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Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Rawatan Alternatif Untuk Sakit Jantung dan Sakit Buah Pinggang

Rawatan alternative untuk sakit jantung dan sakit buah pinggang.


Bulan November 2013, cik abang dimasukkan ke hospital kerana serangan jantung. Ambulan dipanggil dan cik abang segera di bawa ke HKL.  Sebaik tiba di hospital terus dibawa masuk ke unit kecemasan, para doktor dan dotor pelatih mengerumuni cik abang. Doktor bagi tahu saya yang dia beri ubat cair darah untuk memudahkan pengaliran darah di dalam salur darah.  Doktor siap bagi tahu akan kemungkinan bila mereka bagi ubat ni, boleh berlaku pendarahan dan jika pendarahan itu di bahagian otak, cik abang sama ada boleh dapat stroke atau tak dapat diselamatkan. Saya tawakal saja, dan suruh doktor teruskan.

Tak lama lepas tu, denyutan jantung cik abang makin lemah dan perlahan, tekanan darah merudum, maka doktor buat keputusan untuk guna alat Direct Current Shock, tekan di dadanya. Sorang demi sorang doctor cakap kat cik abang yang masih separa sedar, “Encik, kami nak buat direct current shock ya, keadaan encik parah.” “Encik banyakkan berdoa ya.” “Keadaan encik parah ni, berdoa ya.”  Yang paling tak best bila salah sorang cakap, “ Encik, keadaan encik parah. Encik boleh mati.” Cakap tak berlapik langsung! Bertambah sakit la jantung orang yang sedang sakit. Semua bersedia nak gunakan alat tu sambil doktor beri isyarat hold on sambil baca kadar denyut nadi dan tekanan darah dan sebagainya. Memang cemas dibuatnya terutama bila doktor keep counting sambil bagi isyarat untuk tekan alat tu kat dada. Kemudian, tiba-tiba doktor bagi isyarat batalkan guna alat tersebut sebab degupan jantung muncul semula walaupun perlahan.

Keadaannya agak parah sebab berdasarkan rekod doktor, jantung bahagian depan, kiri dan kanan dah rosak.  Doktor juga menganggarkan yang ada tiga bahagian jantung yang tersumbat.  Cik abang kena tahan wad 10 hari dan diberi cuti 40 hari. Tak dibenarkan bawa barang berat dan tak dibenarkan bawa kereta dan macam-macam pantang.

Bila dah sakit tu, ramai le kengkawan dan sedara mara yang nasihatkan jangan terlalu bergantung kepada ubat doktor sebab ada kesan sampingans.  Sebab masih baru, kami bercadang untuk betul-betul ikut makan ubat doktor, bila dah okay nanti cari la ubat alternative.

Sementara tu kami menunggu masa untuk ke IJN, susulan dari rawatan CRW. Sambil tu, kami cuba jugak cari rawatan alternative sebab tak nak buat pembedahan jantung.

Nak dijadikan cerita, tak sempat lagi nak cari ubat alternative, sekali lagi terpaksa panggil ambulance dan suami dimasukkan ke hospital bulan March 2014.  Sekali lagi terpaksa lalui trauma macam bulan November 2013. Aduhai….. (Nota: Kali pertama kena serangan jantung, kami belum berkahwin)

Ada kawan cadangkan pergi buat rawatan alternative kat seorang pak cik di Pantai Remis kerana suaminya dia pernah sakit jantung dan buat rawatan di situ, now selepas 5-6 tahun, tak ada masalah jantung lagi dan tak jadi buat pembedahan jantung.

Kami pun pergi lah ke tempat tu dengan tersalah simpang dan berpusing merata. Suami dah buat rawatan sekali dan bakal buat rawatan susulan kat situ. Alhamdulillah kesihatan suami kian baik. Semuanya dari Allah, kita cuma berusaha.

Kalau ada sesiapa yang ada masalah jantung dan buah pinggang, boleh lah mencuba rawatan pak cik yang dikenali sebagai Pak Long Haji Mohamad di Kampung Tebuk Yan di Pantai Remis, Perak.  Boleh hubungi Pak Long di talian 012-5093304.  Tentang bayaran, bayar seikhlas hati untuk rawatan yang dibuat. Untuk ubat (cuka kurma, madu, etc) ada la sedikit bayaran.

Pak Long juga boleh beri rawatan khas untuk lelaki kalau nak tambah umphh.  Itu kena sembang sendiri dengan Pak Long.

Itu aje perkongsian info. Moga memberi manfaat kepada yang memerlukan.

Nota kaki 2017: Suami masuk hospital lagi dua kali pada tahun 2015. Suami enggan dibedah. Jadi kami cuba beberapa rawatan alternatif. Alhamdulillah guna air semburan Polilex dan minum air rebusan daun pecah beling seolah beri tenaga dan dia semakin sihat. 
Sekarang ni sudah dua bulan mencuba air yang dikisar bersama timun, lemon, halia dan daun serta batang sup; diminum pagi dan malam. Alhamdulillah kadar kolesterolnya turun ke tahap normal. Kita berusaha, Allah tentukan kesembuhannya. 


Monday, June 17, 2013

Beratur 5 jam untuk beli "Cronut". Kegilaan di New York. Cronut Craze in New York.

Beratur 5 jam untuk beli "Cronut". Kegilaan makanan di New York

Sanggup tak anda beratur 4 - 5 jam semata-mata nak beli 2 keping "cronut" macam dlm gambar tuh?  Cronut adalah gabungan crossaint dan donut. Memang macam tak logik ada orang beratur 4 or 5 jam setakat nak beli makanan nih. Tapi di New York, memang ramai yg gilakan makanan ni. 

New York foodies in grip of 'Cronut' craze

Some hungry customers began queueing outside the pastry shop around 3:30 am. Others managed to keep their taste buds at bay for a few more hours, arriving at the patisserie around 6:00 am.
They were all united by a desire to sample the food craze that has gripped New York since its debut a month ago. Half-doughnut, half croissant: the 'cronut' has left the Big Apple's gourmets in a frenzy.
By the time the Dominique Ansel Bakery in the heart of trendy Soho opened its doors to the public at 8:00 am, the slavering customers were at breaking point. Within the hour, every single cronut available has been sold.
The bakery's owner, Dominique Ansel, says the crowd reflected the typical pattern since the May 18 launch of the the cronut, a food sensation powered by social media. On the first day, 50 were sold. The next day 100 flew off the shelves, within 15 to 20 minutes.
Since then the bemused pastry chef has become accustomed to queues of 150 to 200 people winding down the street before the bakery has opened.
Ansel settled upon the idea of the cronut after deciding he wanted to create a hybrid pastry that would be instantly recognizable as a marriage of French and American food cultures.
His revolutionary confection offers the delicate puff pastry of a traditional croissant shaped into a round doughnut, which is then deep-fried, filled with cream, rolled in maple sugar and coated with a light glaze.
It's soft yet crunchy, light and delicious, say the cronut's devotees.
Ansel, regarded as one of the most talented pastry chefs in New York, said settling upon the cronut recipe was a painstaking process. "It took me about two months to perfect the recipe," Ansel told AFP.
It is so perfect that Jessica Amaral, 30, thought nothing of leaving home at 3:00 am to get in line. The two cronuts she is buying are a treat for her husband to mark the couple's eighth wedding anniversary.
"I am the idiot, I read online that people were arriving at three... The others started to arrive at five. It's my eighth year anniversary, I thought it would be nice for my husband."
Just behind Amaral in the queue stood Steven Go, a chef who arrived from his home in Staten Island shortly after 5:00 am, at the behest of his wife. Justin Gorder, a 30-year-old salesman, travelled an hour from New Jersey.
Irvin, a trader, bashfully admitted he should already be at work. Gina, meanwhile, arrived in a taxi at 6:30 am, clutching her four-month-old baby.
To satisfy the largest possible number of customers, patrons are restricted to two cronuts each. At first, customers could snaffle six at a time, but Ansel restricted it to two after discovering the cronuts he sold for $5 each were changing hands on the Internet at up to $50 a piece.
At 8:00 am, the wait was over. Ansel flung open the doors and welcomed his first customers. By 8:56, almost all of the approximately 250 to 300 cronuts available have been sold. A bakery employee distributed madeleine pastries, advising people who arrived at 7:00 am they had a "40 percent" chance of satisfying their craving.
By 9:05 am, Ansel broke the bad news to those outside his shop who have missed out. "We are sold out for today," he said.
Inside, around 20 people waited anxiously to snap up the final cronuts on sale. A crafty customer offered to sell his place in the queue for $100. His offer was accepted by two friends who delightedly came away with two cronuts each.
Immediately behind stood Jessica McCord. She was furious, but consoled herself by opting for a kouign amann, the Breton cake that is a house specialty.
Meanwhile, Irvin, late for work, hungrily devoured his cronuts. A young woman meanwhile prepared to take her prized pastries, nestling in a golden case, to share with work colleagues.
McCord was disappointed to have missed out, but the experience will not deter her. "We'll be back," she sighed.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Kucing ditangkap kerana gagal misi di penjara

Kucing ditangkap, gagal misi di penjara.

Fuh! Gempak tajuk news ni.  Kucing kena tangkap? Gagal misi? Ditangkap? Dipenjara?

Ada beza antara "dipenjara" dengan "di penjara", okay. Tapi berita ni memang bizzare or weird la kan. Berita ni memang lain dari yang lain.

Pengawal penjara telah menangkap seekor kucing dan menggagalkan misinya.

Kalau dah nama orang jahat, otak penjahat (criminal minds) ni kreatif la jugak kan.  Kreatif tapi bodoh la pulak. 


Pengawal penjara yang membuat rondaan ternampak seekor kucing di atas pagar dan kucing tersebut kelihatan seperti membawa sesuatu. Apabila ditangkap, kucing tersebut didapati “memiliki” beberapa buah telefon bimbit, bateri dan alat pengecas yang dilekatkan di badannya, ala-ala suicide bomber gitu.   

Federal Prison Services berkata, kejadian berlaku pada 31/5/2013 di penjara Penal Colony No. 1 di Syktyvar di daerah Komi, kira-kira 1,000 kilometer daripada Moscow, Rusia.

Tak dapat la nak dipastikan camne caranya si kucing tu nak drop kan barang yg dibawanya kepada empunya handphone2 tu.


Si "Criminal minds" yg rancang penyeludupan ni kira memang ngok la kan. Dowh... dah sah-sah tau yang si kucing tu tak la reti nak menyorok bila nampak pengawal penjara, lagi nak suruh kucing menyeludup barang masuk ke penjara.  Lawak gila lah berita benar nih.




Thursday, March 28, 2013

Crouton & Bread Pudding from stale bread


Fresh Ideas for Stale Bread

Fresh Ideas for Stale BreadCrouton is great as salad companion, or just as snacks.
Text and images by Tris Marlis @ Makansutra
What do you do with half a loaf of bread that is going to expire the next day, or just short of going mouldy? Refrigerating prolongs its shelf life, yet the low temperature also makes it stale – dry, hard and almost not palatable.
Stale bread, however, is perfect for croutons, those crunchy bits usually served on top of Caesar’s Salad along with Parmesan cheese. To make croutons, dice a couple pieces of stale bread, toss them in olive oil, salt, pepper, and seasonings like garlic powder, herbs and chilli. Sauté the bread cubes in a skillet until they are light brown, and finish it in the oven at 170 degree Celsius for about 15 minutes or until crispy and golden brown.
If you are not a fan of croutons, make some bread crumbs for fried chicken instead. To make them, bake stale bread in oven at 120 degree Celsius until dry and lightly brown. Cut them into pieces and blend them in a food processor until it has the consistency (coarse or fine) you desire, or a sandy texture. Let it cool thoroughly before storing, and season it to taste with salt pepper or even truffle salts.
Fresh Ideas for Stale BreadBread pudding is best served warm and with a scoop of ice cream!
For dessert, try this simple bread pudding recipe – velvety and moist bread with custard.
Ingredients:
6 slices of bread
2 tbsp of butter
4 eggs
2 cups of milk
3/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp of vanilla extract
Method: 1. Preheat oven to 130 degrees Celcius.
2. Break bread into small pieces (about 1 inch squares or hand tear if you like). Spread melted butter over bread in a 8” x 3” round baking pan.
3. In a mixing bowl, combine eggs, milk, sugar, and vanilla extract. Beat until the sugar dissolves. Pour over bread. Let it sit for 15 minutes until the bread is covered and has soaked up the egg mixture.
4. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until the top of the pudding springs back when lightly tapped. Watch the pudding closely and stop as it starts to brown.
5. Serve it with vanilla or coconut ice cream!

Best Nashville Fried Chicken


Burning desire: Hot chicken takes over Nashville

Fried chicken (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Most folks know Memphis for its barbecue and Philly for its cheesesteaks, but how about Nashville and its hot chicken?
If you're not sure, you've never tried this fried chicken so fiery it will leave your mouth in shock. It's a flavor you don't soon forget.
Born as cheap, flavorful fare for Nashville's working class community and offered late into the night for its party-goers, hot chicken has long been a staple in town. But its reputation has grown in recent years. Taylor Swift and B.o.B. even featured one of the city's best known hot chicken shops in a video they did together.
At heart, it's fried chicken that gets finished with a potent — and nearly always secret — blend of dry, peppery seasonings (paprika and cayenne are common, though that's just the start). But that oversimplifies things.
"I don't know," James McNew, hot chicken fan and bassist for New Jersey indie rock band Yo La Tengo, says of the recipe. "Some kind of combination of love and hate. I'm not sure of the measurements, whether it's half and half or not."
McNew and husband-wife bandmates Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley have been coming to Nashville for almost two decades. For the music, of course. And the chicken.
They sing its praises to anyone who will listen. They even named two songs in honor of their love for Prince's Hot Chicken Shack, which has been serving up searing hot chicken since sometime during the 1940s.
"It's something different," said Andre Prince Jeffries, second-generation owner of Prince's. "It's not a boring chicken. I mean, you wake up on this chicken. You're gonna talk about it."
And talk about it they do. The members of Yo La Tengo heard about hot chicken from another band that already had fallen for it. They visited the humble strip-mall home of Prince's in north Nashville, far from the trendy districts, and were immediately enchanted.
"It really was love at first sight," Kaplan said during a recent interview at Prince's. "Even before we tasted it. It was obviously unique."
Prince's is the most popular of Nashville's growing roster of hot chicken restaurants. Over the years, it has moved several times and its owners have missed a few bills, but Jeffries, with the help of her daughter, niece, brother and cousins, has managed to keep it in her family.
As the story goes, it all began with Jeffries' great uncle Thornton Prince, a bit of a man about town whose girlfriend had put up with enough and wanted a bit of spicy retribution. So she made him a special chicken for breakfast with a fiery kick.
"But he liked it, I'm sure after he kind of startled himself on it,'" Jeffries said. "He had her make some more, whatever stuff she put on it. And word got around. People started coming out to the house for chicken."
"My great uncle started it, but of course I give credit to his lady friend," Jeffries said.
Sixty-odd years later, the family will be honored in May with a prestigious James Beard Foundation America's Classics Award. It's a proud moment for Jeffries, but one born out of a simple idea.
"I just wanted something to stay in the family," she said. "Mom and pop places, they are phasing out. Big business is taking over, and so I think there's very few mom and pop places open that's been going for as long as we have. That was my goal. But it's nothing that I've done. I'm standing on the shoulders of somebody else."
Many of Nashville's hot chicken restaurants are family run. Like Prince's, the chicken recipe at Bolton's Spicy Chicken & Fish — the restaurant that made the appearance in the B.o.B.-Swift video for "Both of Us" — has been handed down from one generation to the next. Dollye Ingram-Matthews, who owns Bolton's with her husband, Bolton Matthews, thinks there's a reason it's become a Nashville tradition.
"Probably because it's nowhere else and you have to have experience with it to know what you're doing," she said. "It's not something you can say, 'I'm going to open up a restaurant and da da da da da.' You have to have experience with the pepper to make sure it comes out. Because if not you're going to have a lot of errors with your cooking."
The same is true for the customer. Ordering errors occur all the time. It's best to start low. Hot is over the limit for most people, Ingram-Matthews says. And mild is hotter than what most chain restaurants consider spicy. Anyone who orders extra hot is asked if they're a first-timer and politely instructed to start at a lower temperature if so.
And, of course, there's a little danger involved if you don't take the encounter with the fiery pepper seriously.
"With the dry rub, wash your fingers," she said. "Wash up under your nail beds. Do not touch your eyes. And definitely wash your hands before you use the bathroom."
Ingram-Matthews has plenty of advice. But don't bother asking her for the family recipe.
"They say, 'What is the secret to your recipe,' and I say, 'Love, joy, peace and happiness,'" she said. "And I leave it that. Because it's full of all of that."
___
NASHVILLE HOT FRIED CHICKEN
To ensure that the exterior doesn't burn before the interior cooks through, keep the oil temperature between 300 and 325 degrees.
Start to finish: 2 hours
Servings: 6
2 quarts cold water
1/2 cup hot sauce
Salt and ground black pepper
1/2 cup plus 1/2 teaspoon sugar
3 1/2- to 4-pound whole chicken, quartered
3 quarts peanut or vegetable oil
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
2 cups all-purpose flour
Hearty white sandwich bread (optional)
Pickle chips (optional)
In a large bowl, whisk the cold water, hot sauce, 1/2 cup salt and 1/2 cup sugar until the salt and sugar dissolve. Add the chicken and refrigerate, covered, for 30 minutes or up to 1 hour.
When ready to cook, in a small saucepan over medium, heat 3 tablespoons of the oil until shimmering. Add the cayenne, 1/2 teaspoon salt, paprika, remaining 1/2 teaspoon sugar and the garlic powder. Cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Transfer to small bowl and set aside.
Remove the chicken from refrigerator and pour off brine.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Two at a time, dredge the chicken pieces through the flour mixture. Shake excess flour from the chicken, then transfer it to wire rack. Do not discard the seasoned flour.
Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 200 F. Set a clean wire rack over a rimmed baking sheet.
In a large Dutch oven over medium-high, heat the remaining oil to 350 degrees.
Return the chicken pieces to the flour mixture and turn to coat, then shake off the excess. Add half of the chicken to the oil and fry, adjusting the burner as necessary to maintain oil temperature between 300 F and 325 F, until the skin is a deep golden brown and the white meat registers 160 F and the dark meat registers 175 F, about 25 to 30 minutes.
Drain the fried chicken on the prepared wire rack and place in oven to keep warm. Return the oil to 350 F and repeat with the remaining chicken.
When all of the chicken is cooked, stir the spicy oil mixture to recombine, then brush it over both sides of the chicken. Serve on bread, if using, and top with pickles, if using.
Nutrition information per serving: 780 calories; 510 calories from fat (65 percent of total calories); 57 g fat (10 g saturated; 0.5 g trans fats); 140 mg cholesterol; 27 g carbohydrate; 1 g fiber; 2 g sugar; 38 g protein; 1100 mg sodium.
(Recipe adapted from Cook's Illustrated magazine)
___
Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott

Monday, March 11, 2013

Giraffe share your meals at Giraffe Manor


Friday, March 8, 2013 11:12am PST

Giraffes join guests for breakfast and dinner at iconic Giraffe Manor

By: David Strege



One of the more peculiar hotels in the world features giraffes joining you for breakfast or dinner by poking their heads through open windows. At Giraffe Manor on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, a reference to a long neck doesn't necessarily mean beer.

The one-of-a-kind hotel is actually a sanctuary for the endangered Rothschild giraffe. Roaming the 12 acres of private land within 140 acres of indigenous forest are eight Rothschild giraffes, some of which routinely show up in the mornings and evenings to greet guests and sneak a snack. The captivating photos tell the story.

Giraffe Manor is said to be one of Nairobi's most iconic buildings dating to the 1930s and is reminiscent of the early days of Europeans in East Africa.

Since 1974, Giraffe Manor has been the home of Jock and Betty Leslie-Melville. Why giraffes? Their lifelong goal is the preservation of this treasured Rothschild giraffe.

The goal of guests, meanwhile, is the preservation of their morning toast.

Photos are used by permission from the Giraffe Manor. Enjoy. 













Thursday, February 7, 2013

Forbidden Love's Punishment


Woman in Timbuktu punished for forbidden love

TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — The love story in this fabled desert outpost began over the phone, when he dialed the wrong number. It nearly ended with the couple's death at the hands of Islamic extremists who considered their romance "haram" — forbidden.
What happened in between is a study in how al-Qaida-linked militants terrorized a population, whipping women and girls innorthern Mali almost every day for not adhering to their interpretation of the strict moral code known as Shariah. It is also a testament to the violent clash between the brutal, unyielding Islam of the invaders and the moderate version of the religion that has long prevailed in Timbuktu, once a center for Islamic learning.
Salaka Djicke is a round-faced, big-boned girl with the wide thighs still fashionable in the desert, an unforgiving terrain that leaves many women without curves. Until the Islamists came and upended her world, the 24-year-old lived a relatively free life.
During the day, she helped her mother bake bread in a mud oven, selling each puffy piece for 50 francs (10 cents). In the afternoon, she grilled meat on an open fire and sold brochettes on the side of the road. She saved the money she earned to buy herself makeup and get her hair styled.
Like her sisters and friends, she spoke openly with men — including the stranger who called her by mistake more than a year ago.
The man thought he was calling his cousin. When he heard Salaka's voice, he apologized. His voice was polite but firm, with the authoritative cadence of a man in his prime. Hers was flirtatious, and her laugh betrayed her youth.
They started talking.
A few days later, he called her again. For two weeks, they spoke nearly every day, until he asked for directions to her house.
She explained how to find the mud house on Rue 141, past the water tower also made of mud, in a neighborhood less than a mile from where he sold gasoline from jerrycans by the roadside. She had time to put on a yellow dress.
He arrived on his motorcycle.
He was older — she does not know how old — and already married, a status that bears no taboo in a predominantly Muslim region where men can take up to four wives. She found him handsome.
From that day on, he ended phone conversations with the phrase, 'Ye bani,' or "I love you" in the Sonrai language. Instead of Salaka, he called her "cherie" — sweetheart in French, still spoken in this former French colony.
He showered her with gifts, starting with a 6-yard-long piece of bazin fabric, the hand-dyed, polished cotton which is the mainstay of Malian fashion. It was a royal violet, and he paid to have it tailored into a two-piece outfit, with a flame-like flourish of orange brocade on the bodice.
She put it on for him, and they went to the photo studio one street over. They stood against the poster backdrop of an enamel-blue waterfall. He put his arms around her and invited her to sit on his lap.
By the time the first group of rebel fighters carrying the flag of the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad drove past her house on April 1, the two had been seeing each other for several months. He called to see if she was OK.
These fighters in military uniforms made clear their goal: They wanted to create an independent homeland known as Azawad for Mali's marginalized Tuareg people.
Only days later, a different group of fighters arrived, wearing beards and tunics that looked like the kurtas common in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Their black flag resembled the one people had seen on YouTube videos posted by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. They called themselves Ansar Dine, or "Defenders of the Faith."
They produced a pamphlet outlining how a woman should wear the veil, and whom she could and could not be seen with. Eschewing any contact with women, they handed the leaflets out to the men.
One of them was Salaka's boyfriend. He drove his motorcycle to her house to give it to her.
She didn't have enough money to buy the plain, colorless veil prescribed to cover the entire body. So her boyfriend went to the market and paid for two, one red and one blue. The women of sub-Saharan Africa are so used to wearing vibrant colors, he couldn't find any that were black.
___
As their love affair grew more intense, so did the crackdown by the Islamists in northern Mali, an area equal in size to Afghanistan.
Three months after they arrived, they arrested an illiterate man and woman, both dirt-poor herders living together for years with their animals outside the town of Aguelhok. The man had left his wife to reunite with his teenage love, and they had two children out of wedlock, the youngest just six months old.
In the last week of July, the Islamists sped into their nomadic camp and arrested them. They drove them to the city center, where they announced the couple would be stoned to death for adultery.
They dug a hole the size of a man and forced them to kneel inside. They made the villagers come out to see what Shariah was.
Then they cast the first stone.
__
The fear was now palpable on the streets of Timbuktu. Salaka and her boyfriend stopped seeing each other in public. When he came, they sat in the enclosed courtyard of her parents' home, behind the veil of its chrome-red dirt walls.
Even in relatively modern Timbuktu, it was not considered appropriate to leave the couple alone in a room. So he arranged for a friend to loan him the keys to his empty house in a neighborhood less than a mile away.
Would she please join him there, just for an hour, once a week?
She hesitated. He begged her, saying he couldn't be without her. They determined that the Islamic police stopped their patrols at 10 p.m.
She went once and got home safely. She went again.
They began meeting once a week. She insisted on staying no longer than 40 minutes. He brought her on his motorcycle, stopping close to the house and pushing the bike through a blanket of sand to avoid attention.
By this time, the Islamists were beating everyone from pregnant mothers and grandmothers to 9-year-olds for not covering themselves fully. A woman was no longer supposed to talk even to her own brother on the stoop of her house.
At a certain point Salaka knew they were going to get caught. She planned out what they would say.
In one version, she would say he was her uncle. In another she would call him her older brother. In yet another, they would try to pass off as a married couple.
On the night of Dec. 31, the two left Salaka's house on a motorcycle, headed west and turned onto Road No. 160.
They passed the bread oven belonging to one of her mother's competitors. They skirted an alley crowded with handmade bricks laid out to dry. They turned left, and then right again, taking a circuitous path to confuse anyone who might be following them.
When they got close, they chose the narrowest alleyways, used only by motorcycles and donkey carts instead of the Toyota pickup trucks of the Islamic police. They passed the house where they planned to meet and doubled back in an alley. He cut the motorcycle's engine, told her to stay 100 yards behind him and pushed the bike through the sand as usual.
She watched him leave. She was breathing so hard she was afraid the stars could hear her. He passed the first intersection, then the second, and then the third.
The bearded men came on foot via the third intersection. There were four of them. Her lover jumped on his motorcycle and gunned it across the sand. He was the married one and would have paid the higher price.
She knew she couldn't outrun them. So she stood. And in the moments it took for them to descend on her, she realized it would be futile to lie.
___
They took her to the headquarters of the Islamic police, inside a branch of the local bank. They shoved her into the closet-like space where the ATM machine is located and locked the gate behind her.
When she didn't come home that night, her worried sister called her cell phone. The Islamic police answered and told her where Salaka was.
In the morning, her family came to slip her a piece of bread through the grills of the gate, feeding her like an animal at the zoo. Later that day, the police transferred her to a prison they had set up just for women in a wing of the city's central jail. For the next three nights, she slept alone on a hard floor in a large, cement room.
On Jan. 3 they took her to the Islamic tribunal. Just eight days before French President Francois Hollande unilaterally approved a military intervention in Mali on Jan. 11, Salaka was convicted of being caught with a man who was not her husband and sentenced to 95 lashes. It was a severe punishment even by the standards of the Islamists.
They took her to the market at noon on Jan. 4, the same place where she bought the beef for the brochettes she sold and the flour used to make her mother's flatbread. She recognized the meat sellers. One of them used his phone to record what happened next.
The police made her kneel in a traffic circle. They covered her in a gauze-like shroud. They told her to remove her dress, leaving only the thin fabric to protect her skin from the whip. Curious children jostled for a better view.
What they did to her was witnessed by dozens of people in Timbuktu, and can still be heard on the meat seller's cell phone.
The executor announced Salaka's crime and her punishment. Then he began flogging her with a switch made from the branch of a tree. Her high-pitched cries are contorted with pain. You can hear the slap of the whip. You can hear her labored breathing.
They hit her so hard and for so long that at one point she wasn't sure if the veil had fallen off. She could feel the blood seeping through.
When it was over, they told her that if they ever saw her with a man again, they would kill her.
Her lover called as soon as she got home. The night she was caught, he ran away to Mali's distant capital, becoming one of an estimated 385,000 people who have fled their homes from the north.
He said over and over: "I'm sorry." He promised to marry her. But he has not yet returned. She still will not name him, fearing the Islamist extremists will be back.
Her face warms when she speaks of him and contracts when she describes her pain and humiliation. There isn't a child in Timbuktu who doesn't recognize her, she says. Even now she avoids the market, sending her sisters to buy the meat instead.
"This was a tyrannical regime, which had no pity towards women," she says. "I'm not the only one that went through this. I did this because I was in love."
Last week, Salaka was among the thousands of people who poured into the streets to cheer French soldiers as they liberated the city. She folded and put away her blue and red veils.
In recent days, she pulled out her lover's gift of the violet bazin with the flame-patterned brocade from the bottom of a pile of clothes she was not allowed to wear under the city's occupiers. She painted her lips a translucent fuschia. She went to the newly opened hairdresser.
The photo studio where she and her lover posed by the cardboard waterfall remains closed, so instead her brother snapped a picture of her.
If you look closely, you can see the marks left by the whip across her now-naked shoulders.
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Salaka's story was pieced together from interviews with her over three days. Salaka took AP journalists to the rendezvous house, the place where she was arrested, the ATM machine, her prison cell and the market. Her family, city officials and several witnesses confirmed the whipping, and a meat seller shared with the AP a sound recording that captures the sentencing and her screams. The account of the stoning in Aguelhok is from the city's mayor.
Rukmini Callimachi can be reached at www.twitter.com/rcallimachi.