International fiction: Sato is a happy boy until his father decides he has to undergo a piety ritual

Of course, just like most little kids, long before all this I went to mosque and studied prayer and recitation. Why? Because my father went to mosque and studied prayer and recitation, because my grandfather went to mosque and studied prayer and recitation, because my great-grandfather went to mosque and studied prayer and recitation. And I guess it kept going like that, stretching back from the father of my great-grandfather, to the grandfather of my great-grandfather, the great-grandfather of my great-grandfather, all the way back to Prophet Adam, from where there is no farther back to go. Apparently, all of them went to mosque and studied prayer recitation.

If I may be honest, I preferred going to watch the cock-fights behind the market, or going to the sports field to watch the pigeon races. That was way more exciting than sitting cross-legged in a prayer room, pronouncing letters I never used to recite, words whose meaning I didn’t know. It was better to watch the horse dancers spin into trance at a party. Or argue over who’d won at cards. Or swim in the little stream that ran through the rice fields. Or watch the singers in an orkes band at...

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