Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

Manfredi Cracaust

Yesterday, during Dr. John's class, he asked a question: who here, had bedtime stories read to them? I found myself shooting my hand up in the air.

I can't remember exactly when she started, but mum used to read to us all the time when we were younger. I remember when it was just me and Ina, we'd be lying down on either side of mum when it was bedtime, and mum would read stories mostly from Enid Blyton, Charles Dickens, C. S. Lewis and Roald Dahl. When we got a little bit older, she'd read us Stephen King (that’s why I’m a scardey cat now). But what I loved the most was when she would make up her own stories. Mum was quite the story teller you know. I guess that's where my wild imaginations come from. There was even one night (in winter), I dreamed about Peter Pan coming to me and Ina’s bedroom window and flying me off to NeverNever Land. I was convinced it really happened so the next night I kept the window open, thinking he’d come again that night. I nearly killed myself and Ina by freezing us to death that night. Peter pan never came (ok, cue mockery and laughter) but to this day I swear that was the best dream I ever had. Hehe..

When Balqees came into the picture, bedtime was a battlefield. We'd fight about who got to sleep next to mum that night, and whose turn it was to have their name used for mum's next story. Balqees was the youngest, so she won most of the time by being a cry baby. When Hidayah was born though, mum was dead busy. Some nights she'd be off at her college real late studying or doing research or whatever. Most nights we would be home alone, and though it was against the law in UK to leave your children under 10 years of age unsupervised (what more with a baby), it was a risk my parents had to take because Abah went to teman mum every night. The place where mum waited for her bus every night was in front of a creepy graveyard. At 3 in the morning, a place like that can be real spooky. But we got a baby sitter for Hidayah a little later though, and Mum and Abah would go 'collect' Hidayah from her baby sitter when they came back home every night.

When Hidayah got a little bit older, I took the role of reading her bedtime stories. Yes, me and Hidayah were close when we were younger. It's hard to believe, I know. But I was also the one who taught her to read. I still remember the first book she managed to read without any help AT ALL, it was called Where's My Mummy. Ironic. It's about a little duckling who lost his mummy and was going about the farm asking other animals if they were his mummy. He found his mummy in the end, don’t worry. Haha..

Anyways, I too started making up stories to tell Hidayah, like the ones about Suzie (Hidayah wouldn’t let me use her name cz most of my stories were ghost stories so she made me use Suzie instead) Most times when I tell her a ghost story, I’d be the one to get scared first! yeah, Padan muka me.

Well, all this happened about some 10-15 years ago. I guess we all grew up, and grew too old for bedtime stories from mum. But none of us ever grew tired of stories. I still have the very first story book mum gave me which is The Banana Robber by Enid Blyton. I still find comfort in reading about the folks of the Far Away Tree and I’m still an avid fan of Roald Dahl, and I still believe in fairy tales. So, obsessed by fairy tales, I spend my life searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.

Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.— G. K. Chesterton