One of my mother’s brothers, whom I loved and admired very much as a child, spent his whole life telling me that I should be called Javier, my older brother’s name. We had no relative with that name, but for some obscure reason I couldn’t figure out, it held great prestige in the family. My uncle never raised this issue publicly; for example, at Christmas gatherings. He only told me this secretly and I didn’t dare to tell my family. The truth is that I grew up with the idea that my older brother stole my name and perhaps the rest of my life along with it. He was a famous heart surgeon and earned a lot of money. He received invitations around the world to give lectures on his field of expertise, and his photographs frequently appeared in newspapers. I witnessed their achievements as if they were my own, as I managed to pass some third-year exams shortly after leaving school as a civil servant.
