Bhaiya

My brother is really my cousin.

When my uncle (my dad's brother) left him with my parents, he was a five year old boy who was too afraid to speak. My mother said that for the first two weeks he was there, he would spend most of his time huddled in a corner, crying.

My uncle was not a very nice man. Consequently, his wife had run away, leaving my brother (then two years old) behind. Three years later, deciding that he was unable to look after him, my uncle sprayed him with Morteen (to get rid of his head lice), put him on a plane and sent him to my parents.

That was a year before I was born. For me, he has always been there as my brother. I didn't know that he was not my biological brother until I was eight. Then, I would ask him about his mother, and he would tell me that he hated her, and didn't want to talk about her.

"Why did she leave me?" He would sometimes ask, softly, speaking to no one in particular. Looking away with a faraway look in his eyes, blinking his tears away before they could form. I wanted to make everything better for him, but I was only eight. What could I say or do that would make a difference? I couldn't, and never will be able to, imagine the kind of pain he was going through.

Fifteen years later, she ran into him by chance, at the supermarket. He says she recognised him straight away. He says she held her for what seemed like hours, in the middle of the supermarket, crying. He seemed very apathetic about it, and although now he makes more of an effort to keep in touch with her, he still harbours a splinter of the old resentment towards her.

He was an amazing boy, my brother was. Our relationship was stronger than most biological sibling relationships (including my own) I know. He was always, and remains, the perfect big brother. Never once during my twenty two year existence did we have an argument, disagreement or fight. He was always good to us, always there for us.

As a kid, he was my idol. Well, whose big brother isn't their idol? I thought he was amazing. He could fix anything, from my broken toys to the VCR. He could make a lego house exactly like the one on the cover of the bin. He could draw amazingly well, and make things out of wood.

Childhood was never boring with him. He made us wooden swords, complete with handles, and taught us how to "sword fight". We would make bird traps with elevated cardboard boxes held up with sticks tied to a string, underneath which we would scatter seeds and hide around the corner waiting for a bird to go under so we could catch them and bepet them. We never caught any, but that didn't stop us from trying.

Sometimes, my cousin, also my brother's age, would come around and they would hang me upside down from the swingset, shave my head with a leaf and ask me who my commander was, and where he was hiding. Then they would set me free, tell me to run for my life and shoot me down. If it was raining, we would watch Rocky, then play war with Lego guns. On other sunny days, they would try and shoot down birds (to keep, not kill) with slingshots.

One day, my brother said that he had shot one down. I was there, I don't think I saw it fall, but I believed him. He waved in the general direction of where it had apparently fallen, but I still didn't see it. Later, he told me that he had found the bird and that it had a big gash on its head and that they had sewn it up, and he was nursing it. Still, I didn't see it. A couple of days later, he told me the bird was fine, and had flown away. I was happy for this bird I had never seen, this bird that had quite possibly never existed. I was so proud of my brother for nursing it back to life.

He told me other stories, that I believed. He told me that when our house was being built, he had jumped off the second story with an umbrella and landed unscathed on a pile of sand below that was stored there for making concrete. He told me not to try it though, because you needed a lot of practise to do it. He also told me that once a helicopter had flown so low over our house that he had been able to grab onto the bottom of it, and it had flown him around the neighbourhood before returning him back to the house. For the longest time (until I was old enough to realise this was ridiculous), I was in awe of him over this.

He loved dogs and there were a few years when he was at school where he would come home with at least one stray puppy every two weeks. He tried his best to look after them, but while he was at school the puppies would get out and get run over, or die because they were too ill. This made us both very sad, until my dad bought us a German Shepard puppy in 1987, followed by a Doberman in 1988. The German Shepard lived for six years before dying of an infection the vet couldn't pick up, but after then we always had two dogs (until recently when both died in a short timespan).

We made kites out of newspaper, and I would help him launch them into flight. His kites were always the highest in the neighbourhood, and I would watch him fly it for hours. He tried to teach me to fly one, but I could never get it off the ground. I still don't know how to fly one. I was always more of a watcher anyway, afraid that if he were to give me the string, the kite would come crashing down.

When I started school, my friends would come over and tell me how cute my brother was (and he was a good looking kid). During his teenage years, he would have girls flocking by the gate, asking to see him. He would send me out to tell them that he wasn't home, and I would do so beaming with pride.

At twenty, he got married. Things started changing then. His wife was great, I wouldn't want anyone else to be my sister-in-law. At twenty-two he had his first child, a boy. Shortly after, we moved to New Zealand, but returned at the end of each year for two months over Christmas, the only thing we looked forward to each year.

We had a Secret Santa ("Christmas Raffle" we called it) tradition to save us money on presents, which we only just recently broke. We made eggnog, opened presents at midnight, and went to resorts for Boxing Day and New Years weekends.

Five years after the first, they had another baby, also a boy. Our nephews my sisters and I loved dearly, and they provided us with unconditional love in return. I have a feeling I would do anything those kids wanted me to do. The thought of seeing them at the end of the year is sometimes the only thing that will keep me going.

He was there through everything, the good times and the bad times. Always the one person I could count on to make me feel better.

But no more.

"Don't worry." My brother told me the other day over the phone, when I confessed that I had been crying myself to sleep.

They are moving to the U.S. in less than two weeks. I am not dealing with it very well. My brother claims that he will come back, but his wife and the kids will stay behind. No more family Christmases. No more little nephews to spoil, or sister in laws to get drunk on strong eggnog. He will join them a year or so later, after he has saved some money.

Then, no more brother.

Of course he will still be there, we will still talk on the phone and by email, but it won't be the same. The last time we visited the U.S. was twelve years ago, we won't see them as often as we do now. My nephews will soon forget who I am. It is selfish of me to expect him to stay, to continue working for my dad for the rest of his life, I know. I know that ultimately this will be good for him. After everything, it's a chance he deserves.

The part of me that has accepted that he is going hopes that he will be happy, and everything will work out of him.

The part of me that has not hopes that he will not go, or come back after a while.

The whole of me is afraid of what it will be like after he has gone. To know that I may not be able to see him for years on end. To not be able to look foward to seeing him at the end of each year. To know that I will no longer be able to get on a plane during times of desperation, and be there within a few hours.

The whole of me will miss him, very much.

My brother. My idol.

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