Living Royalty

21. A step towards improving him.

Samiha's P.O.V

The next morning, I woke up at eight in the morning, feeling extremely terrible about shouting at my sister. So what if Arif talked to her sometimes? It didn't mean she was happy with him either. I knew she wasn't. She had it as hard as I did. I was thinking about going to apologise to her when I realised she must have already gone for uni.

The whole night, I just thought about the deal with Saamih. I knew he meant each and every word he said. If I didn't try and improve my relationship with Asif, he would definitely tell dad and that would only mean one thing - trouble. I knew he made the deal because he was worried about us and that is why he wanted to use that threat against me, because he knew I wouldn't want him to tell dad so I would have no choice but to improve my relationship with Asif. Besides, I had to keep my promise to my mother-in-law
to at least try and change Asif. So with as much courage as I could gather, I decided to make a start and shook the sleeping Asif by his shoulder.

"Asif, wake up. Come on, get up!" I called, while shaking him. He stirred a little but didn't wake up. I shook him a little harder and called him a little louder. His eyes shot open and he sat up straight immediately.

"Huh? What happened?" He said, startled.

"Nothing. But I think you should wake up. It's eight fifteen now. You should get up early. It's not right that you wake up at noon everyday," I said, trying to keep my voice as even as possible, because there was no doubt, I was scared.

"Are you kidding me?" He said slowly, clearly agitated.

"No I'm not. You need to wake up, right now," I said.

"Who are you to tell me that I need to get up, and that too, right now? I thought there was some emergency and you tell me nothing happened and you're waking me up right now?" He snapped at me.

"I'm your wife, Asif. And yes, I'm waking you up right now. Have you ever reflected on your life? Sure, you're practicing, but then, what kind of a Muslim doesn't do any meaningful work? And wakes up at noon every single day of their life?" I asked, trying my best to keep calm.

"Sure I do meaningful work! I...uh...I play football! And practice fencing! Those are sports and participating in sports is sunnah," he said, indignantly.

"Yeah and other than that? At least, if you don't want to help your dad at work, then wake up a little earlier and do something else!" I said.

"Look here, Samiha. I get that you're my wife, but you're not going to start lecturing me, understand?" He told me.

"Listen Asif, I'm just doing my duty which I should have started doing much earlier. Your mum has some expectations of me, and as much as I don't want to speak to you even right now, she's a lovely person whom I don't want to let down so please don't make this difficult for me," I told him.

"So now?" He questioned.

"So now you'll just wake up, and do something constructive. Allah hates laziness!" I said.

"Fine," he muttered and rolled his eyes. He then grumbled under his breath what I thought sounded like "I can't believe I'm actually letting my wife order me around!"

"Yeah, and its for your own good," I retorted. He looked surprised as he probably thought I couldn't hear him.

"Whatever," he snapped and I flinched. It was going to be hard sticking to the deal with Saamih. Improving this relationship seems impossible. But at least he listened to me. He could have totally ignored me if he wanted. He got out of bed, grabbed some clothes from one of his walk-in wardrobes and entered the bathroom.