For about ten days asking the time around here was to utter fighting words. That is because the prime minister, Najib Mikati, with the connivance of the speaker, Nabih Berri, decided to postpone daylight savings for a month. The stated reason was so that Muslims could break their Ramadan fast at 6:00 p.m. and not 7:00 p.m.
Mikati, a Sunni who looks like he’s never missed a meal in his life, should know that it is not the clock that establishes the end of the day for those fasting but the setting of the sun. Moreover, Ramadan is a period where Muslims detach from regular business hours and routines. Their fast is broken by long, convivial meals followed by a few hours sleep. An hour or two before dawn they often wake up and eat something to carry them through the daylight hours, and then go back to sleep. In olden days, Muslim neighborhoods would be roused in time for this predawn meal by a man called — guess what! — a mikati. Mornings are very quiet during Ramadan as Muslims often sleep late. The roads are empty and many stores don’t open until noon. There is a feeling of lassitude throughout the day. Of course, getting through until sunset is tough but changing the clocks doesn’t lighten the burden.
So what was really going on? There are two main theories. The first is that this was a sectarian gesture to show that the government is now solidly in the hands of Muslims. Mikati is viewed with deep suspicion by the Christians as he announced a study showing that Christians are only 19% of the population. No census was taken but presumably some demographer has come up with this figure. I understand that the Shi’a are now referring to the Christians as “the nineteen percent”. Christians account for over a third of the registered voters.
The second theory is that the decision was a diversionary tactic to avert public attention from a contract awarded to renovate and expand the airport. If that was the case, it failed, as there was a hue and cry and the contract was cancelled.
Chaos abounded while the time issue got sorted out. Christians didn’t know when their church services were – at my suggestion, my church sent out an hourly countdown on Sunday morning because we didn’t even know what to call our regular 10 a.m. service. Private schools sent out notices to parents about which time they were adopting, leaving some parents to cope with dropping off children at different times and managing to get to work at whatever time was chosen there. Any appointment had to be confirmed by asking which time had been selected. Hospitals, the airport, and some newspapers chose to proceed with daylight savings time because their computers were updating to that time. It came to be called “international time” in official announcements but it was also called “Christian time”. The other time was called “government time”, “Muslim time”, and “Berri-Mikati time”. We were living in a weird, slightly menacing time warp.
Mikati had to have known that the last minute time announcement delaying daylight savings would throw computers, phones, and the like into chaos as he made his billions in telecommunications. L’Orient Today reported that it could take months to develop the software to re-synchronize everything. Indeed, at one point last week my phone was confusing New York City time with Beirut time. A clock at the airport was shown to have one time on one side and the other time on the other side.
In the end, the delay in daylight savings was cancelled. Ask nearly any Lebanese and you’ll get told that it is time for the political class to go.
goingfortheguttural 