Giving My Brother Slides

As a kid, I was never fully accustomed to what it meant to faithfully watch the Super Bowl every year like most American families do. I never fully grasped what it meant to shout “RUN THE BALL” or to hold my head in disbelief as my o-line didn’t do its damn job. But I saw people play this part well growing up in the Midwest, especially on Husker gameday’s where my mother and I would carelessly wander the aisles at Walmart while the commentators covered the game that was so kindly projected through the speakers. While some people lost their minds over a bad play call, my mom and I debated brand name or generic. While I’d watch someone clutch their pack of beer and groan while another flipped off the speakers as if that would make the game run much more smoothly, my mother and I would remain unbothered. It was just the way things were as two Arab women in Nebraska who weren’t privy to the workings of football (I’ve obviously come a long way and so has my mother, in fact. She thinks Joe Burrow is to die for).

But I saw it all the most, the feelings of deep despair and endless joy at watching your team either disappoint you beyond reason or affirm your fanhood with an arrogantly pointed finger at a ridiculously priced jersey, by being around my brother. A committed Eagles fan who refused to have green colored folders or notebooks in school but religiously wore the color in support of Philly spent every weekend yelling “GO BIRDS” or singing “fly, Eagles, fly” at the top of his lungs, flinging his arms around as if he were soaring.

My mom and I wouldn’t roll our eyes. We wouldn’t tell him to turn down the television as my mom tried desperately to concentrate on her Turkish drama show. And I wouldn’t be caught dead sneaking a peek into my brother’s room to catch a glimpse of an Eagles game because, for some odd reason, it felt so personal. At least, it did to me. It was like his love for the Eagles was the one thing that was his, the one thing he could at least hold onto out of the myriad of things that would inevitably be taken away from him.

Family. Friends. Stability. A father.

I mean, I lost those things, too. But watching my brother transform into a father figure overnight made it feel like he had more to lose than me. Scratch that—I knew he did.

It’s why my mom put every Eagles jersey on a credit card and purchased every hat with the little money she got from babysitting. It’s why she never turned down a request to keep the cable on, despite it being outrageously expensive and despite the fact that the bills were racking up in ways that made the three of us nervous. She didn’t want either of us to break, but for me as a kid, I was pretty content with hanging by my mom’s side. I didn’t need much since there were always girls around me as we met up with my mom’s friends. I was more than happy to just hold my mom’s hand and go about my day. It’s just the way I was.

But with my brother, who was a quiet boy who loved to play sports and watch them, who didn’t have many male figures around to guide him, she knew if my brother lost this, this… portrait of making it, this inspiration manifesting right in front of his eyes that everything that attempts to hinder one’s growth only proves to serve as motivation… she knew, and I knew, that if this was taken away from him, he’d probably resort to other ways of finding solace in his pain. In his coming-of-age. It was just the way things often were portrayed when you were a Brown kid in the Midwest. And in every way possible, my mom didn’t want to give that stereotype a chance to ring true.

So we stood by his fanatic Eagles behavior and as we grew older, when my mom could no longer work because of how sick she became and my brother went off to college and was drowning in coursework and his jobs, I’d take a little bit away from every paycheck and student refund to buy him something that showed him that I saw him and everything he was doing to make it. That I understood how much the Eagles meant to him, because he meant more to me as my brother and as someone who never once wavered in his support of me. Every Eagles beanie I bought and every Eagles shirt I sent his way was to show him that what the Eagles did for him is what he did for me. That every annoyance inevitably felt in our dynamic and every heartbreaking moment shared between us two in-between hospital corridors to every tear shed in happiness as one of us walked across the stage never went unrecognized by me. To me, we were a team, just like the Eagles. No matter what, we’d have to play offense and defense, carry out a game plan, reconsider our play options as the time clock threatened to run out, just like the Eagles.

This is not all to say that I didn’t need something to be a fan of in order to fit in. I wasn’t exempt from the repercussions of being a Brown, hijabi kid in predominantly white spaces. It’s why I pretended to be a fan of Panic at the Disco growing up, even though I was, and still am, genuinely content listening to the Hannah Montana soundtrack.

Because yes, I carried a lot as the daughter and sister of asylum-seekers. I learned to interpret Arabic to English and vice versa at such a young age, the official sitting behind each desk as I spoke to and for my mother probably thought he was experiencing a hallucination.

Yes, I have trauma to last a lifetime from being raised by a chronically ill single mother on welfare. I’d sit in the back of ambulances and list every medication and dosage she took without missing a beat as the paramedics sadly smiled and whispered “you’re going to make a great doctor one day, kiddo.”

And yes, I still have panic attacks underneath the covers out of fear that this was it, that I’d die from the weight of it all and still hide it from my mother and brother because they were already going through so much. Sometimes, when I’m particularly unlucky, the feeling of panic will creep up on a simple walk to a graduate class amongst colleagues in which I’ll pop a piece of candy in my mouth and say “it’s probably my blood sugar, I didn’t eat breakfast” and sneak into the bathroom to make a bargain with the universe that if I could walk out of the bathroom without submitting to a panic attack fully, I’d be more than happy to let it unravel in the comfort of my own home.

But my brother, who took on the role of a father and brother, who begged his friends to keep an eye on me in high school because of bullies and took me out to ice cream sometimes with his girlfriend because he felt bad that I was alone (she was remarkably nice for allowing a fourteen-year-old girl to third wheel on their date, but what a bad move, bro)… this was the person who I felt deserved to break the least. And the way he loved this team was something that transcended my childhood and young adulthood understanding of commitment. While I now suffer from the same mechanics of sports fanaticism, as a child, I was just happy to see that there was still a spark of fire in my brother’s eyes. That it didn’t die out because of everything we went through. That he would be okay.

Because while I carried mountains, my brother carried the entire universe.

While I may have done more to help out my mother growing up with interpreting and filling out paperwork and taking care of her, my brother did more emotionally.

I always had tears pricking my eyes. I’d be the one to cry in hospital rooms and in moments of insurmountable grief.

But my brother?

He kept it all in. He never once broke in front of me.

If he did, I never saw it. It’s not like he would be ashamed of sharing his pain. And I would never blame him for it. If I were him, I would probably be a pool beneath my own feet on a constant basis.

But if there is one thing we can all agree on, it’s that there is no scale that could measure the difference between physical and emotional pain.

Sometimes you just have to see it. And I saw it. Every. Damn. Day.

So when I got admitted into my dream doctoral program and earned a fellowship based on academic excellence to be recruited to their program, when I learned that graduate stipends seemed like such a luxury because that kind of money usually took me two jobs in college to earn, I purchased a pair of Eagles slides for my brother.

When he posted his gratitude for the gift on social media, telling me that I was the best sister ever, I don’t know why I cried myself to sleep that night. Maybe it was because I was still adjusting to being alone in a new city without my family and that I missed them terribly. Maybe it’s because my neighbor wouldn’t stop yelling at his game at one in the morning and I’d simply had enough because apparently threatening to break his PS5 is “immoral.” It could also be because I ran out of pepperjack cheese that night and my sandwich would be incredibly bland for lunch the next day.

Or maybe it’s because my brother took that moment to say “I see you, too. I see all that you do. Thank you.”

And then he’d go back to roasting me for my love of the Bengals, reminding me of the deal we struck in which whoever’s team had a better season would have to take the other person to their chosen team’s game sometime in the 2023-24 season.

I mean, he won, obviously. The Eagles went to the Super Bowl while my beloved Bengals lost the AFC Championship to the Chiefs (feelings still pending). But between someone on a teacher’s salary and another on a graduate student stipend, this deal was fictional from the start (Zain, if you’re reading this, this deal is effective starting, like, 2040 or something).

But I concede.

I’ve learned a lot about the love of football growing up and even more now that it’s become a downright obsession to me in my adult years. It’s taught me about commitment, sportsmanship, and above all, loyalty. And hey, maybe there’s still a lot to learn as I continue to watch football as I grade papers on Sunday afternoons or lesson plan on Monday nights.

But what I know for sure is that whenever I go home and visit my brother and see those green and black slides placed neatly by the entrance of the door, I do something I have found harder and harder to do as the years pass, as money becomes tighter and times become more difficult to overcome. I smile.