Is refraining from drinking and eating for several daylight hours so hard for people that it causes a total breakdown? The fourth pillar of Islam, it seems, is just that for many of us here in the Kingdom.
Every year, on the eve of Ramadan, certain changes occur and our body clocks are readjusted automatically. We tell ourselves that day is night and night is day. The reason? No particular reason — it just happens to be Ramadan.
For example, I was once a salesman in a shop in Makkah; in fact I was working part-time during my final college semester. The day before Ramadan, we received directions setting out the Ramadan working hours: from 10 a.m. to 12 noon, then from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., and finally from 8 p.m. to 2:30 in the morning. We were all amazed — a shop in a mall open until 2:30 in the morning! Of course, in a few days, we had become used to the new hours and before the end of the month, we were not closing until 3:15 in the morning!
Now, when a person stays up until dawn that can only mean one of two things. Either he is not a working person and can sleep till afternoon or he works the night shift.
Of course we need policemen, firemen and such people to be awake all night for our protection but when millions of people who are not doing any kind of shift work stay up until dawn that is a problem. And I think it is a big one. The next day those people either show up late for work or simply lack the energy to work at all. This is why government employees whose working hours begin at 9:30 a.m. in Ramadan are always grumpy, moody and rude.
Don’t bother trying to accomplish anything in a government office in Ramadan; make it easy on yourself and wait until Ramadan is over. Especially if you have a short temper, high blood pressure or heart problems, avoid government buildings in Ramadan altogether. Maybe the solution would be to put up signs reading, “Do Not Disturb Sleeping Employees” or “Ramadan Kareem: See You Next Month.”
And of course, if you do decide to go into the government office and try to accomplish anything, chances are very great that you will be told in a very curt tone, “Come back tomorrow.” It is even possible that the desk will be empty, the employee having gone to pick up his children and deliver them to school — which will take at least an hour and then there is picking them up after school and taking them home.
Students coming to school at 9:30 a.m. who have had only a few hours sleep are another problem. They are incapable of understanding or absorbing what is taught. There are always students in the back of the class whose heads bob up and down as they fight sleep. Teachers often have to ask them to go to the lavatory and wash their faces. Sad indeed!
I wish that in Ramadan we fasted like many Muslims do in other parts of the Islamic world. I wish our working hours remained the same. I wish that half an hour before maghreb (sunset), we behaved like civilized people instead of untrained Formula 1 race drivers. It is amazing how people react in a line waiting for ‘ful’ and ‘tamees.’ They push and shove and are totally inconsiderate of every other person — as if they were the only ones fasting. Sometimes you wonder if they have starved for days instead of fasted only a few hours, with some of those having been spent sleeping.
Most people actually gain weight in Ramadan. They fast from dawn to dusk, only to eat three meals in the seven hours of night: Iftar at sunset, dinner about 10 or 11 p.m. and then sahoor at 2 or 3 a.m.
Ramadan has changed completely in Saudi Arabia from what it was thirty years ago. During my father’s and grandfather’s time, people slept at the usual time and woke up a short time before the dawn prayer to eat and then go back to sleep. They had a reasonable night’s sleep and so were able to work during the day.
Sadly Ramadan is now the month of satellite TV programs — sit-coms, soap operas, and too much food. The new Ramadan has changed our customs beyond recognition. What has become of neighbors exchanging plates before iftar? What has become of the people in a neighborhood coming together for talk and discussion after taraweeh prayers? Couldn’t we bring back some of these customs in place of an hour or two of satellite TV? Wouldn’t we all be richer if we did?
