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| Contented: Demonstrating how one feels after an exhausting day of fasting followed by a satisfying evening meal. |
By the last week of Ramadan I considered myself an experienced faster. I thought I knew all the tricks of the trade: drink plenty in the morning, don't expend unnecessary energy, only speak if it is important and try to grab a 30 minute siesta at lunch if circumstances permit. But there was another trick which took me a bit longer really pick up: keep busy and don't look at the clock.
One finds that idleness is the faster's enemy. If there is nothing to do, you tend to mope around thinking about how hungry you are, swallowing with your already dry throat and watching as those interminable seconds tick by. But as soon as I got busy with some work or a task, I found the time passed much more quickly. As soon as I cottoned on to this technique, I started applying it liberally. When I was not busy working to make money I began to tackle all those jobs I had been putting off for most of the year. Cupboards and drawers got cleaned out and re-organised, squeaky door hinges got oiled and my bike got a much needed service. I also found also that routine tasks were performed with newfound zeal. Laundry got washed, folded and put away in record time; dirty dishes were dealt with almost immediately and grocery shopping was better organised than a military campaign - above all because one wanted to be very sure that ample supplies were available for each morning and evening.
And it seemed I wasn't alone in this realisation. My Aunt told me that the german author Gunter Grass had observed a similar phenomenon albeit in much more difficult circumstances. In his autobiographical account "Peeling the Onion" he describes his experience of being held prisoner at the end of the second world war. Prisonners in the camp were rationed on a strict diet of only 850 calories per day, but rather than break their spirits as it was designed to do, this regime had quite the opposite effect:
"Among ten and more thousand prionsers of war and after 17 years of eating my fill - we had seldom had to tighten our belts at home - I had learned what it is to be hungry. Hunger, because it had the first and last word, was a source of gnawing pain, but also a source of sparkling inspiration; the more my stomach shrank, the more my imagniation grew."
Rather than demoralise the prisoners, it motivated them into a of well organised hive of activity. They organised theatre classes, Latin language courses and music workshops. Even with the dearth of ingredients, Grass learnt to cook gourmet dishes from a fellow prisoner who was an ex-chef.
Surely Mohammed must have also been aware of such effects from fasting. I wonder if he promoted the practice in part because the increased productivity he observed in his followers? With such anecdotal evidence on the table, would it not be worth conducting a more rigorous study to quantify the benefits? Imagine if American CEO's started endorsing Ramadan as a way of increasing the profitability of their companies? Assuming it worked, it might go some way toward bridging the alarming gap of Islamic intolerance we are witnessing in that country right now.
