My nephew has just finished reciting Surah Al Fatihah (the first Surah in the Quran) to us. Admittedly, it is a very mangled recital but he is only four years old. He beams at us when he is done, and leaves his aunts my youngest sister and I in fits. He then proceeds to demonstrate prayers to us, which has us laughing again because of the way he shouts, "La Wa Ba! La Wa Ba!"

In the one week at a private Islamic kindergarden his mother (my second sister) enrolled him in this year, he has learned to recognise Arabic alphabets. After school, he attends Kumon classes. In time to come, my sister hopes that he'll take up swimming, taekwondo, literature, helicopter flying and probably gourmet cooking my sister is the kiasu mother from Kuala Terengganu. She is praying that when he enters the local primary school, he would have memorised the Yaasin, because she wants him to have secular Malaysian education, though this may change, depending on finances. Farhan's going to be a mercurial Malaysian by the time he's 10, he would have had the best of Western and Islamic education.

We, the sisters, are very happy, that we are not Liza's children. In our books, this constitutes to child abuse.