Of the Place

Abstract

In these testimonies recalling Edward Said--as a childhood friend (Hoda Guindi), an academic colleague (Michael Wood), an inspiring mentor (Andrew Rubin), a captivating role model (Ananya Jahanara Kabir), and a tender father (Najla Said)--different faces of his persona surface: the playful child in Cairo, the youthful professor in a panel, the concerned advisor at Columbia University, the activist inspiring his audience in Calcutta and Cambridge, and the loving and affectionate father in New York. These pithy statements by friends, close relatives, and admirers--belonging to four continents--speak intimately and astutely of Said's extraordinary presence. ********** I would like to stress at the outset that what I am going to say is drawn from--probably--collective memories because the Saids and the Guindis (Edward's and my families have been friends for over sixty years--and through three generations: grandparents, parents and children, i.e. Edward and his sisters and us--through all the vicissitudes of life. Even death has not, and cannot, sever the bonds of friendship. Elsewhere, (1) my sister has written a personal memoir of Edward's Out of Place and thus we share some of the same memories but have somewhat different interpretations! I take Out of Place as my point of departure and one particular sentence from the Preface: Along with language, it is geography--especially in the displaced form of departures, arrivals, farewells, exile, nostalgia, homesickness, belonging, and travel itself--that is at the core of my memories of those early years. (2) This struck an immediate chord in my memory; I suddenly realized that my first memory--perhaps "fictionally historical"--(as I was a mere tot!) of the relationship between the Saids and the Guindis, Edward and his two sisters and my sister and myself (there were further additions to both families later), were of departures and farewells, arrivals and welcomes. On this occasion, fortunately, the departure of the Saids at the time of El Alamein (1942) was followed, not long after, by an "arrival"--to us, a return. In the first paragraph of his first chapter, Edward writes of his "overriding sensation ... of always being out of place." (3) Ironically, and perhaps paradoxically, my early memories of Edward are grounded on and rooted in places--for even that first departure is indelibly associated with a particular place--the lift and stairwell--in a particular building in a particular district of Cairo: Zamalek. The Saids and the Guindis were friends and neighbors--we lived, respectively, on the fifth and second floors of the building-which meant that there was a continual toing and froing between flats. Whilst our parents visited each other decorously in the flats, we, with Edward as the ringleader, ran up and down the stairs with much clamor and clatter, much to the despair of our parents and the dismay of the other tenants. To my shame, now, the ancient (even then) and beautiful Art Deco lift was also subjected to thankless thumping during our illicit games. The lift and landing of the building were the scene of yet another occasion which is fixed in my memory--as it added another dimension to the place of place in our lives and in literature. On that occasion, Edward and I met on the second floor landing as I was going up and he was coming down; I happened to have been carrying Eugene O'Neill's Desire under the Elms and Edward briefly commented on it, highlighting the human desire and greed for place. …