My Father Says Degrees Don’t Make Billionaires

I am sitting outside, watching the sun lean on the roof of our old house, when my father speaks again—his voice flat, steady, like someone reading a painful truth from a sacred book.

“Degrees don’t make billionaires,” he says. “If they did, all university lecturers would be driving planes.”

I don’t laugh. I never do when he talks like that. The air between us feels brittle, like it could break under the weight of what is unsaid. I want to tell him that it isn’t about billions, that it was never about chasing wealth, that I only wanted to stand tall beside him one day and say—I made it. But the words never make it past my throat. They dissolve, somewhere between pride and exhaustion.

He doesn’t know what it took. He doesn’t know about the nights I went to bed hungry, the early mornings I worked as a porter in the market before rushing to lectures. He doesn’t know how I borrowed shoes, photocopied notes, or stared at an empty plate pretending I wasn’t hungry because my roommate was watching.

He doesn’t know that every coin I earned smelled of sweat, that every exam I passed came at the price of a meal skipped.

And now, here he is—telling me my degree is useless.

I stare at his hands as he talks, rough and tired, carrying decades of unspoken struggle. I wonder if this is his way of saying he’s afraid—afraid that I’ll fail as he did, that all his sacrifice, however small, was for nothing. Maybe he hides his fear behind mockery because it’s easier than hope.

But still, his words sting.

He says billionaires don’t need degrees, but I want to ask him—what do poor men need? I want to scream that I didn’t study to become rich. I studied because I didn’t want to live chained to hopelessness, to spend my life measuring worth by the weight of a coin.

Yet, even as anger rises, I feel guilt crawl beneath it. Because deep down, I understand him. He is a man whose pride has weathered too many storms. He built his life without papers, without titles, just his hands and his will. To him, I am proof that education promises too much and delivers too little.

He looks at me now, his eyes softer, though he doesn’t say anything. Maybe he regrets his words. Maybe he doesn’t. I can’t tell anymore.

The silence stretches between us like an invisible rope—tight, pulling, unbroken. I want to break it, to say something, anything, but the words feel heavy.

I turn away, looking at the horizon where the sky folds into itself. Somewhere out there, I tell myself, is the version of me that will make sense of all this pain. The version that will make him proud, or maybe not.

For now, I just sit there, quiet.

The wind picks up, carrying dust, memory, and something unnamed. My father clears his throat, and I think he’s about to speak again.

But he doesn’t.