Every Momma's Boy.

He was a good kid, every momma's dream son with a good brain to be top of the class from primary one all the way to secondary school, university and a Magna Cum Laude of an Ivy League university.

He's a good kid everyone says so.

Listen to him recite a difficult surah while leading a jemaah prayer in the family living room. His dad, tears welled up in his eyes, was a proud man in the middle-class neighborhood that everyone says, you're one lucky person, haji.

He's a good kid who doesn't mix up with boys his age in the neighborhood who stay up late at night to learn a few chords on a guitar singing rock n' roll smoking boxes after boxes of cigarettes among themselves until the voice is all coarse in the throat. He's a good kid who doesn't mix up with boys his age drinking beer smoking joints and fondling young girls in tight jeans and a tube.

He's a good kid always at the surau when he's on holiday from a semester break. Everyone loves him and everyone prays for him to be a good man one day. May you be blessed with a good woman for a missus, son. A solehah who can raise your children to follow in your path to being a good man. A good man.

And then he got a job. And then he met me. And then he met the gang. And then he kept to himself when we were having fun. And then he started to join in. And then he started to like what he saw. And then he started to like what he drank. And then it all started. And then he was not a good kid no more. And then his dad started calling me from a lonely bed in a government hospital. And then his momma met me, tears welled up in her eyes to ask, what happened to my son?

Don't ask me. I don't have answers to this type of question, ma'am. No, ma'am, I don't have a message for his dad. Quite frankly this is none of my business, ma'am. Good day.