Out of Place: A Memoir

320 Pages·2000·0.16 MB·English

by  Edward W. Said

ACCLAIM FOR EDWARD W. SAID’S
Out of Place
“A voyage into a cruel, luxuriant, mysterious land called childhood, which
makes Orientalists of us all.”
—Newsday
“Said is in place among the truly important intellects of our century. His
examined life, from the tragic and triumphant perspective of a mortal illness, is
superbly worth living. I know I shall not read a work to match this one this
year, or for many years.”
—Nadine Gordimer
“Out of Place is an intensely moving act of reclamation and understanding, a
portrait of a transcultural and often painful upbringing written with wonderful
vividness and unsparing honesty.”
—Salman Rushdie
“As an emotional document, Out of Place is a revelation.… The deeply a�ecting
testimony of one boy’s nearly relentless persecution by the world.”
—New York
“A powerful, and, at the most fundamental level, a thoroughly convincing
statement about a man who has helped to illuminate our crisis-ridden world
with its contradictions and complexities.”
—The Times Literary Supplement
“Rich and touching.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“Out of Place comes as a bolt from the blue, a dream come true. Vividly
portrayed in this work is Edward Said’s path to self-realization, making him
one of this �n de siècle’s most indispensable intellectuals.”
—Kenzaburo Oe
“The vivid portrait of a brilliant, vulnerable boy growing up in a complicated
and callous world.… An undoubtedly valuable glimpse into the life of a great
man.”
—St. Petersburg Times
“Patently honest.… Mr. Said’s total recall for distant names, happenings, and
feelings has produced a painfully truthful book.”
—The Economist
“Ultimately, Mr. Said’s book is about the mysterious  …  inner power that
enables some people to overcome the stunting in�uences of their childhoods
and stubbornly keep growing toward a light, at �rst dimly and intermittently
glimpsed, that is their destiny to reach.”
—Forward
EDWARD W. SAID
Out of Place
Edward W. Said is University Professor of English and Comparative Literature
at Columbia University. He is the author of twenty books, including
Orientalism, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award,
Culture and Imperialism, and The Edward Said Reader.
ALSO BY EDWARD W. SAID
Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography
Beginnings: Intention and Method
Orientalism
The Question of Palestine
Literature and Society (editor)
The World, the Text, and the Critic
After the Last Sky (with Jean Mohr)
Blaming the Victims
Musical Elaborations
Culture and Imperialism
The Politics of Dispossession
Representations of the Intellectual
Peace and Its Discontents
Covering Islam
The Pen and the Sword
Entre guerre et paix
The End of the Peace Process
The Edward Said Reader
(edited by Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin)
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2000
Copyright © 1999 by Edward W. Said
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United
States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by
Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1999.
Vintage and colphon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Photograph of Aunt Melia collection of Lily and Albert Badr
All other photographs collection of Edward W. Said
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Said, Edward W.
Out of place : a memoir / by Edward W. Said. —1st ed.
p. cm
eISBN: 978-0-307-82964-1
1. Said, Edward W. 2. Palestinian Americans—United States—Biography.
3. Intellectuals—United States—Biography. I. Title.
E184.P35S25 1999
973′.049274′0002—dc21 99–331106
Author photograph © Brigitte Lacombe
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.1
To Dr. Kanti Rai and Mariam C. Said
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A Note About the Author
Photo Insert
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN MOSTLY DURING PERIODS OF ILLNESS or treatment, sometimes at
home in New York, sometimes while enjoying the hospitality of friends or
institutions in France and Egypt. I began to work on Out of Place in May 1994
while I was recovering from three early rounds of chemotherapy for leukemia.
With unstinting kindness and patience Dale Janson and the superb nurses of
the Ambulatory Chemotherapy and Transfusion Unit at Long Island Jewish
Hospital took care of me for the days, weeks, and months I spent in their
charge until I �nished writing.
My family—Mariam, Wadie, Najla—bore with me throughout the �ve years
of work on my manuscript, plus of course my illnesses, absences, treatments,
and my generally all-round state of being hard to put up with. Their humor,
unconditional support, and strength made the whole thing easier to live
through, for me if not always for them, and I am profoundly thankful.
My dear friend Richard Poirier, surely America’s �nest literary critic, gave
me early encouragement and read through various drafts, as did Deirdre and
Allen Bergson. To them I am genuinely indebted. To Zaineb Istrabadi, my
excellent assistant at Columbia, must go a prize for deciphering my
handwriting, reproducing it for me in readable form, helping with numerous
drafts, and always without impatience or a disagreeable word. Sonny Mehta
gave me his friendship and support, a rare publisher and comrade. Once again
I would like to thank Andrew Wylie for seeing this work through from start to
�nish.
It is customary, even routine, to thank one’s editors. In my case there is
nothing pro forma about the feelings of a�ection, admiration, and gratitude I
have for my friends Frances Coady of Granta and Shelley Wanger of Knopf.
Frances helped me to see what I was trying to do, then made the most acute
suggestions for sculpting a bulky, disorderly manuscript into a semblance of
form. Always patiently and humorously, Shelley sat with and guided me as we
went through hundreds of pages of often overwritten and inchoate prose.
Dr. Kanti Rai’s redoubtable medical expertise and remarkable humanity kept
me going while I wrote and eventually �nished this book. From the beginning
of my illness, he and Mariam Said cooperated benignly, and literally kept me
from sinking. I gratefully dedicate this book to Mariam for her loving support
and to Kanti for his humane skill and friendship.
E.W.S.
New York, May 1999