Team Updates
TEAM UPDATES
When Shirin returns home from Heathrow she struggles to enter her flat. The key won’t turn. She knows she needs to jig it to the right side twice before pushing hard to the left. But this time this method doesn’t work, and it’s only on her fifth go, when she is muttering and swearing “For fuck’s sake, can something just go right for once?” that it clicks open. Her housemate Jane is coming down the stairs in her pajamas as Shirin enters. “It’s a hazard,” she says. “If someone was running after us and we had to get in quickly, we wouldn’t make it. We’d be dragged away and killed.”
Shirin looks at her, not knowing exactly what to say to that. In the end, she says nothing. Her housemate trudges into the kitchen, and Shirin drags her feet up the stairs to her bedroom. When she checks her phone, she sees a disjointed email from her mum, which informs her that Maman Bozorg is in hospital with pneumonia.
The following Monday she receives an email with the subject Team updates from Allegra. She clicks on it idly. They’re regularly sent these emails; someone is always leaving, joining, going on maternity leave, or getting promoted. Usually in the PR and marketing teams, which are constantly in flux. Her heart beats out of time, though, when she sees the name in bold and skims the body of the email.
We have exciting news to announce: Florence Ainsworth has been promoted to editor, effective immediately. Florence has shown herself to be an invaluable member of the editorial team, with innovative ideas and a can-do attitude. Notably, her acquisition of Abigail Underwood—the Windmill First Novel Award winner and the Women’s Prize long-listed author—is such a massive book for us, and is in line with our mission to be more diverse and upmarket in the books we publish. We are excited to see more acquisitions from Florence. She will be handling many of Poppy’s authors. Please do join me in congratulating Florence!
At 10 A.M. Shirin and Lilian have their one-to-one catch-up. They always use the full hour because Lilian is too busy for Shirin to ask quick questions throughout the week, and often they are things that only her manager can answer, so she stores them up in a list in her notebook.
There are two questions she wishes to ask Lilian. One: that she needs to take time off work to go to Tehran, to be with her grandmother, and can she use her annual leave to go? And two: does Florence getting a promotion affect her chances of getting promoted? The first is easier to word than the second, as she has twenty-one days of annual leave to use up anyway. When she told her dad about Maman Bozorg, he said he’d pay for her flight. One can say many things about her dad, about his character, but it cannot be said that he isn’t generous with his money. He throws it around like it’s nothing, lending money to friends who never give it back, so she has no qualms about taking money from him now.
She has been unable to sleep all weekend, thinking of Maman Bozorg, of how she hasn’t called her in a while, that she is a bad granddaughter. Despite her mum’s fraught email, it took her a full twenty-three hours to reply to Shirin’s questions about whether Maman Bozorg is okay. She didn’t answer the phone either. Shirin began to fear the worst. Hospitals in Iran are not always sanitary, and many of her relatives have suffered from infections after being hospitalized, which caused them more harm than the ailment they went in with in the first place. She’s trying not to think something like that could happen to her seventy-three-year-old grandmother. Eventually her mum replied to say that Maman Bozorg is getting better, but she is keeping a close eye on her. She said Shirin didn’t need to come all the way to Tehran, that it wasn’t necessary. Shirin isn’t sure how her mum could think traveling to be with someone you love isn’t necessary. She doesn’t see her grandmother as a burden, though she wonders if that’s how her mother sees her, and that’s why she said that.
On Sunday, when her mum visited Maman Bozorg in the hospital, Shirin called her. She handed the telephone to Maman Bozorg.
“Shirin,” her grandmother said into the receiver, her voice quiet, when normally her talking voice is akin to a shout.
“Maman Bozorg, how are you? I’ve been so worried.”
“I’m okay, azizam, don’t worry about me. It’s nothing, I’ll be okay.”
“You’re in hospital, of course I’m worried.”
“I’m strong, Shirin jan.”
Hearing her grandmother’s voice, even if it was raspy, reassured Shirin. Her mother’s email had panicked her, made her think her grandmother was unable to speak, on ventilators maybe, and she’d feared the worst. That’s the problem with her mother’s poor communication skills.
“Inshallah, you’ll get better very soon,” she said.
“Inshallah, inshallah,” Maman Bozorg said. “How are you, azizam? Everything okay? You feeling better about work?”
Shirin let out a small chuckle. “My problems are small compared to yours.”
“What talk is this? You’re important, so your problems are important too.”
Shirin told her she was going to try and fly over next week. Maman Bozorg protested that it wasn’t that serious, but when Shirin said, “I miss you,” her grandmother softened and said, “I miss you too. It would make my year to see you.”
“I’ll do my best,” Shirin promised.
Lilian and Shirin are in a meeting room. It only fits two people as it’s narrow, with two plush velvet chairs opposite each other and a small coffee table between them. One side of the room is completely glass, and they see people walk past them. It is like a fish tank.
“So,” Lilian begins. “How are you?”
Shirin always says, Good, thanks. How are you? She’s not sure if she’s ever said anything else in the last two and a half years she’s worked at Hoffman. It’s an odd question, she thinks, in a professional setting. No one really cares, and she can hardly say, Shit, actually, can she?
So, instead, she goes for a different, more tentative approach and says, “Okay, but my grandma went into hospital on Friday. She’s doing better now and they’re going to release her, hopefully, but I wanted to ask, actually, if I could take some of my holiday to go back to see her?” She speaks quickly, as she often does around Lilian. It seems easier somehow to say it all in one go, rather than taking her time and enunciating her words. She is surprised that her eyes water as she speaks. Saying it all aloud, she imagines her maman bozorg in a hospital bed, frail and beautiful, wanting to be back home. There is nothing Maman Bozorg loves more than her own house; she is the most house-proud woman Shirin knows. Her children have asked her to move in with them, so they can take care of her better, but Maman Bozorg refuses, proclaiming she wants her own home, that she doesn’t want to be a guest in someone else’s.
Lilian’s brows furrow. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. When exactly were you thinking of taking time off?”
Shirin has her laptop on her thighs and pulls up the calendar app. “I was thinking of going next Monday for two weeks. That way, I could get a flight on Saturday. I have three weeks’ annual leave left anyway, and only two months to take it before it renews.”
Lilian makes a low sound, almost like a cat hissing. “Usually we need more notice for annual leave. And don’t we have an author event next Thursday? I think you volunteered to help with it?” This is not strictly true. Lilian volunteered Shirin to help with it. Attending is, of course, not paid, nor is their extra time preparing for it compensated.
“I could ask if maybe Florence could cover…”
Again Lilian has a pained, pinched expression on her face. “I don’t think it would be right for you to ask her. Maybe you could go in three weeks? How does that sound?” Her tone is as though she is doing Shirin a favor.
“I’m just quite worried about my grandma,” she says. She hasn’t said the words aloud until now, and just vocalizing her worry makes her voice catch. She tries to think of something else to block any tears.
“You mentioned that she’s on the mend though? I would love to say yes to you going sooner, but we can’t bend the rules, or else everyone will want us to. You understand that, don’t you?”
Shirin wants to tell Lilian that her heart is in Tehran, and that she has this bubbling fear that if she doesn’t go soon something bad will happen to her grandmother and she’ll never forgive herself. There is a block within her, though. The words she wants to say are not even on the tip of her tongue, but instead lodged in her throat, and she cannot get them out. She wills herself to just say that she needs to go, but instead, deflated, she says, “Oh, okay, thank you.”
Next on Shirin’s list is ask about promotion, but when the moment comes, she is quiet. In her mind she is confident and assertive, but in work situations she is rendered voiceless. She bites her tongue and begins. “I had a question about progression.”
“Hm?”
“I remember a few months ago you mentioned that I was on the path to getting promoted. I wondered, am I going in the right direction?” This isn’t even the question she wanted to ask. But it is easier to skirt around the issue and hope Lilian understands.
She does not understand.
“Yes, indeed, I’m very happy with the work you’re doing.”
Shirin smiles; it is a closed-lipped smile and of course she doesn’t mean it, because really her heart is pounding anxiously. “I mean, obviously Florence recently got promoted…”
Lilian sits up straight, both hands on her lap, her large engagement ring shimmering in the light, the picture of formality. “Yes, she did. Listen, Shirin, you shouldn’t compare yourself to your colleagues. Focus on yourself.”
It is so vague and shaming, and she isn’t sure what to say. “Yes, of course. It’s just that we have similar experience and have been working here the same amount of time, so I wondered—”
“I’m not meant to say this, it’s highly unprofessional of me, but the thing is, Shirin, Florence’s situation is quite different from yours. She got a job offer elsewhere—and she is such an asset to the team—so we matched her offer. I’m being transparent because I know it can be confusing when someone in the same position as you moves ahead quicker, but we don’t want to lose any of you, so that’s what happened.”
“Oh, okay. Does that mean the editor position is still open?”
Lilian shakes her head. “I’m afraid not. But we can discuss all this in your next review.”
Her next review is in May. Three months away.
Shirin says something noncommittal and pathetic like, “Okay, great!” Inside she is withering.
There are so many things she wants to say, but she can’t find the words to do so politely. She is defeated. When she speaks up she is not heard, anyway. She cannot use her allotted leave to be there when her grandmother needs her. The promotion she was grasping for is no longer in reach. And Kian has left her. Everything that gave her joy, everything that she was striving for, is disappearing.
And then it is confirmed; two days after Shirin had planned to visit Tehran, her mum rings her in the afternoon. She never calls. Shirin gets up from her desk and only answers the call when she is away from her colleagues, down the corridor by the lifts.
“Your maman bozorg has passed away,” her mum says.
Shirin’s body no longer feels like her own, her vision blurry. “How?” she barely manages to ask.
“The stupid hospitals here.” Her mum’s voice is shaking. “She was doing much better, but then she got an infection. It happened so quickly—so, so quickly. I can’t believe my maman is gone.” Her voice breaks.
When the call ends, Shirin goes into the toilets, into one of the cubicles, grabs a wad of toilet roll, and buries her face in it. She cries silent tears, wanting to scream, wanting to bang her head against the door. She wishes, so badly, she could have said goodbye to her maman bozorg, that she could have told her in person that she loves her, before she passed away. That she had been granted permission to go to Tehran and see her sweet maman bozorg’s face one last time.