Four weeks ago I learned that my brother is a millionaire. He's been one for a few years already, I just didn't know it. I also just found out that his neighbors at the end of the world call him "the eccentric millionaire with the heliport," that the tollbooth operators at the bridge over the Detroit River know him by name, that Canadian government representatives are vying for the opportunity to do business with him and that he also has something of a reputation in China and in South America. How could I not have known? He actually tried to tell me before but I didn't quite believe him, because how could it be that my brother, the brother of lowly struggle-to-make-a-living Neri Livneh, could become a millionaire?

My brother has lived in Canada for 24 years. When I visited him there the last (and, before now, only) time, 14 years ago, he was living in Windsor. The kids, who now live on opposite sides of the United States, were still at home; he was still married and the dog hadn't died yet.

I had gone there in the hope of healing a heart that had begun to crack. It was winter. It snowed for three days. We went up Toronto's CN Tower but you couldn't see anything. His future ex-wife took me to a karaoke evening for the Jewish community. The rest of the time my brother and I spent traveling the endless wide-open spaces of Canada, driving beside Lake Erie in the gusting snow, discussing at length which of our parents - they had separated by then - was worse. We agreed it was our father.

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In the years that followed I saw Zvika, who calls himself Steve in Canada, only when he came to Israel for quick trips that combined business with visits with our parents, who had begun their tortuous decline toward death. We would get together and continue the endless discussion about who was more to blame. Only once did we decide it was our mother.

My brother is very tall, taller even than I. A few decades and kilos ago, when he was in his late teens, he was also slender, and in Haifa people used to call him "Zvika the hunk." Like me, he talks a lot. In fact, he talks even more than I do. But aside from the height and the talkativeness, as well as a few common expressions that we inherited imperceptibly from our parents, it would be hard to find two people who are more different: I don't drive, I can't program a VCR and I barely distinguish between left and right. My brother flies planes, drives thousands of kilometers on the world's fastest motorcycle and made his millions thanks to his extraordinary talent for technology and science. He thinks that only people who don't have a life read books, go to art exhibitions and films and sit in coffee shops and chat with girlfriends about things that have nothing to do with economics. I think these are exactly the things that make life worth living.

As with many siblings, the balance of power between us was set around the time that I was four and he was eight. This means that, to this day, he feels that he is the only one who is allowed to bug me and will mete out killer blows to anyone else who so much as dares to try. It also means that I am still a bit in awe of him, and that it's still dearly important to me to prove to him that I'm no crybaby girl.

Since my brother won't let anyone else bug me, he invited me to Canada at his expense. As he put it: "I wanted you to see that you don't have to hook up with all sorts of pathetic men in order to enjoy yourself. Just remember that you have a big brother." And because my big brother won't let anybody bug me, I trusted that he would beat up the deserving party when my suitcase failed to show up on the baggage carousel.

"First of all, relax," he said the moment he met me at the airport. "I'm totally relaxed," I lied, shivering in the T-shirt I had put on 14 hours and two flights ago, before taking off, in summer weather, from Ben Gurion Airport. "How could a suitcase not arrive?," my brother asked the Air Canada agent in Windsor. "Oh," the agent sighed with self-satisfaction, "there are all kinds of ways, 100 at least." Zvika did not beat him up. Apparently, he quit doing that sort of thing when he became Steve. We drove home.

The next morning I opened my eyes and immediately shut them in panic. My first thought was that my laser eye surgery had succeeded far too well. I opened my eyes again and sat up in the unfamiliar, capacious bed where I was surrounded by plump, comfortable pillows. The French window was filled with the huge, rusting hulk of a passing cargo ship. Behind it, the blue-green waters of a wide river glistened, and beyond lay a densely forested island where the leaves were ablaze with the whole palette of autumn colors.

The parquet floor led to a broad staircase that brought me to the first floor, where I found a bright kitchen with large French windows that opened out and a wooden deck with a barbecue grill. From there, some curving, rustic-looking wooden steps led straight to a grassy riverbank dotted with blue and red wildflowers. Two squirrels scampered about.

I've come to paradise, I said to myself, and, as I'd always thought, it appeared to be straight out of "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood, who happens to live just spitting distance from here (in Canadian terms, that is). I thought about getting dressed and going for a walk along the riverbank, but then I remembered that I had no clothes. I sat and waited for my brother to come rescue me. Clothes are one thing, but how was I supposed to wage my grueling existential battle without the benefit of nail file and tweezers?

"First off, stop worrying, what are big brothers for?," Zvika said when he came down. The first phone calls to Air Canada seemed promising. Within a few hours, a day at most, my things would be delivered right to the house. In the meantime, Zvika bought me everything. Zvika took me out to eat. And once, Zvika held me by the elbow when I tried to cross the street alone, just like my father used to do. When I remarked on the fact that all the customer service reps at Air Canada had Indian accents, he explained that Toronto has a large Indian community and that Canada, unlike Israel, knows how to absorb immigrants and integrate them right away in good jobs, even at its national airline. At the same time, he wondered why I insisted on living in a country that was so corrupt, racist, war-mongering and generally impossible.

On the third day, after five trips to the airport and about the twentieth phone call, Steve lost his Canadian cool. "What I need," he told the woman on the other end of the line, "is for you to go to the baggage department in the airport, take the suitcase that you say has already arrived in Toronto, and just put it on the flight to Windsor. My sister needs to fly to New York this afternoon and she can't fly without her suitcase. What don't you understand here?"

"I can't do that," the airline representative said. "I'm not in Toronto."

"Where are you?," Steve wanted to know. The woman on the telephone, evidently a bit disconcerted, paused before replying, almost in a whisper: "Um, we're in India." That's cost-effectiveness for you.

My brother knew exactly what to do. He reverted to being Zvika when he called the customer service manager for Gold Members, and suggested that maybe he and the CEO of Air Canada ought to move to India "where you'll earn a starvation wage like the Indians that you exploit and thereby save even more on costs."

I was gratified. "Now do you understand?" I said to my one and only brother. "In Israel, at least, you not only know whom you should beat up, but just where to find him."