Paper Anniversaries
March milestones
It’s been a year since Mahmoud Khalil was kidnapped in the lobby of his NYC apartment building, in front of his pregnant wife Noor. They celebrated this anniversary with an iftar at the mayor’s house.
Everyone has a moment when they realized what life under Trump was going to be like this time around. For me, that was Khalil’s kidnapping.
Before the 2024 election, I remember talking with an old friend about how afraid we should be. We both thought Trump would win, and we were trying to figure out the implications for him and for my partner, both non-citizen immigrants. After we discussed my friend’s case for a while, he said, “But you guys don’t need to worry, Bri. Ivy League graduates with green cards and American-born partners are the very last people they’re gonna go after.”
It turns out that Ivy League graduates with green cards and American-born partners were some of the very first people they went after. Instead of slow-boiling us, frog-in-pot-style, the Trump administration came right out the gate with a direct attack on freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, freedom to protest— a repressive message meant for all of us, sent via an attempt to destroy the life of an earnest and eloquent young husband and father.
One year later, they have still not succeeded. As Mahmoud said at his welcome home party last summer, the phrase that kept him going during his long months of detention was I believe that we will win.
Look at the smiles in this photograph, the comfort, the ease. (With hardship comes ease.) This image of joy during a time of unfathomable sorrow is one to dwell on. March marks a year since I started canvassing for Zohran, and the mere fact of a family iftar in Gracie Mansion is a miracle in itself. Since last year, tens of thousands of people have been kidnapped. The US has found new children to bomb. Khalil’s legal battle is ongoing, and the odds are against him. But on this night, this meal was shared, and this family remains reunited. As my friend Sonja wrote when she posted this picture: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.”
Mahmoud and Noor are far too classy to ever gloat, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do it on their behalf. To paraphrase a bunch of feisty imprecatory Psalms: Take that, haters!
Paper Anniversary
Mahmoud and Noor are indirectly responsible for another anniversary: the first year wedding anniversary that Isaak and I are celebrating later this month. We’d been together for five years and were already official domestic partners, but it wasn’t until immigrants started getting snatched off the streets in New York City that we thought it might be nice to have some kind of federally-recognized connection to each other in case shit ever hit the fan. With the help of few old friends, we turned a frantic response to fascism into a few days of meaning and fun: some festive meals; old and new and borrowed and blue somethings (respectively: grandparents’ jewelry, a new dress from LL Bean, a borrowed necklace and hanky, and sky blue nail polish); rings from TJ Maxx and an impulse-purchase display by the cash register at a bookstore; and vows made before a clerk at the Queens Borough Hall and a priest at Old St. James Church.
I didn’t expect to get married, and I’m still not sure what it means, but I’m leaning into the clarity it offers in crazy times. So many things are falling apart, but love endures! And we are saving so much money on health insurance and taxes!
Meanwhile we are celebrating all our March anniversaries:
March 14, 2020: The pandemic stops the world, and we have our first phone call. (It’s Pie Day so we always celebrate with pie)
March 26, 2025: We attempt to get married on my grandma’s birthday, forgetting about New York’s 24-hour waiting period. Queens is not Vegas!
March 28, 2025: We get it done! (Our first anniversary coincides with my grandma’s 100th birthday party, so we’ll get to celebrate with four generations of family. Costco cake for all!)
According to Google AI, the traditional one-year anniversary gift is paper, “representing the fragile yet blank, unfolding story of your marriage.” Unfolding is right, but I’m not sure about blank and fragile. We’ve got most of a decade of history already written. And every writer knows that paper is powerful too.
Call for Poetry
April is poetry month, and KtB: An Online Magazine of Religion, Culture, and Politics wants to publish your poems! We are looking for work that is connected— however loosely!—with spiritual or religious themes. Check out past poems for examples. You can send submissions to me at briallenhopper at gmail with KtB in the subject line. Prose welcome too.
Critical Bites
I’ve gotten a bit behind with #CriticalBites but for now all you need to know is:
AVOID:
Forever, the lifetime movie with Taye Diggs and Meagan Good— (spoilers!) apparently sometimes your leading lady’s grueling struggle with cancer isn’t miserable enough, and you need someone to shoot her in the neck!
WATCH:
the charming female-friends buddy comedy One of them Days (2025)
and the pre-Code extravaganza 3 on a Match (1932) featuring Joan Blondell and Bette Davis— now streaming on the Criterion Channel
READ:
S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed (2023)— my first Cosby mystery, Southern Gothic, religion-infused, featuring expert pacing and world-building. The actual solution to the mystery was fine/whatever, but it was an immersive subway read and the last chapter was fire!
That image at the mayoral residence really is a beautiful encapsulation of the contradictions of the moment - and something beautiful to hold on to like your other many anniversary moments. As they say at the end of every Drag Race episode: “Everybody say love!”
Happy anniversary! Sending love and wishes for continued optimism in the face of all horrors!