Back in court – but today my trusted mentor Haneen Dajani was not with me. At first I was afraid, I was petrified....and wondered what would happen without her by my side.
But as I went from one case to another, I followed Haneen’s instructions, and slowly gained in confidence. First, I had to listen very carefully, since it gets hard to hear what’s going on, and second, I needed to writedown everything.
I needed names, ages, case details and the adjournment date. Writing down everything was extremely hard especially since the judges, lawyers and defendants all have different accents. Also, because I’m fairly new I didn’t know about the case histories – only the updates.
Not every court case is as interesting as a murder or a rape and today I was stuck with two fairly uninspiring drug cases. But the drama in court is not always provided by the cases.
For instance, the previous day Haneen and I were discussing the details of some of the cases we had seen, and noticed how people kept staring at us.
Maybe they were staring because we were discussing various types of drugs and what effects they have. We were inspired by a case in which the defendant was accused of using both marijuana and tramadol.
I hadn’t really heard of tramadol before and I asked Haneen what would happen to someone who took both marijuana and tramadol at the same time – given that the marijuana is supposed to make you laugh all the time and tramadol is supposed to calm you down .
“You probably die of confusion,” suggested Haneen, in her usual deadpan style.
This got the interest of two men sat nearby, who started talking to us about cocaine. One of them joked saying he knew all about it because of his “experience”.
Later we took our amusement from a case in which a woman accused of prostitution was described as having a “curvy body” and flaunting it in court.
Despite the seriousness of the courtroom, something about the description made us laugh hysterically – which in turn seemed to scare the other people in the courtroom.
Haneen and I make a great team together, even if we are both weird and crazy!