The Unpleasant Time Difference

It was midnight when my siblings and I went straight to bed once we came back from the mosque.  I woke up to the annoying phone ringing at two in the morning. I thought this better not have been a joke because my sleeping time was precious. Since my schedule at night was hectic with suhoor* and then waking up a bit later to take Bara to his soccer practice, every minute counts.

I answered the phone so it could stop ringing, not because of the person calling. I was about to shut the phone on the person’s face once I said “Hello?” until I realized it was my dad calling from Jordan. Unfortunately, there’s an eight hour time difference so calling time will most likely be inconvenient for someone at the other end.
“Hello, hello, can you hear me Mariam? How are you doing?”
“Oh, Baba how are you guys? We miss you a lot. Everything is under control, how’s everything?”
“ We’re good. Mama and I are running on no sleep. Everyone’s excited that we’re here. Tell me how are your siblings doing?.....”
The conversation continued for about ten minutes until my dad said, “Okay, I think I’ve talked enough with you, can I speak to one of your siblings, possibly Raneem?”
“Yeah, just a minute,” and I struggled the life out of myself to wake her up but it was never going to happen. I could actually feel with her. For Raneem, as a nine-year-old, going to sleep at midnight and waking up after two hours seems impossible.
My only resort was to tell Baba, “Raneem isn’t waking up, you want to talk to someone else?”
“No, that’s fine. I just wanted to see how she was doing. I hope I didn’t take too long. I’ll call you later. It seems like this is the best time for me to call you. I can’t really call at a later or earlier time because it’s always too hectic.”
My only reply could be, “Yeah, that’s fine,” even though I was exhausted and calling at 2:30AM was clearly a horrible time to call!

I shut the phone and went back to sleep for another hour until suhoor.

*Suhoor: The meal Muslims eat in the morning before starting their fasting. It’s also the time when Mariam becomes the maid:needing to wake up the kids, make the food, and clean up mess that her siblings have done even though they didn’t eat that much.