Archibald.

Dear Archibald.

Happy birthday, dahling. 

I am very bad with dates, but there are just some that don't escape me. Your birthday is one of them. Funny enough, I would forget your birthday year after year when we used to hang out, the whole lot of us. Really, who remembered whose birthday? It was one of those things our families had in common, not celebrating birthdays.

The last one you had with all of us wasn't even a proper celebration of you, was it? It was an excuse to gather the whole family, get drunk with every man, woman and newly-turned-teenager in our not-so-little fucked-up family.

We had sung two songs over and over that night, The Last Dance, the one that Kaka J loved, and of course, Alicia Keys' If I Ain't Got You. We will always have Alicia Keys. These were the only two songs everyone knew the words to. We liked the fact that we had our own little exclusive club, that we were among celebrities but we chose to ignore them. The things that made us outcasts.

I remember us finally shutting up for a few minutes to talk about your grandmother, my father's only sister. Her condition. I never understood her, the things that drove her. Whenever she and I talked, it felt like she was my grandmother, too. She had that glazed look, her unseeing eyes. She talked to me but she called me by my father's name. Yes I remember you, she would always tell me, you're my baby brother. No, no, babu, it's me. It's me. Diana. His daughter. 

Yes, yes, she'd say. Diana. We named you after the princess. I named my granddaughter after you. How is your father? He never comes to visit me. 

Babu liked to talk about the Germans. I feel bad now that we made it an ongoing joke between us. Babu and her Germans. Who took the glass of Milo I put on this table just a moment ago? The Germans took it, Babu. The Germans did. 

How horrible we were as kids. I remember that summer we exchanged homes. You came to Jeddah and we lived in Riyadh for a few months. You and Kaka H had this huge poster of a beautiful woman in your room. She was blonde, she had red, red lipstick on, and her blue eyes looked like she was gazing at some faraway point, when in fact, she was just always staring at the door. 

There's nothing that connects us now. Not even our last names suffice. 

But I think of you a lot. I remember Babu a lot. She was a brilliant woman. We are more alike than I ever thought.

Happy birthday. I wish to meet your kids sometime. Tell them that all the stories they've been told about me were all untrue. 

Love,

D