"So... Sassafras, huh? Let us know, Emed," a bunch of AIESEC friends said after one of those confession games people inevitably start once there's a bonfire involved.
Sassafras was my cousin. My friend. The love of my life in the most inconvenient sense of the phrase. I was her unrequited lover, and, as it turned out, the village idiot.
We had known each other since we were evicted from our mothers' wombs. We did not grow up nursing from the same breast, though I have never understood why that is supposed to mean anything. We simply grew up together. That was enough.
We piggy-backed each other through difficult years. She could sing. Not "pretty well," not "quite nicely." She could sing. Perhaps grief is inflating the review, but if there exists a pantheon for voices, she deserves a seat somewhere near the front. People who heard her would recount the experience as though she had temporarily turned reality into an improvised musical. Ordinary afternoons became rhapsodies because she refused to let silence have the final word.
Her mischief was equally irresistible. She had perfected that Puss-in-Boots look, weaponized it, and deployed it whenever she wanted an accomplice. Resistance was futile. I lost every appeal.
She was absurdly wise for someone so young. I remember one evening when we were dragged to what was advertised as a party and turned out to be little more than a cheerful gathering with delusions of grandeur. Her friends were exhausting in the way only extroverts can be. She told me to care less, gave me that familiar Puss-in-Boots look, and I found myself volunteering for yet another questionable adventure.
At one point, we came dangerously close to smoking a tampon. I wish I were embellishing this story for literary effect.
We were spectacularly drunk. She began singing absolute gibberish, and somehow it still made perfect sense to me. That is either how intoxication works, or how love does.
The following morning, we sobered up and wandered into a circus. The trapeze act received a standing ovation. I remained unconvinced. Sitting behind the carnival in one of her friend's cars, she laughed until she cried over the previous night's idiocy. Though beneath the laughter lingered something heavier. Her ex-boyfriend was there.
He was not a dork. Dorks can be charming. He was simply an ignoramus with fraternity aesthetics and the personality of a cheap protein shake. The sort of man who mistakes body count for biography.
Unfortunately, she loved him.
She loved food with equal devotion. Food was her preferred antidote to despair. Whenever life cornered her, I bought snacks. It wasn't therapy, but it was something. When panic or anger overtook her, I stayed. Occasionally that meant absorbing punches, bites, and a remarkable lack of gratitude. She always came back. She always apologised. I always hugged her as though I could somehow bully the universe into leaving her alone.
Meanwhile, I had begun seeing someone else. I divided my time between my girlfriend and Sassafras, convinced that balance was something one simply willed into existence. I was too preoccupied with my own little melodrama to notice hers collapsing in real time.
Her troubles multiplied with frightening efficiency. Home, university, work. Every corner of her life seemed to conspire against her. I was her emergency exit. Unfortunately, I kept walking away from it.
Then I was accepted for an AIESEC internship in Poland.
On the way to Rabat to collect my visa, she texted me. I was on a video call with my girlfriend and decided I would answer later. She called. I silenced the phone because the embassy queue was moving.
I got my visa.
I stepped outside feeling absurdly triumphant.
Then a relative received a phone call from my mother.
Their faces changed before they said a word.
Oh dear.
She had killed herself.
I remember nausea before I remember grief. I threw up.
Later, I wandered into a bar where a woman was singing. She had a beautiful voice.
It only made me miss Sassafras more.
Eventually I opened her message.
"I miss you, Emad. I'm so sad you're leaving. I really need someone to talk to, and you're all I've got. I feel like everyone is against me. Please pick up your phone. I've been calling you over and over. Call me back."
— Thus Spoke Sassafras.
P.S. I now have a dear friend whom I affectionately call Sassafras. She has no idea why. If she ever stumbles upon this, I hope she knows that I'll always answer the phone.
P.S. The title is a play on Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Read it. Even if you end up disagreeing with him, he'll give you something worth disagreeing with.
P.S. Flowers for Algernon remains one of the finest epistolary novels I've ever read. It was Sassafras's favourite.
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