By Joel Bertet
The sweat trickled down my side and onto my lower back. It was warm and tickled me awake as I rolled over to reach my iPhone to check on the time. I grabbed the iPhone hoping it would provide good news. The screen flashed on 2:36 a.m. Oouf! Too early to wake up. I scrolled over to the weather icon. Lamhamid:108 Degrees. I sat up and pivoted my legs onto the floor and put my head in my hand. Time for another shower. I made my way over to the bathroom and turned on the shower, twisting the knob to the coldest setting. The water came out warm. I stood in the shower for a few minutes enjoying the massaging flow of water over my head. Quickly dried off, walked over to the nightstand, grabbed the bottle of water, and chugged down the fluids like a college fraternity student would shotgun a beer. Got back into bed and stared at the air conditioning unit blowing room temperature air. The dampness on my body was working some cooling effect from the warm air. I woke to the sound of a rooster and the laser-like sunlight that had breached the only crack in the drapes and was now scorching my right eyeball.
I grabbed my iPhone for a time check: 5:39 a.m. Finally, morning had come. A quick shower got dressed and walked over to the lobby of the hotel where breakfast was being prepared in an outdoor area. One of the doctoral students is already deep into some work on his computer. “Sbah l-khir.” (good morning) “Sbah nour” (morning of radiance), I responded. Time for some Qahwa (coffee) and he motioned over to one of the garçons. “jib juj Qhawi.” (bring two coffees). Minutes later two piping hot espressos served in extra hot glasses came over. I sipped my espresso in silence until it was gone. Refill. A signal to the garcon, and without saying another word, the message was understood, and my second espresso arrived post haste. The nectar of life now flowing in my veins allowed me to engage in conversation.
I was in LamHamid, which is a village in southeastern Morocco at the foot of the Bani Mountains in the pre-Saharan region. To get to LamHamid, you first must drive first to Ouarzazate. Marrakech to Ouarzazate is an arduous four-hour trip taking you over the treacherous and winding roads over the High Atlas Mountains. Car sickness is part of the experience. Four hours later you arrive in Ouarzazate. An oasis town few have heard of, but many have seen. Ouarzazate was the filming location for blockbuster Hollywood movies such as Star Wars, Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, The Mummy, and Game of Thrones, to name a few. The trip to Lamhamid takes another 4 hours from Ouarzazate, taking you through desert and rocky and Mars-esque landscapes.
During the trip through Ouarzazate, I was ordered to make a mandatory 75-kilometer detour to visit the tomb of Rabbi David ou Moshe which is in the remote village of Agouim. Outside the village of Agouim lost on a hill is a magnificent synagogue, Jewish cemetery and facilities for a yearly pilgrimage to celebrate the life and miracles of Rabbi David ou Moshe. A man known for miracles and helping the poor and sick of Morocco. This is one of hundreds of Jewish sites marking the history of almost 3,000 years of Jewish life in Morocco. The place was beautifully maintained thanks to the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, who made it a national imperative to restore and preserve hundreds of Jewish sites, synagogues, cemeteries, street names, mellahs (Jewish Ghettos) and museums throughout all of Morocco. The Kingdom of Morocco has always protected and cherished its Jewish population. During World War II when the Nazis arrived in North Africa, they demanded that the Moroccan Monarch round up and turn over all the Jews. King Mohammed V famously refused saying: “There are no Jews in Morocco, Only Moroccans.” The history of Jews in Morocco is fascinating and a topic of great interest to this Moroccan Jew but is a topic for another day. It is one of the soul-searching reasons I found myself en route to Lamhamid.
I was invited to Lamhamid by my good friend Aomar Boum, who is a member of the Royal Academy of Rabat and a UCLA Professor of Anthropology. Aomar was born in Lamhamid and had organized a weeklong study of his hometown with renowned professors from Morocco and France, along with a select group of doctoral students. The topics of study ranged from anthropology to sociology to the cultural and historical impacts of colonialism on this region of Morocco. Many of the studies involved “interviewing” the locals. I had arrived late afternoon after being picked up in Ouarzazate by Aomar’s sister and nephews. They drove me straight to Aomar’s family home, where his 96-year-old mother received me in the traditional Moroccan salon festooned with cookies, cakes, mint tea, and coffee. There is nothing comparable to traditional Moroccan hospitality. Aomar and several professors arrived shortly thereafter. One professor sat next to his mother and continued to converse with her in a mixture of Amazigh and Darija (Amazigh was formerly termed Berber, and Darija is Moroccan Arabic dialect). She kept him mesmerized with long- forgotten stories and poetic fables. Aomar sat on the other side of his mother, holding her hand and kissing her on the head with great love and respect.
That night 20 of us sat at a dinner table at the hotel, where we had a traditional Moroccan feast of tajines. During the four-hour meal, the two topics of discussion that struck me were temporality and silence. Temporality in the Oasis Villages of southern Morocco, such as Lamhamid, was a key subject of study. Time in Lamhamid was slow. The watch does not control you here. Time stood still. The only notion of time being marked was the call to prayer throughout the day, and even then, it just seemed to mark an event rather than the time of day. I experienced this my first night when the heat kept me up all night seemingly never ending. I also experienced it during the day, where time seemed to flow very slowly. Moments for coffee, for discussions with strangers, and still the day seemed to move slowly. The discussion at the table compared the notions of temporality in Lamhamid to places like Paris or Los Angeles. How the obsession with social media and television in large cities made time flow at light speed. While in Lamhamid time seemed to flow ever so slowly, where the focus was primarily on family, farming, and life.
Next is the fascinating discussion of how interviewing someone and asking specific questions alters the response and has a direct impact on the environment and the subject that is being studied. For example, one of the doctoral students studying the female role in southern Moroccan villages were tempted to ask one of the older men in the village about the noticeable absence of women in the cafes and fields. One of the professors made the fascinating observation that the fact that women are so absent shows how important they are to society. Their visible absence actually screams out their importance. If you were to ask such a question of a mother in Lamhamid you would have an impact on the environment. They may not understand such a question, and it could change the way they see themselves in the village and might have an impact and create a slight change in the ecosystem of the village. The proper way to approach the question, the professor explained, is not to ask a question for which you seek an answer. Rather to simply engage in a conversation and, more importantly, to remain silent and allow the other person you are interacting with to speak freely. Specifically, the professor said spark a conversation and then remain silent for 15 seconds. 15 seconds in a conversation is a long time. It allows the space necessary for the other person to speak freely, allowing the conversation to organically go in the direction that it should naturally go in. Rather than directed questioning. As lawyers, we are trained never to ask such open-ended questions. Thou shalt know the answer before asking. This is the opposite. Don’t even ask the question. Remain silent and allow the response to take you wherever it naturally travels.
Two Important Mediator Lessons: Temporality and Silence
Temporality. Allow time to go at the speed necessary. Don’t rush the process, and don’t slow it down. Participant A: Time is money. Let’s get the show on the road. Stop wasting my time. Participant B: Let me tell you, my story. It all started 40 years ago. Allow me to explain how we got here. Participant A is running on Manhattan time and participant B is running on Lamhamid time. Difficult to reconcile those time frames in the same room. Understand what temporality notions we are working in and allow the appropriate time to flow with the respective parties.
Silence. Allow the parties to speak freely and take the conversation in the direction it needs to naturally progress. As mediators we tend to ask questions with preconceived notions for the solutions we are seeking. If I ask A and she responds B or C or D then I need to drive the discussion down solution path X, Y or Z. Versus if I remain silent and allow conversation to naturally flow it may allow the participants to take me towards solutions never contemplated, such as Q, R or S. If the parties get there more naturally, solutions and options not created or fabricated will develop more organically and directly by the parties. This will make for a more meaningful and party-based settlement rather than one prodded and guided by the mediator.
Mediator silence and open-ended questions with less directed questioning are the lessons learned. Steve Rottman is a master mediator, highly published, and a respected leader in the field. At a recent conference of the International Academy of Mediators, Steve made a presentation where he explained that he opens his mediations with five words: How can I help you? That’s it. No long, egocentric introductions. No explanations about the mediation process. Simply hello and how can I help you, followed by silence. This lesson struck me as I sat at the table of academics in Lamhamid. That’s what Rottman really meant! Now I get it.
Mediation is a process that is framed in time and conversation marked with mediator silence. We don’t have the temporality of Lamhamid as we have a window of time set aside by the participants. But understanding temporality, we can make that time meaningful and significant. Coupling that with lessons of silence can help us go to places during that time, which can help us arrive at solutions that would not otherwise be open to us with directed and driven conversations.
Salaam Aleikum. Peace be upon you. Peace is what we search for in life and in meditation, and with some good lessons from Lamhamid, we can find that elusive peace with patience and silence.
Joel Bertet, is an Expert Mediator of Construction and Real Estate Disputes. He can be reached at www.resolvebertet.com or joel@resolvebertet.com.