The sewing machines click and clack in the small workshop where Ei Phyu stitches fake Levi's shirts. Over the din she sometimes overhears her co-workers talking about Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy leader whose trial awaits a verdict. 'I only know her name,' said Ei Phyu, a slight and shy 20-year-old who says she has no idea what Suu Kyi looks like. 'I've never seen a picture of her,' Ei Phyu said. 'I think she's an old lady.' Outside Myanmar, formerly Burma, the trial has energized dissident Burmese exiles, has caused some politicians in neighboring countries to issue rare criticism of Myanmar's military government and has mobilized actors and rock stars to take up the cause of Suu Kyi, 64, the only living Nobel Peace Prize laureate currently in detention. But in a waterlogged hamlet an hour's drive from the prison where Suu Kyi is being held, villagers are preoccupied with their own severe poverty and are only vaguely aware of her trial. Having spent the better part of the past two decades detained in her home in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, Suu Kyi is up against a great deal as an agent of democratic change: a young generation that barely knows who she is; government-run media that portray her as a lackey of the West; and an educated elite that is eager for economic development but wary of more political confrontation after two decades of deadlock. For those old enough to remember the events of 1988, when Suu Kyi led protests against the military government, and two years later when she won an election in a landslide, she remains a powerful icon of democracy. Longtime foreign residents of Yangon point out that questions about Suu Kyi's relevance are not new. In the early part of this decade, diplomats speculated that she was no longer an important political force. But when she was released from house arrest in 2002, she toured the country and drew large, spontaneous, cheering crowds. She was rearrested a year later. Testimony in her trial ended Friday. Lawyers say that she should know her fate soon; if convicted, she could face up to five years' imprisonment. So could John William Yettaw, the American who says he saved her from an assassination plot by swimming to her lakeside home and whose visit led to the charge that she violated the terms of her detention. 