Page 57 of People Change

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 manythings 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 hospitalised, which has 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 travelling 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 is a two-person meeting room, 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. It is, of course, not paid, nor is their time in doing this extra work 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 favour.

‘I’m just quite worried about my grandma,’ she says.

‘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. Instead, deflated, she says, ‘Oh, okay, thank you.’

Next on Shirin’s list isask 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 mute. 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 inthe 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.