Said was not 'out of place' By Ramzy Baroud

Said was not 'out of place' By Ramzy Baroud

“EDWARD SAID passed away this morning,” a troubling e-mail message stared me in the eyes. I knew that such a moment was inevitable. The honourable man had been stricken with leukaemia and had suffered for years. His eyes sunk deeper into his handsome face with every lecture he gave. I knew that his untimely death was approaching.
The last message I exchanged with the Columbia University professor was a while back. I had requested an interview and he said he would be happy to grant me one. But he asked for a month before the interview, for he was about to undergo “very rigorous chemotherapy treatment” at a New York hospital. I imagined the courageous man absorbed in pain. The mere thought sickened me. We never had the interview.

Said stood for everything that is virtuous. His moral stance was more than a wealth of essays, books, prose and music. It was manifested more evidently in his gentle, kind persona. He wrote whenever he managed to get hold of a pen. In his seemingly weakest moments of pain and struggle with the spreading cancer, he taught us strength and preached endurance.

Said was an extraordinary intellectual. His intellectual capabilities, thoughtfulness and genius were inimitable. And because of that, he was a target for those who wish to silence every voice that utters the taboo words of truth. Said's words dug deep into our hearts, broke the boundaries of culture, religion and politics. He tackled our humanity before reaching out to our minds.

Palestinians are not the only ones who are mourning Said's death. Of this I am sure.

In his touching memoir, Said spoke of his long-life legacy of being “out of place”. As a Palestinian denied the chance to live freely in his homeland, he circled the globe, from the Middle East to Europe to the United States, where he spent most of his life vividly and eloquently conveying the pain of his people in a way no other intellectual had.

Many tried to exploit the man's unscarred reputation, dishonestly building a name for themselves. An unknown Israeli writer rose to become a celebrated “intellectual” when he broke the news that Said was not a refugee. Justus Reid Weiner's “revelations” made him a hero in the eyes of those who never cease to demand Professor Said's expulsion from his position at Columbia University, where thousands of Americans were privileged to learn a side of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that was hardly conveyed anywhere.

“I have been moved to defend the refugees' plight precisely because I did not suffer, therefore feel obliged to relieve the suffering of my people,” Said responded so graciously to his accuser.

Weiner and his supporters were quickly discarded and the giant intellectual carried on with his mission, swimming against the current of the mainstream.

But those living and dying in isolation, so desperate in their attempt to let the world know of their atrocious destiny under a wicked Israeli occupation, those scattered in their refugee camps across Palestine and the Middle East are the ones who will miss Said the most. Unlike many of us who chose to be so careful not to offend, Said was unrivalled in his honesty. He tackled issues that were too “politically incorrect” to confront. It is no wonder he was as much adored by the people as he was detested by the authorities.

On more than one occasion his books were banned in the Middle East, even in the West Bank and Gaza. But being “bookless in Gaza” was hardly enough to dishearten Said. His lashing out at the Zionist ideology and its involvement in shaping America's foreign policy was deliberately and shrewdly misapprehended as “anti-Semitism”. But the might of Said's logic always prevailed, and will continue to prevail, even after his death.

Refugee or not, the tireless professor at Columbia University is dead. He passed away on a New York morning, not like any other. He left us with a legacy that makes us proud that he was a Palestinian, with a heart that beat with endless humanity.

Thank you professor. You stood courageously for us, while many denied that our pain was even legitimate, or that it deserved to be eased.

Said was never out of place, despite the title of his memoir. He always had a special place in our hearts, and there he shall remain.

The writer is a Palestinian-American journalist and editor-in-chief of The Palestine Chronicle online newspaper. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

Monday, September 29, 2003