Maame(74)

I get out of bed and the house is empty. I decide I’m going to try to look at my emails today. I wrap a cardigan around me and sit out in the garden with a tall glass of water. There’s almost two hundred emails in my work inbox, which is less than I expected considering a good portion of them will be threads and emails I didn’t need to be cc’d into in the first place. I imagine Penny told relevant parties not to bother me.

I skip through all the condolence emails, opening but not really reading them. There’s one I spend twenty minutes drafting a reply for but, in the end, choose to delete it. Then I see the repetition of the words “Love Stories.”

Love Stories? What’s that?

Via a thread of emails, I discover they’ve followed up with Afra Yazden-Blake and signed her on, with Kris acting as head editor. I’m not usually cc’d into Creative emails, but I think Penny’s been adding me in when the rest forget to. I go through them all and gather that Afra’s book will be called Love Stories from the Middle East and when published it will be a three-to-four-hundred page book on food, drink, and desserts from the Middle East.

A synopsis has even been drafted:

When Afra came to London from Iran twelve years ago, alone and severely homesick, she began to cook and bake food from her mother’s sparse notes as a way of expressing what she could not yet vocalize. She started meeting men and women via social media and various community organizations before holding, what she called, “home parties” in her studio flat. Her dinners started off with just three people bimonthly; each guest would bring a dish from their home to share and they would sit, eat, drink, and reminisce. Soon, friends invited friends and the number of dishes arriving through her studio’s doors grew until her dining table was full and people were sitting on the floor, the kitchen counter, and beside the sink. Afra looked forward to these dinners because her evenings would smell like home and of cities she hadn’t seen. The “home parties” were disorganized but she loved this chaotic expression of love and friendship. Eventually she began storing her recipes and collecting guest recipes to create an Instagram account full of Middle Eastern cuisine.



I go through every single email in my inbox and not once am I mentioned for bringing Afra forward. Maybe they said it out loud in the office, but I doubt it. I unclench my jaw. No way. No fucking way. Not again and not this fucking time. I hit Reply All to an email thread about how to best present the fact that not all the recipes in the book are Afra’s but from her dinner guests also.

Subject: RE: Love Stories

How about Love Stories from the Middle East by Afra Yazden-Blake et al.? When I first found Afra on Instagram, she was quick to credit any recipes that weren’t hers, so I think she’d like that.

Best,

Maddie

It’s not the best idea I’ve had, since cookbooks don’t ever feature the words “et al.,” but I needed to write something that would allow me to mention that I was the one who found Afra.

I hit Send.

Google: Does your line manager steal your publishing ideas?

I find an editorial assistant forum discussing all kinds of things, from pay differences to appropriate work banter. Last year, someone asked: Does your boss pretend your ideas are his?

Kieran: No. I’m credited for all my ideas. I might not have the experience to follow it up, but my line manager always lets the team know who came up with what idea, even if it’s tiny.

Lia: Same here. I can’t always follow up because I don’t have that training, but I always get a “Lia came up with this great suggestion/congrats” from the team.

Georgie: It’s a question of intellectual property belonging to the company you work for. I’m sure you were credited somehow, but don’t expect your name in the Acknowledgments.

Steph: They do this because they want to keep you an assistant for longer. It’s better for them to pay you an assistant-level salary rather than acknowledge the position you really should have.

An email from Kris pops up.

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: RE: Love Stories

It’s so good to hear from you, Maddie, but know there’s no pressure to return to work. If you feel you need to, do only bits of what you can, but we have plenty of breathing space on the schedule for this. Selecting your favorite photographers for Love Stories might be a fun task—see email below.

K x

I don’t ever get to do anything creative such as choose photographers—I assumed the Design team would do that—but this task must have been given solely to placate me. Still, I click the links to various portfolios and spend the rest of the afternoon going through food websites and photographs, keeping the book’s synopsis in mind.

His style is more focused and appealing—the red of tomatoes, the drip of olive oil.

Her photos are more ranging; she tells me an entire story in only a few shots.

She’s very clean and neat, maybe too much so? Afra uses the words “chaotic expression” and I don’t see that here.

He’s very bright and colorful. He’d be great for the summer section but for winter too?

Is this too sparse or is it minimalist?

Ooh, I like him. Incredible with close-ups. I know it’s an autumnal recipe from that photo alone … Pumpkin tagine—I knew it. Henry VIII royal banquet vibes.