Brother Format

I have a brother, 20 plus something years older than me. He now lives at Kuala Nerang, had a pretty decent job to keep his home and family comfortable, which he had a wife and two children to complete the set. His complexion, is so different from me, where he have fair and radiant skin, undoubtedly from my mom, where I'm tanned and dim, undoubtedly from my father, and people can never tell that we are brother unless are informed. His education record tracks almost everywhere in Malaysia, he kept changing schools as my father as an army officer kept changing stations, so to keep it simple, he managed to get to further his studies overseas, mission accomplished. What happened next? Well, lets say, I have a big role in that what happened next.

So, this my brother of mine finished his studies and went back to Malaysia, and stayed there for a moment. Up until that point, my sister was only 13 and she was the youngest in the family, I'm not there yet and I'm not expected. Both of the eldest sister was married and has moved out of the house, leaving my brother and the last sister. I dunno what went on the house during that era, but I knew, from many stories, something happened. I didn't have the luxury to know what really happened, as nobody told me anything about it, but a certain drama unfolded in the house, and it involved my brother and my dad, presumably. I was told by my sisters that my dad was such a strict person then, so I can half imagine what happened between him and dad, both won't give up their arguments. And what really happened next, he was off. Gone, literally.

And so it happen, that only about a few sunsets after my brother's exile from home, my mom was pregnant, and I'm the wonder cursed child. I can only imagine what's the scenario there, given the circumstance. My mom, being nearly 50 years old, giving birth to another child, my sis, all this while the apple of my parents eyes, had me replacing her as the youngest child all of a sudden, my father, at the peak of his carrier, he's currently the CO at JB, the place that I was born, my elder sisters, having married and settled down somewhere far away, overjoyed perhaps of another addition to the family. And yes, my brother was not in the picture where I imagined where it all happened. Like the Malays say it durian runtuh, two months after my mom got pregnant, my eldest sister was also confirmed to be pregnant with a child, imagine the riots in my family.

After a tremendous 9 months, I was born into this world, Alhamdulillah. But I didn't come in peace, I had to be brought upon this world by the means of Cesarean, which is to practically cut up my mom's stomach to get me. Each time my mom showed me the scar, I would shudder and hold my body like a child's feeling cold. And then came my nephew, and I'm an uncle when I'm only two months old, quite an extraordinaire when I came to think about it. But my main point here is that my brother wasn't there, and I ended up growing with 3 sisters, but no brother there to accompany me in growing and learning about this world.

After 7 years of brotherless and stuck-with-nagging-sisters life, I was told that I have a brother. I can still remember me back then, the young and naive me then, being over excited by the fact that I have a brother. I kept repeating the fact that I do have a brother, it must be so annoying for people around me then, so my mom kept my hopes high by telling me that if I kept praying for his return to Malaysia, insyaAllah, he will be here soon. Being a motivated kid with nothing else on his mind, that's what I do each and every passing moment afterwards. Allah's willing, 3 years later, my brother suddenly send an e-mail to my sister, saying that he is coming back to Malaysia. My sister who was staying in England at the moment, apparently found him, as my father told her to, and send words of good news back home. The feedback was enormous.

I thought, I must be the happiest one to receive this news, to have a brother for the first time, but I was just a little kid then who couldn't understand the world yet. All of the family went to KL, and stayed in my second eldest sister's house there to wait for the arrival of my brother. Everything is all blurry from my memory up until this point, maybe there's something else more important for me to remember. And what I can really remember, though still vaguely, is the moment my brother passed the arrival point, with families by my side. And things went all blurry when I remembered that I heard my mom said "Itu abang kamu, Fudin..." and poof, nothing else of the reunion. Another thing that I can still recall, is the moment where I'm on the car, at the back with my brother. We were resting at a gas station, and by chance, I was left alone in the car with my brother. He opened his laptop and offered me to play his laptops game. I played pinball, and can't really remember what happened next...

I'm 18, and now, my relationship with my brother just stayed the same as the moment I was in the same car with him then. 8 years did nothing to improve our brother to brother love, and it just stayed sour all this while, without any hope of rekindling. As I lie down somewhere and think about this, sometimes I just wonder why, why it would happen like this? I was excited to finally have a brother back then, surely something would happen to improve our bonds right? As I mentioned before, I'm 18 now, and that number gives me something, which is the ability to understand a bit of my past. Looking back, I saw a child who kept hoping to have a big brother, someone to look upon to. When his father was absent, he would feel lonely, and embraced his mother in silent wish to had a brother he can turn to instead. And the fact that suddenly a brother will be granted for him, only after 3 years of silent hope, simply overjoyed him. But the child found out that the brother was not the answer he was looking for, and all of a sudden, he felt very lonely in this world, even when he was surrounded by people who loved him the most.

Nowadays, I began to realize something good about this brother format. He may not be the brother I expected him to be, but still he is my brother after all. Perhaps the fact that he left even before I was born, and was not there for me all the while, has left him in guilt, and that kept him away from me. But still, it was all just a satire played by him because of his guilt and he was loving me from far away. On a few occasion, I realized that he was helping me a lot, and one day I knew that he was willing to do anything to help me get back on life. Maybe that was his way of repenting his mistakes towards me and especially the family, but how I wished he wouldn't do that. The care was good, but I need a brother, not another father, where it all ended up making me feels more lonely...

I'm still young, and 18 is still insignificant for me to judge what really happened in the past and also in the present. But whatever happened between my brother and me, he is still my brother, my family. My family is all I have when the world will hit me with a brick, politicians burdened me with irresolution, woman tear apart my heart, friends stab me in the back, and when all seems to be lost. My brother, my family. I gotta love that, you know.