My final Ramadan was spent alongside the world’s most dangerous terrorists (according to Bush) and its finest examples of patience and fortitude (according to me). I first read the Dickens’ classic, Bleak House, in solitary confinement, Camp Echo.
The concentric part of this story is based on the fictitious—though accurately representative—and never-ending case of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce, which ultimately consumes and destroys the lives of it’s central characters, rather like the Supreme Court decisions relating to the Guantánamo detainees. But it was the first sentence of another Dickens classic, A Tale of Two Cities, which reads, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” that captured my imagination back then. For that is precisely how I would have described the noble months of Ramadan spent in US custody. *HERE* <http://1426.blogspot.com/2009/09/ramadan-at-guantanamo.html>
