I know it sounds hard, but it can be done. And last night, I proved it. Here’s how.
Set your alarm clock for 6 am, the appropriate time for Fajr prayer these days. When it goes off, wait for your roomie to pray first because there’s only one prayer-rug upstairs, and because that’s the way it works. So wait in your warm and comfy bed, and then be woken up five minutes later and pushed in the direction of the bathroom to do wudu.
Do wudu with cruelly cold water (I could pray faster than it would take the warm water to come into the tap) and then shiver your way over to the prayer rug. Do your best to be worshipful through chattering teeth.
I would like to take a minute here to describe the architecture of Pakistani housing. Most Pakistani houses are composed of plaster on brick, or RCC- reinforced concrete cement. None of them, not a single one, are insulated, and you could find a horned cat before you found one with central heating. What this means is that when it’s 50 F outside (10 C) it’s not much warmer on the inside unless you’re within the immediate vicinity of a heater. For all practical purposes, you live inside of a giant concrete refrigerator until spring comes and you thaw out.
It was 50 F/10 C last night, and foggy, and wet, and bitterly cold. The inside of the house wasn’t much better off. I tell you this so you may understand the blind enthusiasm with which I jumped back into bed after praying and nearly split my head open on a hard, pointed object that turned out to be Aniraz’s elbow lying on my pillow.
Then I died. And I have the bruise to prove it.
Now, there is some dispute as to whether her elbow infiltrated Abezistani territory and ambushed me, or whether my head was violating the border terms that had been decided in previous bilateral talks. (This is my bed, that is your bed. My bed, your bed. See?) . Our two beds have been pushed together so that both of them can be as close to the heater as possible, and there are often border skirmishes. She accuses my head of cross-border infiltration, and argues that her elbow responded with appropriate military measures. I maintain that my head was acting on it preexisting right to use the aforesaid pillow, as it is my ancestral pillow and its usage cannot be curbed based on the arbitrary Line of Control that Anirazistan has drawn up without consideration for the indigenous population. I would also point out that certain unsavory elements, such as Aniraz’s knee, have often made incursions into Abezistani territory to terrorize the native population and then return to the safety of their borders.
If it gets any worse, I will have no choice but to appeal to the third-party intervention for a peaceful and just resolve to the issue. Forget Mom, I’m taking this to the UN.