Criminals Read Online Free PDF

crosswise in the adult’s mouth, the baby cocked its head, flicked its black eyes. “Oh, God,” Amy said aloud, as it was deftly flipped and swallowed.

    S omeone said, “At this point, all religions are cultural treasure.”
    It was an older woman in a batik halter dress, with skin tanned dark as that of the waiters, if not silky and luminous like theirs. This was a party in a garden with lanterns. She was English, maybe she was the hostess.
    She gave Amy’s hand a downward yank when they were introduced and turned to John. She was saying that before she came she had sat herself down to do her reading, and made her husband do the same. Some of the new arrivals, the wives in particular, had no idea. They were surprised to get off the plane and find themselves in a Muslim culture. Though there was more to it, of course, than Islam. “I drove myself here tonight! I drove the Federal Highway in that awful car!” So she was not the hostess. “Our driver is sick. Why? He saw the Penanggalan and it put him to bed.”
    The Penanggalan was a ghost, a head that flew, trailing intestines. “I have no doubt he saw it!” the suntanned woman said, shaking her finger at Amy, who had started to laugh without any feeling of amusement. She was doing that here, in the heat, if she had anything to drink. That was when the woman, curving one shoulder toward John in a way that excused Amy from having to speak, said to John, “All religions are cultural treasure.”
    Why are there so many people now I can’t stand? Amy thought.
    Allah, the Koran said, “imposed mercy on himself as a law.”
    The half dozen women in the Koran study group wanted to do without a guide, to be under no obligation, as Eleanor said—she was the one emerging as the leader—except to consider just what the meaning of the sacred book might be.
    Amy would imitate Eleanor. “I say, this may do the trick.” If John was tired she did various women in the group to make him laugh: the know-it-all doctor, the timid Japanese woman Eleanor bullied, the nice Australian—that was their neighbor who had fried the pork. “‘Yehs, the attitude to animals . . . yehs . . .’” That was Eleanor, with her sprayed gray permanent and her maddening “yes” on the intake of breath, listening intently, especially beforehand when they were all drinking tea, or after an hour or so when the planned topic would wilt of its own accord like a parachute that had made it to earth. Almost as soon as she met you Eleanor found something in her big embroidered bag for you and whisked it out. The second time Amy was there Eleanor said, “A member of the royal family has made animals her cause,” and she slipped Amy a little pamphlet and patted her hand closed on it.
    The newest member of the group, the doctor, had arrived some months after Amy had, but she already knew how everything worked. She knew all about the place, she knew it was not going to be her favorite stint overseas. “It’s the religion,” the doctor said briskly, whenever anyone in the group complained about anything. She said the female medical students were not permitted to touch a patient. Because they were women they had to reach out of their deep sleeves and touch with a pencil. A pencil! If she felt that way, why was this doctor attending the Koran study group? “I have to do something with my mind,” she said.
    This woman knew how to drive in the flying traffic to a particular kampong for batik, and to the Batu Caves outside the city to take pictures. She was a photographer as well as a doctor. She showed her slides at the meeting, lingering over one of a monkey on the stone steps to the Hindu temple, taken with a wide-angle lens so the eyes in the monkey’s lined face bugged with weary comment at a pilgrim carrying up a tray of fruit. Another was of a fantastically wrinkled trishaw driver smoking a