Russian man to spend 48 days in a box to beat David Blaine’s record

Karim Diab, a 40-year-old Muscovite, locked himself in a small booth with a glass wall at midday of March 6 in Moscow's Strogino district. The man has only a mattress, a sleeping bag, a portaloo, the New Testament, a computer and a container of leeches with him in the booth. The man intends to use the computer to write a book during the process of fasting. Karim practices the leech treatment, but he could not find anyone who would agree to take care of the creatures for the time of his stay in the booth, the Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote.

Karim was born in Moscow in a Russian-Syrian family. The man, a medical attendant by profession, has a goal to beat the record of an American stunt performer David Blaine. The latter became world-famous after he had spent 44 days living in a glass box hanging on a crane above the Thames in 2003. Karim is going to stay in his booth for 48 days.

Karim Diab is a member of the federation of winter swimming. It took him four years to prepare his body for such a long period of living without food. He was drinking only water and eating no food for 38 days during last year’s Lent. When the experiment ended the man was terribly exhausted. “When you recover after such a hunger-strike, it gives you the feeling of incredible happiness and easiness,” Karim said.

Now that Karim has locked himself in the box for 48 days he is going to drink water, pray and keep silent. “This is my way of propagandizing starvation as the strongest and safest way of invigoration,” Karim says.

The man is going to neither shave nor wash himself throughout the whole experiment. Karim is not going to have a cellular phone in the booth either: if something happens, he will write a note on a piece of paper and stick it on the glass wall.

People can take a look at the “Russian David Blaine ” only on Mondays, when he opens the blinds on the glass wall of his box. Doctors and experts of the Guinness Book of Records will be visiting Karim on Mondays as well. Karim Diab will release himself only on April 23rd when Orthodox Christians will be celebrating Easter.

It is worthy of note that Karim set another record last year. On March 12 he stayed motionless in an ice-hole of the Moskva River for 60 minutes when it was 20 degrees of cold Centigrade.

NTV photo

Komsomolskaya Pravda

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Author`s name Dmitry Sudakov
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