Whose time is it anyways?

There are a few infamous episodes in my life that have to do with jetlag and time changes. I'll spare the details here, but suffice to say they usually involved either car accidents or missed appointments due to poorly set watches. So imagine my dismay, on my second day of arrival in country, when I set out a very well-timed schedule of meetings between the West Bank and Jerusalem, only to discover during the preparation of my first meeting of the day that, overnight, the West Bank has fallen back 1 hour behind Jerusalem time.

Really, the focus of this post is to describe how something so relatively insignificant can take on so much meaning here. Ok, maybe time is not totally insignificant.

Let's take the reason behind the time change first. The time change is to put the clock on "winter time" - why winter time when the 100 degree weather outside does not even hint at how cold winters can really get here? In actuality, it has nothing to do with the season, but everything to do with the holy month of Ramadan. By moving the clock back one hour, in essence, the sun sets one hour earlier, basically shortening the hours of fasting by making the assumption that people will sleep in during the bright morning hours. As somebody who is not Muslim, but not a stranger to Ramadan fasting either, this just outright feels like "cheating".

Islam has well answered questions as to how fair it is for Muslims all over the world to fast whether they are in more equatororial locations vs. the extreme hemispheres. As the Islamic calendar is a lunar one, the month of Ramadan shifts about 10 days every year, meaning in a person's lifetime, they will fast several times in winter and summer, thus "equalizing" out the time all Muslims fast across the world. That sounds reasonable to me. So....why the need to change the clock? And how fair is it when you have muslims on the other side of a wall who have to fast one more hour? But the real question is, why make it more confusing for everybody by changing the time?!<

It is certainly kind of nice to arrive here and settle in here in the month of Ramadan, or so it would seem. Things generally move at a slower pace. Then again, it can be frustrating as....things move at a slower pace. Suddenly the "it is Ramadan" excuse pops up as a response to even the most insignificant requests. But it also gives me a nice excuse to take it easy a bit!