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My Dearest Enemy
By Javed Rashid
My life underwent a drastic upheaval on his arrival. Abu Bakar 's arrival changed my life all together , before his arrival I was the star , life was one great fun . Parents and uncles and grandparents seem to have no other task then to entertain me. My wish was their command. Life was trips to parks, zoos, fun lands and nice foods. There were toys galore, all kind of toys was with me and people seem to have lots of time for me. Those sure were the days.
My excellent suggestion to my maternal grandfather to leave Abu Bakar at the hospital was sadly ignored. My grandfather wanted to know what we should do with the new baby , and I told him that this tiny little, wining and sleeping thing should be deposited in the garbage can . This excellent suggestion received laughter. Even now this is narrated to all and sundry and never fails to receive lots of laughter; I to this day fail to see the humor in this. Had my grandfather acted on my brilliant advice my life would have been much better than it is now
The first thing that Abu Bakar did was to hog mum's time, she was busy almost the whole day in feeding him or burping home or cleaning him. He seemed very anti social to me , slept most of the times , but got up after a short sleep , drank milk and was dirty so had to be cleaned and then he went back to sleep . He cried a lot , in all this mother had very little time for me , my needs were sadly ignored , when I got up in the morning there was no body to look after my needs , sometimes that made my cry , but was fully justified of course . Father and uncles and grandparents also had that much less time for me , they seem to enjoy the silly things that Abu Bakar did , his first smile or non sense baby talk received oodles of ooh's and aha's from all , I could not see what was so likable in the disgusting things that the baby did , but grownups are funny have no understanding of what is beautiful and what is gross . I could say whole sentences but this no longer was found so exciting.
I increasing got into trouble on account of Abu Bakar, mother and others would remind me ' Bilal do not hit your brother he is so little and would be hurt ', I was only practicing my cricket and if my bat accidentally hit him on the head it should not have been such a big deal , instead mother got angry and yelled at me and everyone else was also not please with me . He is so stupid that he cannot evade the ball that I hurl at him and immediately starts to weep when hit, attracting the wrath of my parents and more sanctions. These days I seem to get into trouble all the time, every insignificant scratch that Abu Bakar gets because he is unable to anticipate the path of my cycle or bat or ball results in more punishment for me. People seem to think that I do this deliberately, but it happens and when it does happen it does not seem so bad to me though.
Oddly for all these troubles that he has caused me I get angry when someone else hurts him or calls him names. The barber who cut my hair was praising me when he said that Abu Bakar is a sissy little boy , since Abu Bakar ,as was usual with him , was crying at the slightest pretext , I on the other hand did not weep at all , did I did not like and told this barber guy that my little brother was not stupid or sissy , he is just a baby . Someone reminded me that I also wept when I was little, when my hairs were cut, some people have long memories and remember useless details and also do not know when to keep quiet and when to speak. Grownups have no sense of proportion and propriety at all.
My other problem with Abu Bakar has been that he is never interested in the activities that I am , if I play cricket , he is fond of foot ball , if I like cars he prefers aero planes . Seems he is interested in things that I do not like. Toys that should have been mine are given to him, this I control by not allowing him to play with any toy mine or his , he in any case destroys toys and has no sense of how to use these toys , therefore I keep all these to myself, sometimes I am forced by mother to share these toys so I give him a few of the toys to play but I get these back as soon as mother is off to do something else .
