I received some really very sad news today – one of my university professors had died, and he was someone I was really very fond of.
His kindness to a quiet, awkward Pakistani student who was going through the tumult of a difficult transition to and through university, as well as all the chaos and worry around 9/11 and Iraq invasion, is not something I can easily forget.
I did a self-guided study with him, basically a one-on-one seminar, on Etruscan myth and art. I didn’t know him, but he agreed, seemingly without a second thought, and the term I worked him was an absolute delight. His office was my sanctuary in that horrible year and I learned more than I can say. His delight in his work, and (in retrospect) in my wanting to learn, was like cool water. He took me into the store rooms of the museums where for the first time I handled some of the objects I was reading about. When I just mentioned that I found bronzes fascinating as objects, he took me to the conservation centre and invited me to explore the possibility of studying them more closely.
After my course with him ended, I would still meet him regularly and in fact he introduced me to the delights of the lobster roll. Later, when a sibling and parent arrived from Pakistan for my graduation in 2003, he met them with kindness and delight and hosted them at the faculty club.
He was the best of academia, and though I hadn’t met or spoken to him in a long time, his death is a great loss.