,” he whispers, and her face is wet. She is crying and she isn’t sure when or how that happened. “You don’t need to be strong all the time,” he says, still holding her. “Let it out.”
But Shirin’s thinking, That’s the whole problem. She is not strong enough. She is not enough.