MY BROTHER HAD A VISIT to KL recently and stayed over at my house. For the record, he is a respected lecturer in a university in Sabah. Being the first in the family, he always tries to set supposedly-excellent examples for his little brothers and sisters. For my parents, he is their all-in-the-world pride and priceless asset. At the age of 37, he is a successful man who seems to lead a perfectly-blended life, personally and professionally. We all should be proud of him, my mother used to say. Look at those nicely framed convocation photos! Isn’t he the most genius of all? Yes mother, I couldn’t agree more. But, look, there is one big problem – I despise him. Indeed. The bitter truth is, I have never been close with him and have never felt comfortable whenever he is around. So, when he unexpectedly decided to stay over at my house last week, I was flabbergasted.

After I picked him up at KLIA, the nightmarish episodes started. I felt terrible because I was a little unwelcoming towards him. During our car ride home, he began talking about stuffs I hardly wanted to listen to – things that always make me look intellectually-challenged (or stupid, if you prefer to label it that way). His subtle, diplomatic way of discourse is like an invisible germ which never shows true faces but in the end contaminates human’s life with great victory. And I hated so much when he did that again that night. It was excruciatingly irritating and annoying.

With my brother, I am always an ignorant person who knows nothing about life, who has a lot of unsettled issues, whose self-esteem is at the lowest rank. With him, I am a poor little boy again. And there lies another problem: I have been forever clueless on how to react or go about dealing with his subtle meanness. I guess it all started during my childhood. For all I know, my bother and I shared an ugly past.


*****


WHEN I WAS IN SCHOOL, I used to look at him with contempt. His underestimation towards my capabilities in many basic things infuriated me the most. I was mentally bullied when he called me with an unacceptable term. We have never been close since them. We were two different worlds. For example, he was an outdoor boy who loved sports, who hanged out with various gangs in the kampong, and who got along easily with most of the kampong people. Conversely, I was an indoor boy who loved staying at home, who preferred to get stuck in my own world and who chose to ignore kampong people around me. So, he was very popular among those people, while I was considered “abnormal”, a social criminal, since I behaved rather eccentrically and was not at all like him, or them.

What made it worse, my parents used to compare me with my brother (so did all the busy-body relatives and makciks). I had always hated to be compared and contrasted with him. Being immature and childish, I started to detest him as well as all the general society in my kampong. I had never felt brotherly loved by him. Practically speaking, I could say that I never had a brother who protected me with love and care. Apparently, things were pretty horrible back then.

When I was offered to enroll a boarding school in Selangor, he laughed disrespectfully, telling my family members that I had been a naïve, indoor, kampong boy who had never been exposed to a modern city. I was terribly offended and hurt. He treated me as if I had no idea at all how the world worked. Yes, he is always been Mr. Right, Mr. Know-All.


*****


AFTER PICKING HIM UP IN LCCT, we stopped by at a restaurant for a drink. For the record again, that was our first “intimate” meeting after ages. I had no idea why he wanted to stay over at my place. He could have booked a five-star hotel and be luxuriously served. Why should he bother my life now when he never bothered it all before? Okay, maybe he wanted to reconcile. Maybe he had realized that he had done a lot of nasty things to me and thereafter attempted to compensate. Maybe. But it was hard to reset the hard feelings that had long been bred inside me. I was like a boiled egg which was hard inside but always looked fragile externally. It was obvious. When he talked that night, I chose not to listen neither interrupt him. I was silent most of the time, pretending to be attentive, while my head was spinning, thinking of ways to hasten the time and called it a good night.

Oh yes, he had a lot of philosophical ideas to boast around. While I loved small talks, he talked about those out-of-the-box things – politics, statistics, science, education, world issues, bla bla bla. Okay, fine. I had no objection for philosophers. But he should learn some manners on how to communicate the ideas more gracefully. Like Socrates, who was the cleverest person in Athens, but claimed that he knew nothing. Socrates was so idealistically stylish and gentlemanly, wasn’t he? Unlike my brother. To my brother, as well as those who claim they practically know everything, listen to this wise statement: Wisest is he who knows that he does not know.

Okay, back to my so-called philosopher brother. Whenever he asked me a question, I naturally would give a minimal answer.
“What do you teach for usrah in the college?” he asked me.
“Social issues,” I answered proudly.
“Everybody can teach usrah, even clerks also can. It is how you handle the people that matters most.”
What does he know about usrah?

Yes, he did it again, attacking my answer sarcastically and boasting about what he could do better. This reminded what he did to Jimi, not so long ago.
“What is your CGPA now?” asked my brother.
“Three something,” Jimi answered rather proudly.
“Only three?”
Poor Jimi.

To add the insult, my brother also somehow offended my housemate when they were having a small talk during one morning.
“Are you leaving for work now?” said my brother.
“Yes, I have to leave very early to avoid traffic jam,” answered my housemate.
“7 o’clock is not that early.”
Poor my housemate.

What’s wrong with my brother? Or should the question be: what’s wrong with me? I always wonder. After having realized his professorially-dominant, sickly-judgmental attitude, I usually shut my mouth up. This I know perfectly, because if I say a word, I am just making a fool out of myself again, and getting mentally hurt by him over and over again. Deep inside, I always scream, wanting to slash him with the sharpest knife or shoot him with the most sophisticated CIA weapon right into his head.

Oh yes, come to think of it, I did take revenge against him once. It happened when I was 12 years old.

(To be continued)