Lessons from my brother

My dear reader*

Before the Friday actually begins and the weekend schedule kicks off I thought I would write a quick entry. Life for me has been hectic and busy- work, and the little bits and pieces that I do here and there. But this time it was a special person in my life who had the adventure (yup! And I am the one blogging about it!)

My younger brother (who happens to also be my one and only sibling, and for that matter my entire life!!) went on a trip to Slemani, and from there around to some other places through the Garmiyan area and believe it or not he went to Baghdad as well. "It's time I got to know my relatives well," he said, which was his only reason for this unexpected and sudden journey. It took a lot of mastaw with my parents and he used his tactics well to persuade them.

I asked him to take pictures, he comes home with only five photographs! His excuse? "I didn't have time!"

He arrived back home yesterday--and our place is back to being loud and noisy ever since. His 11-day trip felt like 11 months to me. This is not the point; the point is what the result of the trip was.

We sat together last night and he spoke of his stories, encounters-the good and not so good- as well as what he learned. The brother who once wanted to return and live and enroll in a University in Europe is not the same person I saw in front of me last night.

His texts and phone calls continued well into the night, he spoke to relatives that I don't even know that they exist. He brought up names of relatives I have never heard of, he seemed to have had the time of his life.

Above: The signs reads: "Basra, Kut"

"Sazy, you feel like they are part of your blood." He said describing some of our relatives in other parts of the country (who I haven't had a chance to meet- please don't blame me, I try to meet as many of my bigger family as I possibly can, but somehow there is always more. When you're a Kurd with two parents who have more than a dozen brothers and sisters, it reaches a point where you pick your favorite aunts and uncles, and a few cousins. The rest are… well…for special occasions only.) But I was wrong.

There I was, sitting and listening to lessons, my younger brother was teaching me of what it means to be a Kurd and how lucky we are to have relatives—who we have barely met previously—that feel so much love and respect towards you.

So glad I don't see these in Kurdistan.

The chance to be able to go and discover his greater family on his own widened his eyes and opened his heart. He is a new person. It is clear, because he is going to begin his first year in university in Kurdistan. A final decision that was officially confirmed yesterday!

When we live abroad we come back creating a wall with our greater family back home, but if we give them the chance, we can learn a lot from them, we can learn about ourselves—through them!

Above: And this, my dear reader, is Baghdad through my brother's camera lense.

*Hope you missed my writing as much as I missed sitting and writing to you!

All the pictures of this entry were taken by M.M.