Alexander McCall Smith: Tea Time for the Traditionally Built
This brand new book in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series could not have come at a better time for me. Sorting through, giving away, selling my car – it all takes a toll. It’s a little like dying, this moving. I know I will be “resurrected” in another life, but in the meanwhile, I have so much grief, and I just stuff it away and keep going. These books are my carrots; they are my reward at the end of the day.
I have a stack of books and I am going through them like a locomotive – just chugging along.
Mma Precious Ramotswe and her totally different world in Botswana sweep me away totally. I love the sweetness of the way she thinks, her love for her country, and her tolerance. In Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, several things are going on at once, not the least of which is that she, also, must part with her dearly loved little white van, which has gone as far as it can go, and can go no further. The engine cannot be revived, not even one more time, by her dear husband, mechanic J.L.B. Matekoni.
Just in time, just when they need a new customer, comes Mr. Molofololo, the owner and manager of the Kalahari Swoopers, who hires Mma Ramotswe to find the traitor who is causing the Swoopers to lose their games.
Last, but not least, Mma Makutsi’s fiancee (she is the Assistant Detective now, remember?) Phuti Radiphuti, is being assaulted by Makutsi’s old rival from the secretarial school, Violet Sephotho, who is looking for a rich husband, and would love to steal Grace’s fiancee away, for all the worst reasons. How can plain Grace, with her big glasses and her unfortunate complexion, compete with the glamorous and seductive Violet? Can Phuti resist her wiles?
When I reached the last ten pages of the book, none of these crises had been resolved, and I thought “Oh no! How can the book end with all these loose ends out there?” but in a deft drawing together, McCall vanquishes the devils, finds simple solutions, and leaves us with Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi having tea together at the President Hotel.
This book is a great way to end the day with a smile on your face. 🙂 I bought this book for $21 in a bookstore, but Amazon has it for $14.37 plus shipping. I don’t buy a lot of hardcover books, but this one was worth every penny.
Eliot Pattison: Prayer of the Dragon
As you can see, I am into some serious reading. Not heavy reading, but books like carrots – I am the donkey, plodding way, packing my boxes, sorting, weeding, throwing out – it is time consuming, and it is pitiless work. I need the promise of a great excape at the end of my day to keep me going.
Prayer of the Dragon was a GREAT carrot. I like all of Eliot Pattison’s Inspector Shan Tao Yun series, set in Tibet. In his very first book, we meet Shan as he is still in the Tibetan prison camp, imprisoned for exposing corrupt officials in China. He learns a huge appreciation, in prison, for a different way of thinking, and his treasured companions become the Bhuddist monks with whom he is imprisoned. If you want to read this series, you can read any book as a stand-alone, but it helps to read them in order, starting with The Skull Mantra. The Chinese eventually free Shan; they find him useful – as long as he is not exposing corruption in the Chinese bureaucracy. He is free on parole; he lives with the sword over his head. At any time, if he crosses an important person, he can be sent back to the merciless gulag.
In The Prayer of the Dragon Inspector Shan finds himself involved in a series of murders on the mountainside, in a small mining village. The village headman has a great scam going, skimming the miners take, charging passage on the mountain trails, and keeping his village hidden from the Chinese bureaucracy.
Here is what I learned that surprised me. There appears to be a connection between the American Navaho nation and the native Tibetans. They share some body-prototype similarities, and they share many symbols and earliest legends. An first-nation Navaho and his niece are exploring similarities, and commonalities, when two members of their party are murdered while sleeping. The Navaho is charged, by the headman, with the death, because he survived although he is covered in blood. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to. The headman needs a scapegoat, and he chooses the Navaho.
It is a fascinating read. Here is an excerpt from a conversation Inspector Shan has with the local director of Public Security:
“I know your type so well, Shan, ” Bing said. “God, how well I know you. I was responsible for ten barracks of prisoners, like you – pathetic, morose creatures with no vision, only bitterness about the past. They would sit in reeducation classes and copy out slogans from the little red books like robots, praising the Chairman, reading aloud apologies printed in other books, using someone else’s words. Never a one among them with the balls to stand up and say Fuck the Chairman, screw the Party secretaries, and screw the limo drivers who brought them to town.”
“I tried at first,” Shan replied in a weary voice. “They sent me to a special hospital for the criminally insane.”
“Unfortunately,” Bing said soberly, “you are the sanest person I have ever met.”
AdventureMan knows I love these books. “Do you want to go to Tibet?” he asks me, and I say “No, if I went I would want to hang around with Inspector Shan and his gang of monks, not do tourist things allowed by the Chinese.” These are great reads, Pattison is doing a great job of bringing the plight of the Tibetans to the conscience of his readers, depicting, in graphic, horrorific detail how the Chinese are systematically crushing and obliterating every shred of Tibetan culture, while claiming they are not. I think one of the very worst things they have done is taking over the Tibetan monastery system and corrupting it into something it was never meant to be, a cruel, ugly deformity.
I can hardly wait for the next book to come out. I am on the waiting list for The Lord of Death, yet another book about Chinese bureaucratic corruption and the adventures Inspector Shan has in Tibet confronting and evading all its manifestations.
Susan Wittig Albert: Nightshade
In her ongoing China Bayles mystery series, China and her husband investigate the death of China’s father, with some amazing outcomes.
These are not heavy reading. This series features a burned-out criminal defense lawyer, who, sick of the slime and the jockying for power and position, cashes in her retirement plans and buys a shop in the small fictional town of Pecan Springs, Texas, where she opens an herbal shop, Thyme and Seasons, which sells live potted herbs, but also herbal wreaths, herbal soaps, herbal bath bombs, herbal teas, herbal shampoos, etc – and shares space with a new age shop called The Crystal Cave, a tea shop called Thyme for Tea, a catering company called Party Thyme and a personal chef service called Thymely Gourmet. She and her girlfriends have a lot of fun.
And, somehow, even in this idyllic life, mysteries seek out China, and she is often involved in crime-solving outside of her normal business. This time, her brother – the brother she never knew she had, the brother her father had with his secretary while China was growing up, wondering where her father was all the time – is murdered, in what appears to be a hit-and-run accident, but is no accident at all. Her brother was trying to get China involved with finding out how and why their father died – another apparent accident, which was no accident. When China isn’t interested (she is still very angry with her dad for what she perceives as a betrayal of her and her mother), her brother hires China’s husband as a private detective to examine the evidence. Then – her brother is killed. China gets involved.
It’s great escape reading, but you often end up learning something, too. China is an idealist, fighting crime and corruption, and God knows, there is enough of that, all the world around, to keep a legion of fictional crime fighters busy.
“After I grew up and joined the Houston legal fraternity, I began to understand what was common knowledge in that gossip-driven oil company town: Robert Bayles and his partner Ted Stone had built their legal practice on dubious oil and energy deals, questionable land transactions, and political dirty work. Their clients included polluters, looters and influence peddlers. Both Ted Stone and my father were frequent guests of the Suite 8F crowd, the group of influential conservatives who met on the eighth floor of Houston’s Lamar Hotel and collectively decided who was going to run for what political office, at the state level and beyond. To ensure that their picks – LBJ had been one of them – made it to the winner’s circle, Suite 8F slipped wads of campaign cash into the necessary pockets. Their contributions decided which politicians moved into positions of power and influence.
Just as important, their money brought them preferential treatment when the bidding opened on lucrative government contracts for dams, ships and shipyards, oil pipelines, military bases at home and abroad, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Lamar Hotel was demolished in 1983 to make room for a skyscraper, but the political influence of 8F lingers like a foul odor, a dirty fog. It’s the subject of books, of doctoral dissertations, of documentaries. It’s common knowledge.”
Reading Albert is a great escape. Even knowing that sweet little Pecan Springs is a microcosm of the rest of the world, not untouched by human frailty, it is a sweet place with a culture all its own. China’s life, surrounded by her loving husband, her stepson, all their pets, their friends, the places they eat, it’s all comfortable, an herbal scented different world.
Dean Koontz: The Face
Dean Koontz writes a lot of books with children in them, usually children in very vulnerable positions, abandoned, neglected, or at the mercy of a cruel adult, or at best, a negligent adult. Adults do play positive roles in his books, but the positive adult is usually damaged in some way – maybe a history of alcoholism, a history of broken relationships – in short, a lot like most of us. Real people, who make mistakes along the way, and try to learn something from them.
I like Dean Koontz. It makes me sad to say that this is just another great escape. Young boy, lost in his famous father’s huge mansion, beautiful-model mother who spawned him and then walked away, like a cat leaves her kittens – it’s a sad, lonely life for a child.
There is the usual creepy, badly twisted bad guy.
There is a good guy in pain, mourning his dead wife, and a ghost who intervenes in human affairs. There are deus ex machina aplenty, and a couple page-turner moments where you don’t want to stop reading, not yet!
It was not a bad book, but if I weren’t so desperate for escape reading, I would not have wasted a minute on this book.
Old Fashioned Piracy Goes High Tech
Thanks to blogger BitJockey, and news service Reuters for this update on the Somali pirates:
MADRID (Reuters) – Somali pirates are planning attacks on shipping using detailed information telephoned through by contacts in London, according to an intelligence report cited by Spanish radio on Monday.
The pirates have built up a network of informants in London with access to sensitive data from shipping companies about vessels, routes and cargoes, according to a European military intelligence report that Cadena Ser radio said it had seen.
The pirates receive their information by satellite phone and use sophisticated equipment to locate their targets, Cadena Ser said.
The intelligence report also said that the pirates seem to avoid attacks on ships of some nationalities, including British ships.
It listed several attacks in which the pirates had surprised crew with detailed information of their prey, including the nationalities of those on board.
Cadena Ser did not provide any more details about where the report originated, identifying it only as “European.”
Western nations have sent warships to try to stop the pirates, who have made millions of dollars from ransoming ships and their crews in strategic shipping lanes off the Horn of Africa that connect Europe to Asia.
They are currently holding about 20 vessels with nearly 300 hostages, according to monitoring groups.
Efforts to fight the pirates have been hindered by the gaps in international maritime law, which have sometimes left it unclear who, if anyone, can put them on trial.
Spanish authorities have disagreed among themselves over what to do with 14 Somalis caught last week by a Spanish warship. A judge tried to bring some of them to Spain while the government argued they should be sent to a court in Kenya.
(Reporting by Jason Webb; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Spit for Brains
From today’s Kuwait Times:
Idiot Apprehended
A drug-user was caught thanks to his own stupidity after pulling over to gawp at a traffic accident scene on the Salmi Highway. Police at the scene were suspicious of his demeanor and asked to see his ID card. on producing it, police found a piece of hashish stuck to the back. He has been referred to the relevant authorities.
I am just quoting this. I don’t make this stuff up.
But did you notice – the Kuwait Times has made a major improvement; the police suspected the idiot’s demeanor. They used to say the police “suspected” the idiot, but did not say what drew their suspicions – this is a major breakthrough. Also, red handed was only used once, and it was used very cleverly:
Prostitutes, Punters arrested
Four Asian prostitutes and three of their customers were arrested ‘red handed’ when a vice squad team raided a brothel in Hawally. The officers acted after receiving a tip-off from an informer about the goings-on in the flat. The three customers confessed to paying KD10 each for the women’s services. All have been referred to the relevant authorities.
First, wooo hoo, Kuwait Times, for the ‘goings-on’ – the crime news has seriously taken a jump in the grammatical direction. 🙂 Second – 10KD??? It occurs to me that these women could be earning a lot more doing manicures and pedicures, and have a much less dangerous life at the same time.
Don’t Smear Amir
Ruling in anti-Amir smear May 27
KUWAIT CITY : The Criminal Court on Wednesday set May 27, 2009 to rule on State Security case number 114/2006 filed against a 20-year-old Kuwaiti man, identified as Mansour R., for insulting HH the Amir while talking on the phone.
During the session, the suspect’s lawyer, Attorney Ali Al-Rashidi, requested the court to acquit his client as he had no intention to insult the Amir. He argued there is no evidence to incriminate his client and requested the court to listen to the testimony of the defendant’s witnesses if the need arises.
Mansour, a student at the Public Authority for the Applied Education and Training (PAAET), has been charged with insulting the Amir.
During a previous session, Mansour denied the charge, saying he was talking to his friend, Mohamed, about somebody named ‘Sabah’, not the Amir.
By Moamen Al-Masri
Special to the <a href=”http://www.arabtimesonline.com/kuwaitnews/pagesdetails.asp?nid=31834&ccid=22″>Arab Times
Somali Pirate Code of Conduct
Ever since I was a kid, I found pirates interesting and exotic and adventurous. The truth is probably that those olden day pirates had bad teeth, scurvey – they had lived hard and fast and they probably aged quickly.
Of course, today we have Johnie Depp and the Pirates of the Caribbean series, which makes pirating look mostly like a lot of fun.
So a year or so ago, I wrote a post on the Somali pirates, and got an interesting response. It got me started looking more deeply into what is going on with the pirates there.
Yesterday, in the paper was an article about the Somali pirate code of conduct – with fines and punishments for infractions. I found a complete article in Newsweek, April 27.
What is bothering me now is that the one pirate captured by the US when it retook the captured US freighter (in the report filed by one BBC reporter) said he was just a frail teenager, a kid, and that the pirates had already agreed to surrender when they were blown out of the water. You could hear her attempting to control her rage.
I know it is a thorn in the side for all shippers and freighters and passenger ships who travel through waters anywhere near to Somalia. And yet . . . I kind of ask myself what the options are? Somalia is a for sure failed-nation. They haven’t been able to cobble together a government for over twenty years. Deadly, long lasting poisons have been dumped along their shoreline – and major industrial nations paid Somalis a pittance to dump their wastes there. Their coastline has been overfished. Families are starving, live is – or was – dismal.
I think it is pretty cool that they developed an enforceable – and enforced – code of conduct.
Here is the article from Newsweek:
It was a hit with the U.S. public, but president Obama’s decision to authorize the Pentagon to kill three Somali pirates who took an American sea captain hostage sent shudders through the world’s shipping and insurance industries. Because the pirates are motivated chiefly by money, maritime experts say, they have—at least until now—taken good care of the crews they hold captive. A document retrieved from a ship hijacked last year contained a “list of written rules” of conduct pirates had to follow, according to a maritime security expert who requested anonymity when discussing sensitive material. The document included a series of “punishments” to be imposed on any hijacker who struck a hostage.
Shipping companies and insurers are far more likely to fork over large ransoms if they have confidence that their personnel and cargo will be released unharmed, and while the scourge of piracy has been disruptive, so far there have been virtually no casualties among innocent people. According to estimates, there were 111 pirate attacks off the Somali coast in 2008; 42 were successful, resulting in the capture of 815 seamen. As of last week, according to one estimate, all but 37 had been released, and two had died—one reportedly of illness. Experts say the rate of attacks has increased sharply this year, and “the more [authorities] shoot, the more the pirates will shoot back,” says Tom Wilson, a Somalia analyst for the British consulting firm Control Risks.
Protecting the 23,000 merchant vessels sailing annually near the Horn of Africa would require a naval fleet of at least 60 ships, according to U.S. government and private experts; the existing international antipiracy task force has about 20. And attacking the Somali coastal villages where the pirates are based could potentially radicalize generations of Somalis. “That would be a 19th-century solution,” says Neil Roberts, a marine insurance expert with Lloyd’s Market Association in London. Industry experts say the only solution to piracy is the creation of a viable Somali government back on dry land.
According to industry officials, ransom demands have ranged as high as $25 million—but in most cases they are negotiated down to about $2 million to $3 million, and insurers then pay out claims to the shipping companies. As hijackings have increased in frequency, pirates have become fussier about how their money gets delivered. Initially, said a shipping-industry source who also asked for anonymity, ransoms were often handed off to shady Somali expats in places like Kenya. After Kenyan authorities cracked down, the pirates began insisting on airdrops via parachute into the ocean near Somali coastal villages, where they have cash-counting machines ready. Until the U.S. opened fire, one of the pirates’ biggest headaches had been dealing with the sheer volume of money they’ve collected. Last year, according to an insurance-industry official, one pirate’s boat capsized because he had overloaded it with cash.
I found this on National Post dated April 30, 2009; it is a copy of what I had read in the newspaper:
MOGADISHU — A mobile tribunal, a system of fines and a code of conduct: the success of Somali pirates’ seajacking business relies on a structure that makes them one of the country’s best-organised armed forces.
A far cry from the image conveyed in films and novels of pirates as unruly swashbucklers, Somalia’s modern-day buccaneers form a paramilitary brotherhood in which a strict and complex system of rules and punishments is enforced.
They are organized in a multitude of small cells dotting the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden coastline. The two main land bases are the towns of Eyl, in the breakaway state of Puntland, and Harardhere, further south in Somalia.
“There are hundreds of small cells, linked to each other,” Hasan Shukri, a pirate based in Haradhere, told AFP in a phone interview.
“We talk every morning, exchange information on what is happening at sea and if there has been a hijacking, we make onshore preparations to send out reinforcement and escort the captured ship closer to the coast,” he explained.
Somali piracy started off two decades ago with a more noble goal of deterring illegal fishing, protecting the people’s resources and the nation’s sovereignty at a time when the state was collapsing.
While today’s pirates have morphed into a sophisticated criminal ring with international ramifications, they have been careful to retain as much popular prestige as possible and refrain from the violent methods of the warlords who made Somalia a by-word for lawlessness in the 1990s.
“I have never seen gangs that have rules like these. They avoid many of the things that are all too common with other militias,” said Mohamed Sheikh Issa, an elder in the Eyl region.
“They don’t rape, and they don’t rob the hostages and they don’t kill them. They just wait for the ransom and always try to do it peacefully,” he said.
Somalia’s complex system of clan justice is often rendered obsolete by the armed chaos that has prevailed in the country for two decades, but the pirates have adapted it effectively.
Abdi Garad, an Eyl-based commander who was involved in recent attacks on U.S. ships, explained that the pirates have a mountain hide-out where leaders can confer and where internal differences can be solved.
“We have an impregnable stronghold and when there is a disagreement among us, all the pirate bosses gather there,” he told AFP.
The secretive pirate retreat is a place called Bedey, a few miles from Eyl.
“We have a kind of mobile court that is based in Bedey. Any pirate who commits a crime is charged and punished quickly because we have no jails to detain them,” Mr. Garad said.
Some groups representing different clans farther south in the villages of Hobyo and Haradhere would disagree with Mr. Garad’s claim that Somalia’s pirates all answer to a single authority.
But while differences remain among various groups, the pirates’ first set of rules is precisely aimed at neutralizing rivalries, Mohamed Hidig Dhegey, a pirate from Puntland, explained.
“If any one of us shoots and kills another, he will automatically be executed and his body thrown to the sharks,” he said from the town of Garowe.
“If a pirate injures another, he is immediately discharged and the network is instructed to isolate him. If one aims a gun at another, he loses 5% of his share of the ransom,” Mr. Dhegey said.
Perhaps the most striking disciplinary feature of Somali “piratehood” is the alleged code of conduct pertaining to the treatment of captured crews.
“Anybody who is caught engaging in robbery on the ship will be punished and banished for weeks. Anyone shooting a hostage will immediately be shot,” said Ahmed Ilkacase.
“I was once caught taking a wallet from a hostage. I had to give it back and then 25,000 dollars were removed from my share of the ransom,” he said.
Following the release of the French yacht Le Ponant in April 2008, investigators found a copy of a “good conduct guide” on the deck which forbade sexual assault on women hostages.
As Ilkacase found out for himself, pirates breaking internal rules are punished. Conversely, those displaying the most bravery are rewarded with a bigger share of the ransom, called “saami sare” in Somali.
“The first pirate to board a hijacked ship is entitled to a luxurious car, or a house or a wife. He can also decide to take his bonus share in cash,” he explained.
Foreign military commanders leading the growing fleet of anti-piracy naval missions plying the region in a bid to protect one of the world’s busiest trade routes acknowledge that pirates are very organised.
“They are very well organized, have good communication systems and rules of engagement,” said Vice Admiral Gerard Valin, commander of the French joint forces in the Indian Ocean.
So far, nothing suggests that pirates are motivated by anything other than money and it is unclear whether the only hostage to have died during a hijacking was killed by pirates or the French commandos who freed his ship.
Some acts of mistreatment have been reported during the more than 60 hijackings recorded since the start of 2008, but pirates have generally spared their hostages to focus on speedy ransom negotiations.
With the Robin Hood element of piracy already largely obsolete, observers say the “gentleman kidnapper” spirit could also fast taper off as pirates start to prioritize riskier, high-value targets and face increasingly robust action from navies with enhanced legal elbow room.
They have warned that the much-bandied heroics of a U.S. crew who wrested back control of their ship and had their captain rescued by navy snipers who picked off three pirates could go down as the day pirates decided to leave their manners at home.
I used to read science fiction novels about a diplomat named Retief, I think they were by Keith Laumer. He would find himself in an alien environment with a horrible unsolvable problem and he would find a great solution, where everyone walked away OK. I wish there were a Retief who could negotiate a win/win out of this situation.
My Lucky Day
Woo Hooo on ME! Although I have never been in Nigeria, somehow someone there neglected to pay me my TEN MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS! Yes! Yes! This is “online” with my dearest dreams! Someone wants to give me a lot of free money! Wooo HOOOO!
From: “Barrister Afred Mark”
Subject: FOREIGN PAYMENT INVESTIGATING UNIT.
Date: April 28, 2009 3:25:28 PM GMT+03:00
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA
CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA
TINUBU SQUARE LAGOS
FROM THE DESK OF:
AFRED MARK & ASSOCIATE’S
LEGAL ADVISER TO THE
CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA (CBN).
ATTENTION:
PAYMENT INVESTIGATING UNIT.
From the records of outstanding payment with the Federal Government of Nigeria, your name was discovered as next on the list of The outstanding beneficiaries who have not received their payments.
I wish to inform you that your payment is being processed and will be released to you as soon as you respond to this letter. Also note that from my record in my file your outstanding payment is US$10.5, (Ten Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars only)
Please re-confirm to me if this is Online with what you have in your record and also re-confirm to me the followings.
(1) Your full name.
(2) Phone, fax and mobile #.
3) company’s name,position and address.
4) profession, age and marital status.
5) Copy of int’l passport or any scanned identity to prove yourself.
As soon as this information are received, your payment will be made to
you in a certified bank draft from central bank of Nigeria and a copy
will be given to you for you to take to your bank and confirm it.
YOURS SINCERELY,
AFRED MARK.
LEGAL ADVISER TO THE
CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA (CBN).
What? What? It’s a scam? Oh! Oh, say it isn’t so!
Rape in Kuwait – the flip side
By now you know a lot about who I am – what I laugh at, what I treasure, and what makes me break out in a storm of fury. Rape is one of those issues; the sheer entitlement that goes with stripping another human of choice and violating flesh as if the victim were nothing more than a piece of meat, it energizes me to a white rage, whether the victim is man, woman or child.
And then . . . and then . . . there are very strange cases of reported rapes in Kuwait that I have a hard time imagining exactly what happened here. I am not being flip, in a flippant sense; I am perplexed. We sometimes get so little of the story, and once you have a key piece of information – which we often never have – things make sense.
This is from today’s Kuwait Times:
Minor Raped
Police said a minor girl told Salhiya police that while she was sitting on the beach, a young man approached her and told her that he belonged to a well-known family. He then took her to an apartment in Sharq where he raped her before returning her to the same area. Later, another man approached her and took her to another apartment and raped her as well. She provided police with their mobile phone numbers. The case is under investigation.
Does this not sound peculiar to you? For one thing, is she sitting alone on the beach? Does she know these men? She goes with them – alone? By choice? Twice, with two different men? They give her their phone numbers?? To me, there is a lot of information missing in this report. It sounds like a very strange case of rape. I almost wonder if the minor has a mental incapacity, but it doesn’t say that.
Man, Woman arrested
A police patrol traveling in Sulaibiya recently suspected a young man and woman as they were driving. (Note to self: remind Kuwait Times that you do not use “Police suspected. . ” without specifying which behavior they found suspicious) Police asked to see their civil IDs and discovered that the young woman had run away from home one month ago. During interrogation, she confessed that the man and his three friends had raped her several times in a flat. The case is under investigation.
The following one is not about rape (nor am I sure the above cases are about rape) but is a case that makes you go “hmm. . .. what??”
Runaway Woman
A Filipina woman recently told Sulaibikhat police that she abandoned her sponsor’s home in Bneid Al-Gar before going to her Pakistani friend’s flat in Doha. Two months later, the woman became pregnant. She then reported the matter to the police.
She went to the police and said “I am a runaway, and I am pregnant” knowing she will be charged with absconding AND with immorality, maybe adultery? Knowing she will go to jail? What, exactly, is she hoping to gain? What is she reporting?
The crime news is full of mysterious glimpses, and we rarely know the rest of the story.
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