Happy Birthday Asal: Tavalodet Mobarak, Asal

Flannel Diaries
2 days ago
3 min read

Asal was 6 months younger than me. She would have turned 51 this year, but instead she will always be 36. Friendships are strange like that. For reasons I never fully understood, she really wanted to be my friend. She saw something in me that she felt she was missing, something she needed in her life. Maybe I gave her a sense of legitimacy. Maybe I made her feel more anchored. I don’t know. I just know that the connection mattered to her, and eventually, it mattered to me too. I’ve been thinking about her with her birthday coming up, and with everything happening in the world right now.

Grief doesn’t go away with time. It just changes shape. Some days it’s sharp and heavy. Other days it’s quiet, almost manageable. Sometimes it shows up as anger, sometimes as clarity, sometimes as questions that don’t have answers. Birthdays do that. They remind you that time kept moving, even when someone you loved couldn’t.

Asal and I talked almost every day, about everything, but especially about politics. What’s funny is that in my late twenties, I wasn’t even that into politics yet. She was. She paid attention early.

She once told me that the Kanye West and Mike Myers moment during the Hurricane Katrina telethon was one of the most honest snapshots of where the country was at. Mike Myers, clearly uncomfortable, is pleading with people to care and to help. And Kanye saying plainly that Bush didn’t care about Black people. That was 2005. She understood then what a lot of people would spend the next twenty years arguing about.

To her, Katrina was never just a “failed response” by our government. It was about us ignoring the truth about climate change and poor infrastructure. It was about power. It was about who was considered disposable. She was good at spotting patterns and cutting through the official explanations when they didn’t hold up. What’s harder to talk about, and what feels more honest now, is that she was also a deeply flawed human in ways that didn’t always line up with that clarity.

She wore strength well. Too well, sometimes. She hid her brokenness behind intelligence, conviction, and a tough exterior. She wasn’t unique in that. A lot of us do it. We learn how to look competent, composed, principled, while quietly panicking that if anyone sees the scared, messy parts underneath, they’ll turn away.

She lied sometimes. A lot, actually. She crossed lines. She hurt people. She took things that weren’t hers. And in the end, she chose escape over accountability. I don’t say that with cruelty. I say it because pretending otherwise flattens her into something simpler than she was.

People like to believe humans are straightforward creatures. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Victim or villain. But we’re not. We’re complicated systems of fear, desire, trauma, love, and denial, all stacked on top of each other. We can see injustice clearly in the world and still be unable to face our own pain. We can call out power while being terrified of being truly seen.

I wonder what she’d think now. About Iran. About the U.S. About women’s bodies being controlled everywhere under different justifications. About masks getting heavier instead of lighter. I think part of her would be furious. Part of her would feel vindicated. And part of her would still be afraid.

I miss the version of her who could cut through the bullshit and name uncomfortable truths. I also mourn the parts of her that never felt safe enough to come into the light. Grief holds both at once. It lets memory shift between love, anger, tenderness, and disappointment without asking permission.

Her story reminds me that strength without vulnerability is brittle, and that hiding doesn’t make pain disappear. It just waits. And waits. And grows and grows until it becomes an unbearable burden you no longer can live with.

On Asal’s birthday, I don’t want to sanctify her or condemn her. I want to remember her as she was: brilliant, flawed, perceptive, scared, and very, very human.

And maybe let that be a reminder to the rest of us to tell the truth sooner, ask for help earlier, and stop pretending that fear makes us unworthy of being seen.

I love you. I miss you. I wish you were still here. And sometimes I’m glad that you are not. May your soul be at rest wherever you are.

“God does not burden a soul beyond what it can bear.” — Qur’an 2:286