i don't have to go back on monday. no one expected this trial to go on this long and so everyone has schedule conflicts in the next week. the trial will resume in june or july. the crazy thing is we're not even close to finishing. at the rate we're going, the whole thing will be at least another week and it could possibly go longer.
i had the opportunity to finally sleep in this morning, but i didn't take it. i've been pretty exhausted, but i guess my body just got used to waking up at 5.a.m. mrs. noz is not particularly thrilled about this development.
so now what? a thousand bloggable things ran through my head on my train to and from new york over the past few days. but here i am and i got nothing.
well, almost nothing. in yesterday's nyt, there was an article about the village of siyu, a small collection of mud and brick houses on pate island off the coast of kenya in the indian ocean. i happened to be in siyu in 1995 and i could not believe the times was running an article about such a small obscure place.
somehow its very exciting to read about a place in the paper that only you have been to. (that's not really fair. others have been to siyu. my brother, for example, was with me when i visited). especially when it is as hard to get to as siyu was (i got there by flying to nairobi (via london), then taking a train to mombassa, then a bus to malindi, then a small prop plane to lamu, then a dhow to pate island, where siyu is located. the dhow trip took about 13 hours)
it's odd to think that u.s. soldiers are there now and that it is some kind of al-qaeda hideout. in my experience, the people there were to have visitors (too happy, in fact, they tried to double the prices after we arrived). but that was 9 years ago, and before fazul abdullah mohammed came to town. i remember it as a small village of mud and brick houses. no electricity except for a single generator that the locals proudly showed us the night we arrived and that powered the home of the local big-wig. just outside the town was the unexcavated ruins of a walled fortress. i wonder what the kids who climbed with us over the rusting cannons in those ruins are doing now.
