This is my brother.
He got into Cal Tech the day I didn’t get into Harvard. Had I ever mentioned that my brother is smarter than I am? The reason he didn’t go to my school is that he got a scholarship for the American School. We had both applied for it when we were ten years old. He got it.
My brother chose not to go to Cal Tech. I don’t know how it came to be that we chose sides with my parents. But it was always there from as long as I can remember. Navi somehow understood my father and my father somehow tolerated Navi. Much better than he tolerated me. Maybe it’s because Navi wanted to be a doctor from when he was six years old. Or maybe Navi wanted to be a doctor because of my father. It’s entangled.
When things broke, my brother and I cleaved the way we had grown up. My mother and I came to America and Navi stayed with my father in Pakistan. He is at Agha Khan studying medicine. I’ve always wanted to ask him why he applied to Cal Tech at all. He came to visit over the summer and he spent a couple of weeks with me here at Columbia.
