Siblinghood

Ender: “Valentine loves me.”

Colonel Graff: “With all her heart. Completely, unstintingly, she’s devoted to you, and you adore her. I told you it wouldn’t be easy.”

- (on Ender’s sister Valentine, Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game)

1

Excerpt from Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

A little sibling moment in a life, from Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (2009), page 149-150.

Zeitoun was grateful for his brother’s constant concern. The Zeitoun siblings were all close-knit, but no one worried more, and spent more time collecting and updating addresses and phone numbers and photos, than Ahmad. Perhaps it was because he felt disconnected from them, living in Spain, but in any case he liked to know where his siblings were, what they were doing. And he focused on Abdulrahman in particular, so much so that one day, a few years before, Ahmad had called in the middle of the day in New Orleans and made a very strange proposal.

“What are you doing today?” he’d asked.

It was a Saturday, and Zeitoun was about to go to the lake with Kathy and the kids.

“Do you know the corner of Bourbon and St. Peter?”

Zeitoun said he did.

“I have an idea,” Ahmad began, and then explained that he had found a website where he could tap into a live webcam at that corner. If Zeitoun went there, Ahmad could watch him, in real time, while sitting at his computer in Spain.

“You up for it?” Ahmad asked.

“Sure, Zeitoun said. “Why not?”

Zeitoun packed the kids up in the van, drove the few miles to the French Quarter, and looked for the corner of St. Peter and Bourbon. Once there, he searched for the camera. He didn’t find it, but figured he should at least stand there for a while. He and the kids stood on every corner, in fact, just in case. And when he got home, he called Ahmad, who was just about leaping through the phone.

“I saw you!” he said. “I saw you all! Next to the hot-dog stand!”

He had watched them for five minutes, grinning the whole time. He had made a screen capture and emailed it.

When he saw it, Zeitoun laughed, amazed. There he was, with all four kids. Nademah was just below the streetlight, Zachary was holding Safiya, and Zeitoun was holding Aisha. Ahmad, technophile and deeply protective brother, was, in very real ways, watching over Zeitoun at all times.

…Do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?

- Elizabeth to Darcy, Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice, Chapter 34