Ugliness Draped in a “Doctorate”
Yemeni mp
Ahmed Saif Hashed
I passed through the hands of more than a hundred teachers and professors throughout my years of study, yet never did I encounter one who embodied malice in such an unchallenged, unrivaled form. None surpassed him, none equaled him, none bore the weight of venom as he did. His chest seethed with a rancor so astonishing that one wonders how a man could contain so much within. Inside him there was no heart, but a blacksmith’s forge—blowing, rising, falling—producing nothing but guile and flames that devour even iron. His body, squat and square like a tin can, was packed tight with hatred as poisonous as venom, too heavy for any valley or mountain to bear. No intercession could soften him, no excuse could sway him. He possessed an uncanny gift for drawing out the worst, the ugliest, in whomever he faced.
It is natural for a teacher to be held in awe by his students; that was the norm, even the rule, in our time. It is also common for a student to lack chemistry with a subject or to feel estranged from the teacher of that subject. But what I faced was something else entirely: I was drawn to one subject with genuine love, while its teacher hated me with a ferocity that made me feel as if I were tearing at my own hair in his presence.
I loved that subject so deeply it seemed almost mutual—like a love returned in kind. Yet that bond was poisoned by the teacher who stood between us, “the work of the blacksmith” itself. The subject was engaging, graceful, compelling. I recognized its importance and longed to master it. But this teacher, weighed down with the hatreds of valleys and mountains, spoiled honey with a lethal dose of poison. And what stings the soul most is that such venom came draped in an academic title—a “Doctorate.”
He sought to appease his ego, his deficiencies, his biases, his afflictions of sect and region, incurable and resistant to remedy. I was not alone in sensing this; some of my closest friends felt it too. They too suffered from what I suffered. I sensed his hatred of me for being from the North, and his equal hatred for my Southern friends who often kept me company. Some of them endured his crushing wrath merely for being seen at my side, though they were known for their brilliance, wit, and excellence.
This doctor knew well that I excelled in my studies, that I had taken first place—with unprecedented distinction—in my first year of law school. Yet I was never arrogant, never boastful; I was shy in all things. Still, he was determined to overturn that result in the second year, driven by his parochial spite. And indeed, he succeeded—by failing me in his subject, exploiting the authority he wielded like a tyrant, indulging his vanity, his pettiness, and a gnawing inferiority that could never be sated.
In the seminar sessions—those discussions of his subject—I always felt he could not endure me, could not even bear to hear my voice. He would cut me off before I could begin to speak, hacking at my turn with a butcher’s cleaver, flooding my thoughts with a torrent that brought nothing but ruin, masking his malice, spite, and smoldering fire behind a single, perfidious question.
Whenever he addressed me, he would not grant even half a minute’s pause to hear my answer. Instead, he would barge in rudely, flaunting a shallow cleverness, severing my words with a blade honed by rancor, twisting my meaning, ending my thoughts before they could take shape—deliberately signaling to my classmates that I knew nothing at all. Then he would break into that peculiar cackle, his mouth full of smugness, declaring a victory only he imagined. Some of my friends would mock his pretentious wit and mimic his ridiculous laugh, but what mattered most was that his laughter was saturated with malice, cunning, and sheer contempt.
He sensed that, deep in my consciousness, I resisted his authority and his sickness. I read the threat in the lines of his face—an unspoken warning of the coming reckoning, the exam day, which his pettiness transformed into a stage for revenge and proof of his parochial spite, feeding his sickness, his inferiority, and the vanity of a hollow ego.
My very presence provoked him, like the red cloth before a bull. He would lunge at me with the fury of a beast thicker than the trunk of a wild tree. And he succeeded in battering me, for I was bound hand and foot in chains, while he stood shielded by the authority of the professor whose judgment none could challenge, whose word ruled the oral exam. There he was no venerable teacher, but a debauched adversary, presiding over a tribunal for which he was wholly unfit. He was both accuser and judge, his decisions final and unappealable—yet his fall was into a pit so deep it had no bottom, no resting place.
He was sectarian, provincial, and narrow-minded—yet cloaked in a “Doctorate.” He could not comprehend half of Yemen, not even a fragment of the South. Worse still, he felt no shame. The tragedy is that he once clawed his way onto the bench of the judiciary, not by merit or worth, but through opportunism and the crudeness of those who appointed him.
And today, that very man toys with the courts, despises them, starves judges into ruin, and imposes upon them the tyranny of his regional prejudice. How can justice ever heal when such a man weighs it down with his heavy yoke? It is men like him—and the petty ones who appointed him—who have driven our people, and Yemen itself, into devastation, collapse, and disappearance.
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