I gave my mother a tough time at birth, unlike Jordan. I was two
years old when she became pregnant with Jordan, and she didn’t even
notice she was pregnant. Her second baby came as a surprise to
everyone including Jordan. Although her belly did grow, in comparison
to how it had been when she was pregnant with me it was negligible.
On the morning Jordan was born, my mother had woken up with terrible
pain. She thought it might be indigestion until she looked down and
realised she couldn’t see her toes.
“Maybe, I’m giving birth,” she thought. While her first birth had
been to a superhuman, the second time round she had a superhuman
birth. She barely had time to come to terms with it when she sneezed
and Jordan came shooting across the room like a rugby ball thrown by
a professional footballer. Fortunately, I looked up from my incredibly tall
LEGO tower in time to catch him safely in my arms, thus saving the
day, my brother and my LEGO tower. From then on we were pals for
life. I’m always there to catch him. My mother was overjoyed, and
named him Jordan after the famous ‘Air Jordan’ running shoes,
because his sudden appearance had made her jump. Jordan and I
grew to love each other more and more and would jabber away to
each other in what Mother called ‘our secret language’. It was a
language born from brotherhood, punctuated with occasional punches
and pronounced with the tender timbre of affection. Speaking of
languages, by the age of seven another one had caught my attention.
I heard German for the first time on T.V. What I heard confused me. It
was not English, but it sounded so good, so poetic and lyrical. I found
myself repeating some of the words and that moment marked the
beginning of a lifelong obsession with German. I replied to my parents
in German whenever they spoke to me, and I asked them questions
auf Deutsch.
“What are you saying?” my father asked.
“Ich spreche Deutsch, Vater.”
“All sounds Greek to me. Where did you learn that from?”
“Das Fernsehen.”
“I think you’re making up words, sonny boy!” my father said. I was
crestfallen. My first steps into language were squashed like ein Fehler