Chemistry Classes

Mrs. Mahmood was our Chemistry teacher. She was a petite, young woman, in her late twenties, and got pregnant in my last year of school. She taught us Chemistry for our last two years, and so by the time we left school, we were very close with her.

At barely over five feet tall, you wouldn't expect her to pack much of a punch. But her punches came fast, and they came hard when they did. Not that we didn't deserve them, of course. She was one of the teachers I referred to in a previous post as a tent pole; teachers that kept the departments functional, and helped the students continue learning while the administration did its level best to push costs down by underpaying teachers, hiring English-illiterate ones and just generally doing what a management shouldn't do to its employees.

Chemistry classes in Grade 13 were interesting. They were held mainly after break, if I recall correctly, and the tasty sandwiches my mother made me would invariably make me sleepy at that time. Mrs. Mahmood would assign us past papers to solve, and we would invariably come to class with them copied or answered clumsily during break time, and we'd all take turns in answering questions, starting from the left side of the class, this Palestinian boy called Tawseef, and ending at Dinesh to my left.

She would walk into class, put her bag down on the elevated chair that teachers had, and pulled out her things. A water bottle was an unusual addition when she got pregnant, and she would ask us to excuse her while she drank during Ramadan.

Most of the time, we knew what we were talking about, even if I didn't. Since the questions were answered sequentially, you could predict which question would be yours, so I basically just answered that single question to perfection so I survived that round.

On more than one occasion, she asked me a question about which I hadn't the slightest clue. She once asked me a question regarding some kind of reaction mechanism, and I didn't know what on Earth she was talking about, but felt compelled to answer. So I did what any desperate student does: I pulled out the first word regarding Chemistry in my head, and said it out loud. "Phenols, miss?" (We called everyone miss, even if they were married.) She was probably asking me the reaction type or the class of a carbon atom, and I was sure that in all probability, phenols had absolutely nothing to do with the question she asked.

She went berserk. "Phenols, eh? Phenols, ketones." She picked up a piece of chalk and arced her armed like a bowler throwing a ball, struck the chalk against the greenboard. It shattered and fell to pieces as she scraped against the board with what was left between her thumb and index finger. She yelled at me for the next 10 minutes, and I took it like a man. I walked out of that room. I survived!

I wasn't the only one she yelled at. A friend of mine, Mo, once came under her glare. It wasn't pretty. She asked him to answer a question from a past paper, and he didn't know an aspect of the question she was asking about. She had been in a bit of a foul mood since the beginning of that class, and Mo did the right thing: shut up and look down. He didn't know the answer, and she kept asking him. At one point, she exploded.

"Why are you not saying anything?! Say something! Speak!" Mo sat just in front of her desk. She leaned forward, propping herself on her elbows. "Am I scaring you?! Am I intimidating you?! Why don't you speak?!"

I wonder. I'm not so sure, but from my end of the room, it looked like a miracle Mo didn't burst into tears and jump out the window. She was yelling at the top of her voice, if I ever saw her do that.

There was the time when nobody, and I mean nobody did their homework. Usually, she never checks our sheets, because, well, she respected us as adults, I guess. She caught on when everyone stopped short, just after reading the statement of the question. (That was how we did it. You read the question to the class, then you read the answer) When Tawseef couldn't answer, she moved on to the next person. She couldn't answer either.

She got the hint. She stood up and threw her copy of the sheet on the table.

"Alright. Who did the homework?"

Silence. She looked at Ishaaq, the smartest boy in class. He looked down.

She just didn't know what to do. She then said, "Okay, you don't want to work, I don't want to work either. We won't do anything for the remainder of the class." This was twenty minutes into class, and we had another thirty-five minutes to go.

For another 20 minutes, we sat there in absolute silence. Dead silence. Not a pin fell for the better part of the rest of the class.

At long last, I did probably the single most bravest thing I've ever done in my life. I raised my hand, and asked:

"Miss. Are you mad at us?"

She fell to bits. She got so emotional, everyone in class was taken aback. We were flabbergasted. We sat there and watched her nearly break down as she told us how we're supposed to answer questions at home so we can move through these past papers faster.

It must have been hard for her being pregnant for the first time, and on top of that she had to handle a group of 18-year-olds who adamantly refused to do what she told them to do. Must have been tough.

But Mrs. Mahmood was the reason why I got an A in my A-Level Chemistry. God worked through her to get me that grade, which would prove one of my most valuable accomplishments in my academic career. If ever a teacher beat me into shape, it was her. I've never had a chance to go back to Abu Dhabi since I left 3 years ago, but if I do, and if I go back to school, I will thank that woman from the bottom of my heart.

That school was hard and stressful, sometimes needlessly. The students that went there had a tendency to be rowdy and unruly, and the teachers that go there are probably chronically depressed for most of the academic year. But Mrs. Mahmood has dispensed of her duties in the most professional and excellent manner I have ever seen a teacher do. She has left her mark on me.