Is the world on fire?
- elizabethcorbishle
- Nov 18, 2017
- 2 min read
Me: Nairobi, Kenya
My Brother: Stevenage, UK
Distance: 10,734km
The call came when I was sat in a taxi on the way back from immigration. My brother's name flashed up on WhatsApp and, given this was the first time he had called me in the six years I have lived overseas, I naturally assumed it was a life or death scenario. Probably life, given in the past month all of my friends seem to have either had a baby or announced that they are going to be having a baby. Like some sort of highly contagious airborne virus. Although in the most positive sort of way.
I accepted the call gingerly. 'Hello?'
I am the eldest of four siblings. We are all close in age and get on extremely well. I speak with both my sisters on a semi-regular basis, and not just around organising each others hen dos. My brother, on the other hand, is not a big communicator. Last time I was back in the UK he kindly offered to drive me to the tattoo parlour and provide emotional support through my first tattoo (the emotional support mainly being telling me how small it was). This was, he claimed, a rare opportunity for us to bond over a common interest. 10 miles into the drive to the parlour he admitted it was also the opportunity to use me for leverage against our parents. Yes he was getting a full-sleeve (which he hadn't told them about but instead was waiting until it started to poke out from underneath his t-shirt), but their eldest daughter was also getting a tattoo. It may be minuscule, but it amounted to pretty much the same thing.
We chatted inconsequentially for about two minutes before I couldn't take it any more. 'Hey, is the world on fire or something?'
He laughed. No, no fire it turns out. He was just on his way to the final appointment at the tattoo parlour for his full-sleeve and thought he'd call for a chat. The weight of potential life and death removed we talked and joked about what was happening in our lives on the respective sides of the globe, and promised that we would try and do it again some time in the next six years.
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