Weary Drives to Practices

My brother, Bara, started soccer conditioning just days after my parents left and I was the only one to take him to practice. I had gotten my license in the end of June, so I only had it for 2 months. As a 16-year-old teenager who had just gotten her license, my parents gave me the opportunity to drive my siblings around everywhere, making me already sick to death of driving before they even left. But I can’t complain now; I’m actually really thankful to have my license because if I didn’t, my siblings and I would stay home all month. That is what I would call "real torture".

To help alleviate myself from all the driving, I happened to get in contact with Bara’s friend’s mom (look at real mommy in action) and we both arranged to carpool with each other because I felt like practices couldn’t have been put at worse times in the day. Bara’s practices were Monday through Friday from 7-8:30AM and 4-5:30 PM. Let me emphasize the 7AM practice! 7AM!! That means that after cleaning the kitchen from suhoor and performing the first prayer, I get only 2 more hours to sleep. 2 hours!! BARA!!!

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Bara is my 15-year-old brother and he is number dos in line in the family. Overall, he's actually a really nice brother. Whenever I'm in need of something he can usually help me, unless it involves driving. Some traits that makes him stand out from the rest of us kids is his talkativeness. He is very talkative compared to me and Malaak, which isn’t such a bad thing because it can cancel out with my quietness. If you ask him about his day, he can go on for centuries describing something that happened in 5 minutes.

Another characteristic about Bara that annoys me (but I kind of got over it) is his addiction to computers. He has this major attachment to doing everything on the computer. Most importantly, he has all of his can’t-stop-me-now-in-the-middle-of-downloading-something moments at the time where I most need the computer. I’ve gotten used to not getting the computer, so I’ve slowly not cared about getting on the computer for my fun time, thanks to Bara.

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The Month of Patience At a Start

My parents decided to leave about 5 days into Ramadan. In case you didn't know, Ramadan is a special month where Muslims fast (or in other words don't eat or drink anything, including water) from sunrise to sunset, try to make good habits, and pray special daily prayers. At the local mosque* during Ramadan people can volunteer to provide food for the community to break their fast at sunset. It’s really fun because you can see most of your friends as well as taste foods from different nationalities. We would usually go before sunset by a bit, which was 8:00ish at the time, and stay there until taraweeh**. Since it was summer, the last prayer started around 9:45ish, so we'd leave the masjid around 11. By the time we get home we’re all hungry again. I pull some fruits from the fridge so that I can “engage the family into maintaining a healthy lifestyle” while my parents were gone, as were the things my mom wanted me to do. When I finish setting the food on the table, everyone’s done munching on what I was trying to prepare and run to their beds as an excuse not to help clean the kitchen after themselves. Because I have no other choice, I patiently clean the kitchen by myself and head straight to bed, which by that time it’s around 12:30AM.

The first prayer of the day, called Fajr, starts about an hour before sunrise. The real fasting begins the second Fajr starts.(The reason why I say “the second” is because everyone in the house is usually chugging down cups of water before the actual fasting begins.) Fajr started around 4:15ish, so as the cook for the rest of the month, I needed to get up around 3 to make the food.

Making the food isn’t the biggest problem, it’s waking the rest of the familia up. If they slept around 12AM, how do you expect them to wake up again at 3AM to eat? Waking the kids up was probably the hardest task because it took forever to wake them up. My grandpa was staying over with us but I wasn’t going to have him go through the torture of dealing with those sluggish kids, how dare me?

After finally waking them up, getting them to put a couple of bites in their mouth before time runs out, and chugging down what feels like gallons of water, everyone starts to pray while I’m the only one left in the kitchen to clean up after everyone. Because of their stubbornness, I leave my work and pray with them. They run straight to their beds like it’s their finish line in a marathon while I’m goggily-eyed, trying to quickly finish with the mess in the kitchen. It would be around 5 AM that I run to my bed like I’m about to win first place too.

Simple schedule of life the 1st couple of days after my parents left:
7:30PM- Leave the house and go to the masjid for iftar
8:00-11:00 PM- Break our fast, chill with our friends, then pray Taraweeh
11:00-11:30 PM Drive home
11:30PM-12:30AM- Prepare some healthy snack for the kids
12:30-3AM- Sleep!!!!
3-5AM- Make suhoor, wake the kids, pray, clean the kitchen
5AM-......... - Let’s keep that for another story.........


*Note:I will sometimes refer to it as the "masjid", which is the word for mosque in Arabic
**Taraweeh is a special prayer during Ramadan after the last prayer of the day.