'Anwar dapat bebas

Wan Azizah dapat suami

Nurul Izzah dapat ayah

Dolah jadi menteri

Kamu dapat apa?'

Anwar got his freedom

Wan Azizah got her husband

Nurul Izzah got her father

Dolah is now a minister

What was in it for you?

(This is an extract from some short staccato sentences, which someone tried to pass off as poetry. It was read out in Rumah Pena on the second night after Anwar was freed.)

How wonderful would it be if the Thousand and One Nights fable was true. And I was given the opportunity to make a request from the genie that emerged from Aladdin's magic lamp.

I would kneel, cry and plead for the thinking power of Malaysians, which has become most emasculated over the last two decades, to become vigorous once again.

The dulled Malaysian brain, which grows ever more emasculated, is no longer capable of pondering intangible matters, things that cannot be held in one's hands, things that cannot be put into one's pockets.