The first inspection happened in daylight and only because everyone agreed to it in advance.
Joyce stood in the courtyard with a clipboard. David remained beside Asha, quieter than he had been at Halima’s door. Halima had asked that nobody enter her apartment without a specific reason, and Asha had made the same request for hers.
They began from Asha’s side.
Halima expected exaggeration. Instead, when Asha pulled back the curtain and pointed across the courtyard, Halima could see exactly how her window lined up with the upper part of Asha’s room. Asha showed her where she had moved a chair after the first week and where the brightest strip had landed near the bed.
“I started sleeping on this side,” Asha said. “At first I thought closing the curtain would solve it.”
“Did you ever test whether it was still there when my lamp was off?”
“No. We never separated the sources.”
That answer mattered. Asha was not claiming knowledge she did not have.
Halima looked at the top of the curtain rail. There was a narrow gap where light could enter even with the fabric closed. From the courtyard, the windows were also slightly offset. A beam did not have to travel straight across to cause trouble; it could catch glass, wall or railing and return at an angle.
Joyce asked them to write, separately, what they were willing to accept as true before discussing responsibility.
Halima wrote: **My original task light may have been directly visible from some angles.**
Asha wrote: **I cannot yet tell how much current light comes from Halima’s studio and how much comes from common areas.**
Neither sentence contained *always*, *never*, *refuses* or *imagines*.
Next they went to Halima’s apartment. With Asha’s permission, Joyce stayed outside while Halima demonstrated her normal working position. The task lamp was not pointed at the window, but its spill reached the pale wall beside it. Halima could now see that the partly open curtain did less than she had assumed.
David said, “So you see it.”
Halima turned to him. “I see part of it. That doesn’t make the midnight visit acceptable.”
Asha intervened before he could answer. “We’re here for the light.”
The inspection became practical. A heavier two-layer curtain might reduce direct spill. A small shield could keep the task lamp on the desk. Joyce proposed forty-eight hours for an initial adjustment, followed by another check.
Halima resisted the phrase *initial adjustment* because it sounded as if the whole problem had already been assigned to her. Joyce changed the wording: **resident-side mitigation test**. That was better. It described an action without pretending the source question was settled.
Asha showed them photographs she had taken on several nights. Halima asked that images of the private interior not be circulated beyond what was necessary. Asha agreed immediately. She had not wanted her bedroom to become evidence in a public argument either.
Back in the courtyard, they looked once more at the geometry in daylight. Halima noted the top curtain gap, the wall reflection and the distance between buildings. Asha explained that the worst light had not appeared every night with equal strength.
“That means schedule or angle matters,” Halima said.
“Or another light does,” Asha replied.
It was the first sentence of the dispute that sounded like a shared question.
Joyce completed the meeting form. Halima read every line before signing. She was accepting that her original setup could affect another home. She was not accepting that every later complaint was automatically caused by her.
Asha signed after her.
At the bottom Joyce wrote the first concrete deadline:
Joyce also asked them to distinguish daytime geometry from nighttime effect. The exercise seemed tedious, but it stopped them from using a bright afternoon reflection as proof of what happened at midnight. Halima wrote the distinction in her notebook: location could be mapped in daylight; nuisance had to be tested under the conditions in which it occurred.
**First adjustment — 48 hours.**
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