Palestinian-origin Christian academician Prof. Dr. Edward Said became an example of academic courage with the life he led without compromising the line he believed in.
Becoming known worldwide with his work "Orientalism", one of the most important academic texts of the 20th century, Said never left Columbia University, where he joined the faculty in 1963, until his death in 2003.
Edward Wadie Said (1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. Born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.
While Edward Said gained great fame, especially with his work called "Orientalism" published in 1978, this work also takes its place on the shelves as an important reference source.
It took me 50 years to get used to the English name Edward, which was forcibly attached to Said's obviously Arabic surname. Coming from a Christian family, Said is given this name in memory of Edward, Prince of Wales, a very popular name in his birth year 1935.
Although Said was born after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, his father realizes this period. When the Ottomans begin to gather troops from the Palestinian territories for the Balkan War, Edward Said's father goes to America to avoid having to join the Ottoman army. While he was a citizen of America, father Said, who crossed the border after hearing that Canadians would fight the Turks in the next period, also enlisted in the army. But after realizing that this is not true, he leaves the army and joins the American army.
When Edward Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935, the family actually lives in Cairo. His brother, who was previously born in Cairo, died in the hospital from an infection. That's why Said's mother doesn't want to give birth in Cairo. Therefore, Jerusalem is preferred for birth.
For Said, a trip to Palestine in 1942, when he was a 7-year-old boy, is a little different from the others. Because this visit takes place on the eve of the Battle of al-Alamayn, which took place on the North African Front of World War II. The German army, which is approaching rapidly Egypt, is escaped by the car, whose headlights are especially dim, and the suitcases that are hastily closed are piled up.
Although Said wrote the book "Orientalism" at the age of 40-odd years, it would not be an exaggeration to state that the reason for writing of this work was related to the experiences he had in British educational institutions, to which he was sent from an early age. Returning to Cairo with his family after the II al-Alemen War in November 1942, Said continues his education at the Cezire Preparatory School. According to Said, this is the first experience that introduced him to an organized system, which was thought of as a colonial job by the British. The lectures and books are heavily British. Even fine details of British history are tried to be imprinted on students' minds.
Said, a student disliked by his English teachers, also experiences incidents that amount to being beaten. The colonial attitude that Said was exposed to, moreover, is not limited to his school. He also tells in his book that he was stopped by an Englishman in Cairo and that he was insulted because he was an Arab.
He is then sent to the Cairo American High School, which was established to teach the children of Americans who had just joined Cairo's foreign minorities. In his own words, Said here; He begins as the son of an American businessman who has no sense of being American.
The change in the face of Cairo with the Americans, who won World War II and took the place of the British in Egypt, also shows itself in the education method. Said gives examples in terms of revealing the approach of the Americans and the approach of the British. Accordingly, in contrast to the British colonial method, which ignored local values, the American method is at peace with local values to the extent that it encourages all students to learn Arabic. But their experience makes this place unbearable for Said. He is a person who is under serious pressure from his parents at home, is disliked by his teachers at his school, and is in a school environment that he thinks does not belong.
The symptoms of the crisis that has now come to the fore in the Palestinian territories occur at the very center of little Said's life. In 47, when he was in Jerusalem with his family and spent most of it there, the city was divided into zones by the British army, and almost everywhere was filled with police checkpoints. While adult members of his family have to carry a permit to move to any region, he does not need it since he is under 12 years old. Said wanders freely in the tense environment of the grave developments that will occur soon.
He turns 12 on the anniversary of the publication of the Balfour Declaration, described by family members as "the blackest day in our history". Hot-headed British soldiers are subjected to checking his school bag.
As he left Palestine at the end of 1947, never to return, Said's relatives left Palestine one by one.
Undoubtedly, his aunt had a great influence on Said's attachment to the Palestinian cause that would emerge in the coming years.
The struggle of his aunt named Nebiha for the distraught Palestinian immigrants who came to Cairo undoubtedly has a great place in the mind of little Said. First of all, there is a major health problem among refugees.
With the fall of Palestine in 1948, some family problems occurred in the Said family. When Said's father, who found the solution to escape to America in order not to join the Ottoman troops, returned to Palestine from America in 1920, he became a partner with his cousin, who had established a stationery shop here, by putting some money. But since the Palestinian lands are small for Said's father, who wants to take bold steps with the new ideas he brought from America, he finds the solution by moving to Egypt.
This is the story of Said's family settling in Egypt. Father Said, who made a considerable fortune with the typewriters, fountain pens, furniture, and calculators he sold, became the biggest stationery and office equipment seller in the Middle East and his period. Of course, when the other members of the family immigrated to Cairo with the fall of Palestine, he claimed rights in this company. This creates some family conflicts. It is a few years later that Baba Said takes the reins again as the sole boss.
Said, who spent a while in the United States, where his father went for kidney surgery during this period, talks about his anger at the 33 US President Harry Truman's rhetoric that supports Zionism. Said says that he played an undeniable role in bringing Palestine into the hands of the Zionists on a gold platter and that he always hated it. Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Franklin Roosevelt, is another name Said hates for her fervent support of Israel.
Martin Luther King, who welcomed the war that Israel won in 67 with enthusiasm, is another name Said could not forgive, although he appreciated it for a while.
However, Said does not neglect to express his appreciation for the attitude of the 34 President of the USA, Eisenhower, against Israel in 1956.
Returning after a period of stay in America, Said is given to Victoria College in 1949 in Egypt. Of course, he does not know that there are only 2 years left until the end of the Egyptian period. In fact, the Said family is aware that Cairo could not be a home for them, although plans were being made for the future at that time.
In addition, Said says that the sudden rise of the Muslim Brotherhood at that time caused uneasiness among themselves, who were neither Muslims nor Egyptians. As a matter of fact, this uneasiness is not entirely unjustified. It is understood that the fire that burned down his father's shop on January 26, 1952, was started by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Said, who had a troubled student life at Victoria College, maintains a kind of resistance to the system. In this school, where English is the official language and those who speak any language other than that language are punished, he sees it as a cruel symbol of British power. The Egyptian dialect mixed with the Palestinian dialect becomes his refuge of rebellion.
It is a real loss to turn your back on your own language, history, culture, and geography. Finding a useless, unpromising student and beating him for his actions increases his anger even more. Undoubtedly, the result of his anger is that he brought an English teacher to a place and locked him in a place, gathered the students here and shouted "See our English in his natural environment". Said, who was expelled from Victoria College in the future, returns to the same school after a while, but the father Said decides to send his son to America.
Said wanted to show this school to his wife and children in 1989 when he was in Egypt with his family for a conference he was going to give. The school, which is closed because it is Friday, is entered by convincing the doorman. Said shows his old class, the class he lived in, to his family. Meanwhile, a very angry veiled woman, who is the school principal, bursts into the room and tells them to leave the school. No matter what Said says, he cannot calm her down and finds the solution by leaving the school. He expresses this memory of being expelled from the same school once again, this time by a Muslim, 38 years later.
Edward Said, went to America in 1951 to continue his education; After completing his high school, university, and graduate education for 11 years, he lives here until the end of his life. Despite his decades-old past in America, he says that he still feels treacherous here, but this is actually America, the place that gave birth to Edward. His intellectual discovery is opened here, never to be closed again.
The year 1967, when the Six-Day War took place, was one of the turning points in Said's life.
The result of this war takes Said to the point where all the losses started, the struggle for Palestine. His support for the Palestinian struggle against Zionism for years is evident in the following advice he said he gave to him just hours before his father's death:
"I'm afraid of what the Zionists will do to you. Be careful."
Undoubtedly, he will encounter some difficulties during his work. In 1991, 40 years after his departure from the Middle East, he is in London for a seminar he aims to bring together Palestinian intellectuals and activists before the Madrid Peace Conference. In short, the aim of the seminar is to use a common theme to accelerate the course of the Palestinian issue.
Unfortunately, the program attended by Palestinians from various parts of the world, such as Europe, America, and Arab countries, cannot go beyond disappointment. The commonplace and repetitive rhetoric, the inability to focus on a collective goal, and the intolerance to listen to others are actually nothing but an ominous rehearsal of the wound Palestine will suffer in Oslo.
1991 is also the year Said was diagnosed with cancer. Shortly after this diagnosis was made, he attempted to write a letter to his mother in order to talk to her. But it has been a year and a half since his mother's death. He suddenly remembers this detail. This is a sad detail in his memoir.
Undoubtedly, a long treatment process full of hardships, which lasted until his death in 2003, wears him out.