By Yaldaz Sadakova
Photo by Yaldaz Sadakova
I turned off my computer. I was about to put on my jacket and leave work when L, my editor, called me into his office.
My heart started pounding. I was terrified he would unleash his violent temper on me again. What was it this time?
I went in. Sitting in his chair, L looked as intimidating as ever with his large frame and barrel-shaped chest. As usual, he wore a black V-neck sweater with a white shirt underneath.
Behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his beady brown eyes had a somber expression. I was confused. I was expecting the flushed angry face.
“Close the door,” he said.
“Am I in trouble?” I asked. My voice was shaky.
“Have a seat,” L said, motioning to the chair in front of his desk.
8 Months Earlier
Eight months before that December evening—in April 2008—I started writing for The Queens Courier as an unpaid intern. I was 24 and just finishing grad school.
After my one-month internship ended, I freelanced for a month.
In June, the paper offered me a full-time reporting position. I took it.
My dream was to cover international affairs or major New York City issues for a big name like The New York Times—or for one of the city’s irreverent alternative weeklies, like The Village Voice.
Because I’d just graduated from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, I thought this dream should be attainable right away.
Even though we were in the middle of a deep recession. Even though I had little professional experience. Even though I needed a visa to stay in New York beyond 2009.
When my expectations didn’t materialize, and I took The Courier job because my bank account had only $200, I felt like a failure.
I didn’t like The Courier’s focus on local news. And I didn’t like its lack of glamor.
No journalism school graduate dreams of seeing her byline in a free local paper—unless it’s a paper like The Village Voice. And even The Village Voice has now folded.
Getting to and from The Courier’s office in northeast Queens took two hours each way.
Every morning, I ran to Atlantic Avenue to catch the Q24 bus. While waiting at the stop, I observed my Queens neighborhood, Ozone Park.
The run-down houses were punctuated by the occasional auto repair shop and West Indian bodega selling international calling cards. Everything was covered with graffiti and a patina of urban decay.
Ozone Park’s real color was a few blocks away, on Liberty Avenue, which was lined with Guyanese establishments selling saris, vegetables and roti flatbread.
Ozone Park was a haven for poor immigrants like me, a refuge from New York’s ever-deepening affordability crisis.
But, like the rest of south Queens, Ozone Park was a terra incognita for most New Yorkers.
The only people you could spot on Ozone Park’s streets were local residents—mainly immigrants heading to low-paid jobs or lugging cheap ethnic groceries in old-lady shopping carts.
I swear, that’s the worst bus line in the city, I thought while I waited and waited for the Q24 each morning, constantly craning my neck to see if the bus was coming.
Sometimes I got so impatient that I’d start walking down Atlantic to the next bus stop, looking over my shoulder every few seconds to make sure I didn’t miss the bus.
Once I finally got on the bus, I’d start reading The New York Times. My Times subscription was my only luxury. I stacked the old issues in my sparsely furnished room. I used the resulting eco-friendly structure as a coffee table.
Occasionally, I’d look up from my paper, catching sight of a dilapidated house or a hole-in-the-wall Guyanese restaurant beckoning prospective customers with “Roti” neon signs glowing in the windows.
I got off at Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica and transferred to a northbound bus. That bus also took forever to arrive.
The long wait times made me feel helpless, with little control over my time.
I thought with resentment that if you’re a poor New Yorker, your time is worth nothing. You waste so much of it getting from A to B because you can only afford to live in neighborhoods with inadequate transit.
The area around the Sutphin bus stop was always hectic, with throngs of stressed out commuters rushing past fried chicken joints, 99-cent stores and hair salons advertising braids and extensions.
Jamaica was a historically African-American neighborhood with a growing community of South Asian immigrants.
This resulted in an eclectic street style: a mixture of hip-hop fashion, business attire in subdued colors and bright shalwar kameez outfits.
“You Have No Idea How To Write”
“Yaldaaaz!” L, the editor-in-chief, yelled out to me from his corner office one afternoon in July.
My heart started pounding. I got up from my desk, walked into his beige-walled office and put my trembling hands on my hips. Assuming this power position was my only way of trying to gain a semblance of control in the face of L’s outbursts.
I knew what he was calling me for. Lately, he’d been complaining I didn’t write enough stories. I was meticulous and perfectionist about every story I wrote, which took extra time and resulted in fewer pieces.
Sure, I thought, I could churn out stories at the speed of light, but the quality won’t be as good, and they’ll be missing key details.
I didn’t tell him that. I was terrified of talking to him in general, let alone disagreeing with him.
Instead, I acted passive-aggressive. So, to demonstrate that quality would suffer if I churned out stuff, I’d filed my latest story that morning without including as many details as I normally would have.
I knew he was editing that story right now. I knew he’d be pissed off because of the missing details.
“Do you have any fucking idea how long Junction Boulevard is?” L yelled with a flushed face. He was loud enough for the rest of the reporters to hear.
“Junction Boulevard goes from Queens Boulevard all the way to La Guardia! You can’t just say something happened ‘on Junction Boulevard.’ Junction and what?!’’ L yelled, punching the desk to emphasize that I should have included the cross street.
His massive fist landed not too far from the red EASY button next to his keyboard. I wondered if he ever used that button.
“Yaldaaaz! You have no idea how to write!” L yelled out to me from his office another time. Again in front of everybody.
I assumed he didn’t mean what he said because he rarely made any changes to my stories.
I couldn’t tell whether it was because he truly liked my work or because he didn’t care. Rumor had it he’d taken this job three years earlier simply because of the health benefits.
Before that, he’d spent more than 30 years at the New York Daily News, starting in the mailroom and working his way up to the managing editor’s role.
In the summer of 2005, he left the Daily News unexpectedly. He’d taken a voluntary buyout package—or at least that’s what one of the tabloids reported at the time.
I always wondered if L considered The Courier an anti-climactic ending to his glamorous career, a blow to his journalistic ego.
He went from overseeing hard-hitting coverage about defining New York stories, like the September 11 attacks, to editing meaningless articles about dancing classes for seniors and Christmas tree lightings.
I wondered if he felt out of place at The Courier, if he thought he was too good for it.
“Yaldaaaz! Do we need to go into that much detail in the lede? That’s just so endemic of your writing!” L yelled out from his office yet another time. Once again in front of everybody.
It was not at all endemic of my writing. L rarely changed the beginnings of my stories, even when I experimented with anecdotal openings or other types of creative ledes.
Still, L’s comments hurt.
He was occasionally terse with the other reporters, but he didn’t bully them. Only me.
Was it because he could tell I was afraid of his anger?
Or because I was a foreigner, the only foreigner on the team, the person with the accent and the weird ethnic name?
Or because I was a woman?
It never occurred to me to tell L that his behavior upset me. And that it was counterproductive: I couldn’t write faster and better if my brain was busy worrying about his anger instead of the story at hand.
Nor did it occur to me to complain to his boss, the publisher.
I assumed the solution was to endure his outbursts. It had been hard enough to get this job. I didn’t want to jeopardize it.
But I felt like a pushover, with no boundaries. He could do anything, and I couldn’t stand up for myself. My instinctive reaction was to cower against my desk so I could avoid his wrath.
One summer day, I tore a yellow page from my reporter’s notebook, I wrote “I’m strong and assertive” in Bulgarian so nobody else could read it, and I pinned the note to my gray cubicle.
It didn’t help. L kept pouncing. I remained in a fight-and-flight state, literally shivering all the time.
I shivered so much that I started sweating—cold sweat caused by the constant trembling and anxiety. At the end of each workday, my shirt was covered with huge sweat stains, as if I’d run a marathon.
By the end of the summer, three months into my job, L’s outbursts became so frequent—almost daily—that one of the reporters went to talk to him. I’ll call him John.
He was the reporter I worked most closely with; we shared the western Queens beat. John was my age. He’d been at the paper for a few years.
I couldn’t believe John had the guts to just walk into L’s office at the end of a workday and confront him. But, like I said, L was respectful to John and everyone else.
And I couldn’t believe John cared enough about another reporter to do something like that. I hadn’t asked him to.
I was grateful to John. Somebody had my back in that landmine-strewn office.
At the same time, I was mad at myself. I was so helpless and weak that John was sorry for me and saw the need to intervene.
L backed off a little after John spoke to him.
Instead of yelling out insults, he started calling my desk phone from his office when he had questions. His tone became less threatening. But I didn’t feel much safer.
L praised my work only once during my time at The Courier. Well, sort of praised it.
“Yaldaz, the Newtown Creek story,” he said as he walked past my desk one summer afternoon and gave me a thumbs-up. His thin lips almost curled into a smile. Almost.
Fuck you, I thought.
This was an important story—about chemicals polluting Newtown Creek, the waterway between Brooklyn and Queens.
I’d done additional interviews and research outside of working hours, something I didn’t have to do, because I wanted to add more depth to the story. Despite the extra work, I’d still met my deadline.
Now all he could muster was a half-assed smile and a thumbs-up?
I went to the bathroom and cried.
Photo by Yaldaz Sadakova
When Kids Hate
Two months after I started at The Courier, a group of teens attacked a young transgender woman in broad daylight on a busy Queens street.
It happened in front of Carmen’s Place, the homeless shelter for LGBTQ youth where she lived.
When the priest who ran the homeless shelter came to her defense, he was beaten up, too.
I interviewed the victims on the phone and wrote a couple of short stories.
The attacks stayed on my mind, though. I thought there was another important story to tell about transphobia and homophobia.
A week later, I went to Carmen’s Place after work to do more interviews. There was no time do that type of reporting during working hours.
Carmen’s Place was a crummy apartment of two bedrooms. The whole place reeked of dirty feet and looked like a closet: there were piles of clothes and clutter everywhere.
All the door handles were broken, so you couldn’t close any of the doors, not even the bathroom door.
The residents had different stories, but there was a common thread. They had been kicked out of home for their sexual orientation or gender identity—or they’d run away because life at home had become unbearable.
And they had all been harassed at school.
When I went to the office the next day, I started looking for data about discrimination against LGBTQ youth.
It turned out that LGBTQ kids faced the highest rates of harassment in New York City’s schools.
This caused them to drop out of school at higher rates than other students.
The stories behind the harassment data—the viciousness kids were capable of—shocked me.
One testimonial a transgender student had given to a Queens community center was particularly disturbing.
“I went to Prom as a girl. Kids threw cakes, pies, tomatoes, and chicken wings at me. They said, ‘Look at the She-male!’ They beat me up. They injured my appendix, broke my nose.”
A few days later, I wrote an in-depth story about New York City schools not doing enough to protect LGBTQ students from harassment.
It’s the most important Courier piece I wrote, the one closest to my heart.
L didn’t praise or criticize it.
If he had any passion for encouraging real journalism in that office—instead of the usual drivel about neighborhood block parties and parades—he was doing a great job of hiding it.
8-Letter Word for Panic
Our copy editor—I’ll call him Rick—did compliment my story about transgender kids getting harassed at school.
“You now officially have the LGBTQ beat!” he said after proofreading the piece.
Rick often complimented my work. He edited my informal descriptive style with a light hand. He was approachable.
I loved him for all that.
Rick was a middle-aged burly guy.
He always came to the office in navy-blue sweats, a T-shirt and white running shoes.
He proofread our stories with a pen. There was always a stack of printed out articles on his desk, which was next to mine.
As befits a copy editor, Rick had eyes like a hawk, catching typos and misspelled names before the paper went to press.
He was our last line of defense, powered by caffeine and painkillers. He kept a two-liter bottle of Pepsi and a large bottle of Advil on his desk.
And, of course, Rick had a way with words.
“What’s an eight-letter word for panic?” he asked me once.
“I don’t know. What is it?”
“Deadline!” he replied with a grin.
To say Rick was an avid sports fan would be an understatement. He lived for sports.
He followed not only New York’s major baseball teams—the Mets and the Yankees—but also small college basketball teams across the country.
Whenever his team won, he’d come to work jubilant, shouting the previous night’s score in lieu of “good morning” while punching the air.
It was as if somebody had just deposited a big sum into his bank account. I’ve never understood why sports fans act that way.
Visa Anxiety
Because I’d gone to graduate school in the United States, I received a one-year permit to work in the country when I graduated in May 2008.
That’s how I was able to get a job at The Courier in June 2008.
But to remain in the United States after my one-year permit expired in the summer of 2009, I needed an employer-sponsored work visa. The infamous H-1B.
Otherwise, I’d have to return to Bulgaria.
I desperately wanted to stay in New York. I believed I could only be happy in New York because no other place could measure up to it and offer the same career opportunities. To me, New York was the center of the universe.
I feared that if I returned to Bulgaria after Columbia, the Columbia experience would be undone.
There would have been no point in having studied there because I could have gotten a job in Bulgaria without going to Columbia.
Bulgaria was in my mind a professional shithole. It didn’t have much to offer for my aspirations—covering international news in English (I didn’t want to lose my English) for a big-name outlet.
Bulgaria was a poor corrupt place, so it did have stories worth telling. But I wasn’t interested in covering those stories. I’d already spent 23 years in Bulgaria. I wanted to learn more about the rest of the world.
The H-1B visa sponsorship process required employers to prove they’d been unable to fill the job with an American applicant.
Then employers had to pay thousands of dollars for the visa application.
The law didn’t allow visa applicants to cover the fee. But I’d heard of companies illegally deducting the money from employees’ paychecks.
Even if an employer went through the convoluted application process and paid the money, the visa wasn’t guaranteed.
The successful applicants were chosen in a lottery.
And the demand for H-1B visas usually outstripped the 65,000 visas the government gave out annually.
I didn’t mention the visa issue when I started at The Courier because I didn’t want The Courier to sponsor me.
I didn’t want to stay at The Courier. And the rule was that until your H-1B expires, you could only work at the company that sponsored you for it.
That’s why I wanted to get a job with a media outlet I liked before my current work permit expired—and then convince that outlet to sponsor me for a visa.
I can see now how naïve that plan was.
There were barely any jobs for Americans at that time, let alone for foreigners who needed visas. And, unlike tech or science, the media industry didn’t face a shortage of American-born talent.
But I was ambitious, desperate and delusional.
So I spent my weekends sending customized job applications. I made sure to address my cover letters to the right person. I quadruple-checked my spelling.
Each time I hit the send button, I felt hopeful because I’d religiously followed the rules in my job search book.
I rarely heard back.
On weekdays, at lunch, I sneaked out of the office to make follow-up calls.
One day early in the fall, I went out to phone a magazine editor about a job I’d applied for a couple of weeks earlier.
While walking down the block, I rehearsed under my breath what I wanted to say—lines adapted from my job search book. Then I dialed the number with trembling hands and a racing heart.
“Hi, this is Yaldaz Sadakova, and I wanted to follow up with you regarding the staff writer—“
Then the editor cut me off.
“It’s been filled,” she said in a pissy tone and hung up before I could reply.
What the fuck, I thought. The job ad didn’t say “no phone calls.”
But I was used to that dismissive attitude. Most hiring managers responded like her when I called them to follow up.
They sounded so irritated, it made me wonder if they’d never looked for a job themselves.
Did they think they’d never have to find a job again—and, therefore, didn’t need to build up good karma in the job search department?
Did they assume they’d never cross paths with the candidates they rebuffed?
And why did job search books recommend following up on the phone as a way to stand out from the crowd if hiring managers were so bothered by it?
Finding a job was hard not only because of the deep recession, but also because I was only responding to ads and lacked connections. I had few journalist friends in New York, and all of them were entry-level like me.
It took me a while to realize just how important contacts were for securing a white-collar job in America, particularly in an ultra-competitive city like New York.
I’d been raised in a country infamous for its cronyism and nepotism—characteristics I ascribed to its Communist past and ongoing corruption problems.
In Bulgaria, it was all about connections when I was growing up.
It was something employers openly acknowledged. It was something everybody knew and accepted.
But my mom was a single parent who worked in a factory for a minimum wage; she had no connections. Nor did the rest of my low-income family. I was the first in that family to attend university. I did it through a combination of scholarships and summer jobs.
I hated the idea that because of my background, I didn’t have an equal chance in Bulgaria.
But I believed I had one in America.
After all, America had no Communist past. It wasn’t as corrupt and dysfunctional as Bulgaria.
I saw America as a meritocracy where my low-income background, my lack of contacts and my foreignness would not hinder me as long as I dreamed big and worked hard. Plus, I had skills and an Ivy League degree.
After sending about a hundred job applications within three months, not hearing back and being snubbed when I called, I realized how wrong I was.
Sure, America was more meritocratic than Bulgaria. Sure, these job search rules I followed religiously mattered to an extent.
But connections trumped all that.
I felt cheated.
In my contract with America, I’d failed to see a clause in tiny print. A crucial clause which clarified that this land’s amazing opportunities were not equally available. Oh no.
At least Bulgaria didn’t sell me romantic prospects with glittering skylines.
It didn’t lead me to believe I can achieve anything, regardless of my social status.
It didn’t uphold the pretense of meritocracy and equality.
Afraid of Asking
By November 2008, I still hadn’t found another job.
So I thought I should ask V, The Courier’s publisher, for a visa sponsorship.
But I had no idea how to explain without appearing like a liability to her business that after my work permit expired in six months I’d need a visa.
And the company would have to foot the bill for the visa application—and prove that no American could do my job.
And, after all that, I still might not get the visa because there was a lottery.
There was no way I could put a positive spin on this. But I still wanted to ask for the sponsorship.
The question was how. Was I supposed to put my request in an email? Or, horror of horrors, arrange a meeting with V and ask for it?
My visa situation also made me afraid to ask for a salary raise. Surely, that would be too much. Visa sponsorship and a raise? The nerve this Eastern European girl has! I could see her thinking that.
When V offered me my reporting job back in the summer, I balked at the annual salary she proposed while we were sitting in her office—$24,000.
“That’s too low!” I said.
“Yes, it is, but you have no track record,” she responded in her shrill voice. Her square chin tightened. Her small blue eyes looked unyielding. A string of pearls glittered around her short neck.
V’s response about my lack of track record disarmed me. I hadn’t prepared for it.
I was fresh out of school and knew nothing about salary negotiation.
I started thinking about a counter-argument to her track record statement. My eyes momentarily shifted to the red wall behind her. Like the rest of her office, it was covered with pictures of her posing with New York politicians and business owners.
I felt even less powerful.
V brushed her blonde hair aside with her red manicure. Her gold bangles jingled.
“How about this?” she finally said. “I’ll raise your salary in the fall if you perform well.”
“Oh, that’s great!” I said with relief. It didn’t occur to me to ask for specifics. Or to ask her to put the raise promise in writing.
Fall came and went, but my paycheck remained the same. I realized it was up to me to bring up the question.
But, like I said, I feared that asking for a raise would jeopardize my visa sponsorship chances, even though I was barely surviving on my salary. I was getting $1,400 a month after taxes.
I lived on Ramen noodles, white bread sandwiches with mayo, instant coffee and multi-vitamins. I couldn’t afford health insurance, so I hoped the multi-vitamins would eliminate the need for it.
The other reason why I was scared of asking for more money was that I didn’t know how to.
I’d been brought up in a culture where asking for a raise was uncommon, modesty was prized and self-promotion was considered gauche.
No matter how many articles I read about the best way to ask for a raise, I didn’t feel I had it in me to walk in V’s red-walled office and rattle off my achievements.
I feared that the phrases suggested by the articles would sound so unnatural if they came out of my mouth that V wouldn’t believe them.
I was indeed giving each article my best, coming up with story ideas and doing reporting even outside of work. But I feared she would think this wasn’t enough.
I also thought it was disingenuous and wrong to cite my performance—rather than my legitimate financial need—as a reason for the raise request.
But that’s what the articles I read urged me to do.
The disturbing message of their advice was: you may be starving on your low salary, but you can’t say that is why you need the raise. The company will think you’re selfish. Even your basic needs are irrelevant. It’s all about the company’s bottom line.
I decided not to ask for a raise. I kept eating Ramen and white bread with mayo.
Editorial Meetings
Every Friday after work, I went to a bar across the street with John and a third reporter John and I called The Boss. We gave him the nickname because he came to work later than everybody.
We called the gatherings editorial meetings.
The Boss was a middle-aged man who looked like a balding Dustin Hoffman. He always had a small reporter’s notebook in the back pocket of his black jeans and a cigarette tucked behind his ear.
He was usually the one to round us up for the editorial meetings. “Care to rehydrate?” he’d ask at the end of the workday.
Besides “rehydrate,” The Boss had another code word: “research department.” Or, as he said in his drawn-out New York accent, “research depaaatment.”
He’d sometimes grab a copy of the New York Daily News and announce he was heading to the “research depaaatment,” meaning, the office bathroom.
Unlike the rest of us, The Boss was friends with L. They’d known each other for many years. When L joined The Courier, he hired The Boss.
During our editorial meetings, over beer, The Boss, John and I would flip through the latest issue of The Courier and discuss it in detail.
John and I complained that there was too much coverage of insignificant things—like neighborhood parades and bingo nights for seniors—and that much of the coverage came from press releases.
“Seriously, how many stories did you write this week that did not come from a press release?” John said once. “There’s bigger stuff out there, and we’re busy with press releases.”
But the publisher’s philosophy about The Courier was that readers wanted to see the picture of their kid in the paper, that they wanted the hyper-local announcements about bingo nights and menorah lightings.
The Boss lamented the increasing reliance on unpaid interns.
“They come in only twice a week, they can barely write, they’re too young to drink, and by the time they catch on, they’re gone,” he said one time.
During our meetings, The Boss often mused that us reporters were simply overhead, and that the newspaper existed for the sole purpose of advertising.
“You know why our stories are there? Just because nobody would pick up something exclusively filled with ads,” he said one evening.
I thought he was cynical. I don’t anymore.
Politics was another subject at our editorial meetings. The Boss was an expert on it.
He knew every single political decision-maker in the borough. You could name any elected official—or their chief-of-staff or spokesperson—and The Boss would have a story about sharing a drink and a conversation with them.
Schmoozing was something he enjoyed and excelled at.
So he knew every bit of embarrassing, recriminating and juicy gossip in Queens. And he was never stingy with his knowledge.
Our company’s generosity towards its employees was also a topic of discussion at the editorial meetings.
“I got a mug warmer last Christmas. The next day, they sent a company-wide email banning drinks at the desks,” The Boss announced one time.
“Guess what I got? Coupons for a store selling air conditioners,” John said. “And the coupons were expired.”
We erupted in laughter.
On December 12, 2008, the three of us had a plan to attend a holiday party for newspaper reporters in Queens. It was a Friday. The event was at a bar in Woodside, in the western part of the borough.
We left the office around 6 p.m. The Woodside gathering didn’t start until 9:30 p.m., so we went for drinks across the street.
We sat at the bar and ordered cocktails. They were on the house: The Boss had connections.
My drink tasted like spiked fruit juice, so I downed a couple of glasses.
True to our ritual, we discussed the latest issue of The Courier. Each one of us had editorial complaints.
“Did you see that bridal spread?” John asked. “Like, how many pages of sponsored content on bridal dresses do you really need?”
“That was totally ridiculous. Does anyone even read these things?” I said.
“Hey, that’s how the money comes in—that’s what sales thinks,” The Boss said. “They think they’re more important than us because they bring in the money.”
By the time we left for Woodside, I was buzzed. So were John and The Boss.
We had to take the Long Island Railroad to the bar, and the train was in a few minutes.
With our heavy bags slung over our shoulders, we started running down Bell Boulevard to the train station, which was just down the street.
While we jogged, The Boss tried to hold his wide-brim fedora hat in place.
Just as we jumped on the train out of breath, the doors closed behind us with a cheerful ding-dong. We giggled. We’d made it.
It was past rush hour, so we had the train almost to ourselves.
“We should have ridden in the bathroom,” John said with a grin after we settled in our seats.
We started laughing. It was one of our jokes: a poor reporter can save money if they hide in the bathroom while riding the train; that way the conductor won’t collect their ticket, and they can save it for another trip.
As the empty train hurtled to Woodside, I felt warm on the inside. It wasn’t just the booze.
I had by now spent enough time at The Courier and attended enough editorial meetings to share insider jokes with John and The Boss. We spoke the same language. We had the same editorial values.
For a moment, I felt safe. With these two, I didn’t have to watch my back.
Let Go
Photo by Yaldaz Sadakova
Three days after the gathering in Woodside, on Monday evening, L called me into his office as I was getting ready to go home.
When he asked me to close the door and sit down, I panicked.
“As you know, we’re having a hard time,” L began.
“We’re not getting as much money from advertising as we used to. We’re trying to cut costs. So I’m afraid we can’t keep you on the team anymore. It was a very difficult decision to make. It was not my decision. It’s a decision the publisher made. But I want to clarify that it has nothing to do with your performance. We’ve been very happy with your work, Yaldaz. It’s just that you’re the newest hire.”
At first, L’s words didn’t register. I heard them, but I couldn’t accept them, as if he was talking about somebody else.
When they sank in, my first thought was that I was turning into one of my sources. A casualty of the Great Recession, one of the many laid-off people I’d been writing about.
Scores of journalists had also lost their jobs recently, including some of my journalism school classmates. Entire newspapers had folded.
But I’d assumed I wouldn’t be affected because The Courier was already understaffed. In fact, I’d been planning to ask for a visa sponsorship later that week.
“When will be my last day?” I finally asked in a voice that wasn’t my own. It was as if somebody else posed the question, and I was a witness.
“Today.”
“Today?! Is that even legal, to give me zero notice?”
I’d just written a story about employees protesting that they hadn’t received the mandatory two-week notice before being laid off.
“Yes, it’s legal,” L said.
“What about severance?”
“There’s no severance. It wasn’t part of your contract.”
In my desperation, I’d ignored that information when I signed the dotted line.
“Oh, and what about my charter schools story? I haven’t finished that yet. Can I file it tomorrow?”
“You don’t have to file that story,” L said.
Suddenly, I felt relief. I didn’t have to deal with L’s bullying anymore. I didn’t have to limit my search for a better job to the weekends.
But then I remembered that I had only $1,000 in my account, and my rent of $550 was due in two weeks.
I needed to get a job, any job, as soon as possible.
I didn’t have any family in the city or in the country. There was nobody I could stay with or get help from.
I knew already that due to the type of visa I held, I wouldn’t qualify for unemployment benefits—although I paid taxes. (Ah, those mythical foreigners who live on welfare.)
I burst into tears. But it didn’t feel like I was the one crying. It felt like I was an observer.
L gave me a napkin.
“I’m sorry it’s not soft enough. I don’t have Kleenex,” he said.
I dabbed my eyes with the hard napkin.
“I’m really sorry,” he said again. “But here’s what you should do. Apply for communications jobs with the local politicians. They’re constantly looking for press officers. You already know the issues in Queens. I’ll give you a reference.”
I blew my nose. L stood up, and so did I. He walked around his desk and gave me a hug. A tight, I-mean-it hug.
I was shocked. I didn’t think he was a hugger. I thought he hated me.
I started sobbing again, smearing his black V-neck sweater with tears and snot.
When I pulled away, I apologized for breaking down.
“It’s okay, I understand,” L said. His eyes conveyed empathy—something I didn’t think he was capable of.
But maybe he was able to empathize. He’d been downsized three years earlier from the Daily News.
I dried my eyes and went to the office kitchen for a glass of water.
John came in. From his grave expression, I knew he’d heard the news. Without a word, he gave me a hug. I burst in tears again.
I hated the fact that I couldn’t control myself, that I was being so publicly vulnerable and inviting everybody’s pity.
“Write about the Afghan women!” John said after he stepped away. “Pitch it to someone! Pitch it to The Times. Maybe write up the whole thing first. You have all the notes. I’ll help you edit it.”
For the past three months, I’d been working on a story about Afghan immigrants in Queens. Work was too busy, so I’d been doing the reporting outside of work, on weekends and in the evenings.
L had approved my idea for this story. He had even allowed me do it as a series. I had started transcribing my interviews the previous week.
But now I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish the story and pitch it to another outlet. I didn’t have time for that. I had to find a job right away.
I’d invested lots of passion and energy in that project. I’d promised it to my sources. And now I was going to abort it.
Then His Heart Stopped
Three days after my lay-off, L forwarded me an email. A spokesperson for one of the local politicians was leaving his position. “Yaldaz….you should try out for this job right away…today even…go go go.”
The next day L forwarded me another email. It was about the Census Bureau looking for temporary census takers. “Do not forget this either.”
Then Rick, the copy editor, emailed me.
“I just wanted to further express my sense of outrage and sadness that you were let go from The Courier,” he wrote.
“You were the hardest working, most capable and enthusiastic reporter the damn place ever had; and to think you were let go right at the holidays, being alone here in the United States, is just miserable.”
Two months later, Rick was laid off, too.
Then The Boss was downsized.
Not too long after, John left for a job in communications.
Photo by Yaldaz Sadakova
A few years later, in February 2013, L died. His heart had failed. He was 64.
The Boss was the one who emailed me the news about L’s death.
When I read his email on my laptop in my Brussels apartment—it had already been a few years since I’d left New York—I didn’t feel sad.
I didn’t feel gleeful. I felt nothing.
But I checked the obituaries. They described L as a tough old-school journalist with excellent news instincts and no patience for bullshit.
The Boss himself was quoted in one of these obituaries, saying that L was “a brilliant guy with an encyclopedic memory” who could be “withering.”
However, the obits noted that L also had a soft side. Perhaps he did. ♦
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