Page 32 of People Change

Jessica in particular looks appalled, though at herself or at Mariam is not clear. Her blue eyes suddenly fill. She tucks her hair behind her ears quickly, before responding.

‘I’m sorry, Mariam, I didn’t mean to offend anyone. God, that was awful of me, wasn’t it? I don’t really know what to say …’ Jessica falters, her eyes fully filling now with tears that threaten to spill at a moment’s notice.

The woman next to Jessica taps her on the shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ she says softly. ‘We’re all learning.’

Shirin looks to Mariam, whose eyes are also red, but sympathetic eyes are on Jessica, so no one but Shirin notices. ‘You okay?’ Shirin mouths to her.

Mariam shakes her head, as though to say,Leave it, not wanting attention.

Shirin does not know what to do. She is debating saying something, and being seen to pile onto Jessica, or not saying anything, and thereby not supporting Mariam, when she is the only person with sense in the room. She feels a rush of adrenaline, and simultaneously her throat tightening, and she knows it is ridiculous to be so afraid of being heard, but she is terrified.

She finally opens her mouth to speak just as Allegra says, ‘Indeed, we are all learning. Thank you, Mariam, for being honest with us. I think we don’t quite mean it in the way you’ve interpreted. But I do apologise if something that has been said today has offended you. It can be difficult to get these things right, and mistakes will be made, but of course you know all our intentions here are good, and this is a safe space to explore ways to be better.’

Shirin sees that Mariam’s gaze is now down at the table, presumably at the stray blonde hair. The conversation ticks along elsewhere. The moment to speak up passes her by and Shirin is left spent, feeling both cowardly and pathetic.

‘I should have backed you up,’ Shirin says later. They are in the stationery cupboard.

Mariam is deflated, like a shrivelled balloon. Shirin knows her own expression is akin to Mariam’s, though mingled with remorse.

‘Nah,’ Mariam says. She picks up one of the red pens from a multipack cardboard box. As she speaks, she clicks the pen on and off repeatedly. ‘It shouldn’t have to be us versus them. I just feel stupid, thinking they’d listen.’

Shirin considers this, but even so, she feels she should have said something. She would have liked to have made Mariam feel less alone, to take a stand for something she believes in too. There is something dirty that comes with being a bystander.

‘I’m sorry anyway,’ she says.

‘Shirin, you have nothing to apologise for.’

‘You did really well, you know. Like, it’s not easy to speak up in a group that big, and you said what needed to be said. That’s brave.’

Mariam’s lips curl up in a very small smile. She shrugs, but they both know that in a corporate job what she did was really big. Speaking up for yourself – for people like yourself – is big. Shirin wonders at the emotional labour of her job. It is a strange industry, publishing, in which you bare your soul because you care so much for your readers, for the power of words, but the lines become blurred between what should and should not be acceptable in a job. How much you care about things that are not life or death, but are treated as such.

Back at her desk, she is still deflated and unseasonably sweaty. She never used to be like this. She remembers at university overcoming her inwardness, with the help of Hana, and being confident, finally feeling as though what she had to say mattered. Now, though, she has returned to her shell and finds herself still struggling to speak in large meetings,like she is fearful of being heard, of people looking at her. Like she’s back at school and, to get by, it’s best to be invisible. Often what she wants to say becomes stuck in her throat, her heart beating rapidly at all the potential outcomes.

She looks at her phone, at the message Kian sent her days ago, asking her how she was feeling after Millie’s drinks last week. She hasn’t opened the message until now, fearful of the things she said to him, how candid she was. She almost replies, but stops herself; her mind is too busy and she cannot allow herself to go there right now.

Instead she continues with her work, and goes through her endless emails. She has one from two minutes ago, with no subject, from a colleague. She opens it:You spoke so brilliantly and eloquently earlier. I just wanted to let you know x

Shirin furrows her brows and does not respond, does not move for a moment. She is thinking: Surely not,surely …

Another message comes in almost instantly:Sorry, I just realised I emailed the wrong person. Ignore this!

Mariam looks nothing like her, is five-foot-ten, Palestinian, and wears a hijab. Shirin is five-foot-three, Iranian, and her hair is bleached blonde.

Shirin promptly forwards the email to Mariam.

Mariam replies:LOL.

Shirin shrugs it off as being one of those things, but for the rest of the day she cannot stop thinking about how, to some people, if you’re not white you’re all the same.

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, with hiked-up prices. 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.

Shirin had attempted to recount the events of the meeting to Hana, an outsider in 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 aloud 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 being fully registered. She’d realised then that it’s only through experiencing the specific publishing micro-aggressions that one can truly understand them and their capacity to wound.