Before moving to Dubai, I thought I understood cultural competence. As a conflict-resolution professional, I trained others in neutrality, active listening, and navigating cross-cultural dynamics. I mediated emotionally charged disputes and facilitated sensitive conversations. I believed my practice was inclusive, respectful, and unbiased.
But Dubai challenged me, not overtly, but subtly, through rhythms I hadn’t previously experienced. Time in Dubai doesn’t flow in quite the same way as it does in San Diego, London, or New York, but it doesn’t reject that tempo either. Dubai is a dynamic, fast-paced, and opportunity-driven city, home to a young, ambitious population that is constantly on the move. At the same time, its rhythms are shaped by prayer times, the lunar calendar, the intense summer heat, and deeply held social norms. It straddles both Western urgency and Middle Eastern intentionality, often holding the two in creative tension.
Dubai’s day is punctuated by the five daily prayers, the salah, announced through the Adhan or Call to Prayer. While the Adhan itself happens year-round, during Ramadan, a month of spiritual discipline marked by fasting from dawn to sunset, the atmosphere shifts dramatically. Shops pause, offices adjust hours, and restaurants close during daylight. The pace of life slows considerably, influenced not just by spiritual practice but by communal rhythms. Unlike the relentless Western drive for productivity, Dubai’s pace is segmented deliberately, offering space for reflection, connection, and spirituality.
Initially, this rhythm felt unfamiliar, even frustrating. As a Westerner with a background in law and litigation, I was accustomed to a rapid pace where silence or slowness could feel almost emotionally dysregulating, triggering anxiety about productivity and efficiency. I found myself waiting longer in queues, rescheduling meetings because offices closed early, and adjusting expectations around email replies. Fridays, even after Dubai’s shift to a Monday-Friday workweek, still retain a semi-sacred slowness due to midday communal prayers. It took me months to stop viewing these rhythms through a Western lens of inefficiency and instead appreciate them as expressions of a different, and equally valid, relationship with time.
Then came Ramadan, the ultimate lesson in slowing down. Workdays shortened, meetings reduced, and daytime activity declined dramatically, giving way to a vibrant nightlife after sunset when communities broke their fast together. During Ramadan, the intent and purpose of fasting overrides almost everything else. Even major projects and pressing deadlines naturally move to the back burner. There is a widespread acknowledgment that rest and spiritual reflection carry far greater importance than productivity. Initially, this waiting was difficult. But gradually, I felt myself adapting to a new rhythm: one that valued presence over productivity, relationships over efficiency, and reflection over speed.
These cultural rhythms revealed something critical about my professional assumptions: implicit bias isn’t just about race, gender, or class. It also shows up in how we perceive time, pacing, and silence in mediation.
Reflecting back, I recalled mediations where I rushed through pauses, assuming silence meant awkwardness or disengagement. I realized how often I had nudged people toward a faster resolution, mistaking a slower response as indecision or lack of preparedness. My unspoken assumptions about pacing had inadvertently shaped the mediation process, privileging my own cultural framework.
In Emirati culture, every greeting involves multiple exchanges of pleasantries and genuine inquiries about health, family, and well-being. When I first experienced this type of hospitality, with its leisurely offering of coffee, chai, or tea, I initially felt a sense of anxiety: Why weren’t we accomplishing something? Why was time being spent this way? Eventually, I understood these deliberate pauses represented deep relational value, in direct contrast to the transactional efficiency I had grown accustomed to. Everything pauses during these exchanges; rushing through them feels inappropriate, even rude.
Similarly, the call to prayer itself acts as a cultural anchor throughout Dubai. The Adhan, with its chanting tones reverberating even in modern shopping malls and grocery stores, invites a communal pause. Even as a non-Muslim, I couldn’t help but feel the reverberation of that pause, a cultural reminder to slow down, reflect, and reset.
Intercultural scholar Stella Ting-Toomey points out that high-context cultures often embed meaning in pauses, silence, and pacing, not merely in spoken words. Her insight resonated deeply. Dubai had shown me firsthand that one party’s silence could be another’s sacred pause. One person’s delay might reflect disciplined thoughtfulness, not reluctance or confusion.
The Adhan became more than background sound, it became my reminder. Every call reinforced that neutrality as a mediator is about active humility. My role isn’t to impose my pace or assumptions, but to honor each party’s rhythm. Time, silence, and presence aren’t neutral concepts; they carry cultural weight.
In practical terms, I began to incorporate deliberate pauses into mediation sessions, intentionally creating a minute of silence before responses to emotionally charged statements. I also started conversations by explicitly asking parties how they naturally mark and use time in their daily lives, allowing their answers to inform my mediation rhythm and adapt to individual preferences.
Beyond techniques, Dubai and Ramadan taught me something broader: true neutrality requires questioning the very lenses through which we perceive mediation itself. My implicit bias wasn’t loud or obvious, it was subtle, quiet, embedded in the pace at which I moved through conflicts.
Ramadan, in particular, deepened my appreciation of human resilience and faith. Watching even children and athletes maintain their commitment to fasting through long days and high temperatures filled me with awe. This awe shifted my internal tempo from a push for results to genuine respect for quiet discipline and communal commitment.
We mediators often say we meet people where they are. But can we truly do so if we unconsciously insist they match our own tempo?
Dubai forced me to slow down and listen not just to words, but to pauses; not just to timing, but to tempo; not just to behavior, but to belief. In the stillness of Ramadan, I found a depth of listening I previously believed I already practiced.
Implicit bias is elusive, it thrives unnoticed in our everyday assumptions. It took the slow rhythms of prayer times, the communal patience of Ramadan, and Dubai’s deliberate pacing to reveal mine. I’m grateful for that gentle, powerful lesson.
Inshallah, may we all slow down enough to truly listen.