Compared to Orientalism , in Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said narrowed his focus to the examination of fiction - novels of the western canon by Austen, Kipling, Conrad, Swift, Camus and Verdi's Opera Aida.

He gave readers an illuminating insight into suggesting that these novels served to subtly "condition" the consciousness of European readers at home into having one eye closed on the destructiveness of imperialism on the lives and cultures of non-Europeans, if not outright acceptance of imperialism's civilizing mission, such that the liberal John Stuart Mill which Said ,quoted, could say:

"The sacred duties which civilised nations owe to the independence and nationality of each other, are not binding towards those to whom nationality and independence are certain evil, or at best a questionable good" without the slightest pang of irony.

Through these novels, Europeans validate "positive ideas of home, of a nation and its language, of proper order, good behaviour, moral values. But positive ideas of this sort do more than validate "our" world. They also tend to devalue other worlds, and perhaps more significantly from a retrospective point of view, they do not prevent or inhibit or give resistance to horrendously unattractive imperialist practices.

No, cultural forms like the novel or the opera do not cause people to go out and imperialise ... but it is genuinely troubling to see how little Britain's humanistic ideas, institutions, and monuments, which we still celebrate as having the power historically to command our approval, how little they stand in the way of accelerating imperial process".

New writings

His refreshing examination of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park is most illustrative of this thesis. The heroine of the novel, Fanny Price, a poor orphaned girl was brought up to live with her aunt's family in an English country estate of the novel's title. From a poor niece she grew up amid the frivolities of the wealthy household of the Bertrams into a socially balanced woman and to gradually acquire a status commensurate with, even superior to, that of most of her more fortunate relatives.

But the harmonious social space and the wealth of the Bertrams estate where Fanny acquired her social graces and education was sustained by Sir Thomas' sugar plantation in Antigua that was run on slave labour.

Yet, Austen mentions Antigua in the novel only very casually, prompting Said to write, ... our reading of the novel begins to open up at those points where ironically Austen was most economical and her critics most negligent.

As counterpoint to the novels of the western canon, Culture and Imperialism also examined literature by colonised people such as Frantz Fanon, Aime Csaire, CLR James and, yes, Yeats, seeing it as part of opposition and resistance to imperialism in the early part of the twentieth century, "the empire writes back".

Not only is this last unfortunate fellow (referring to a hypothetical french political theorist or orientalist reading Fanon during the Algerian war) addressed by natives while his army is engaged by them, as neither of his predecessors were, but he is reading a text in the language of Bossuet and Chateaubriand using concepts of Hegel, Marx and Freud to incriminate the very civilisation producing all of them.

(My one criticism of Culture and Imperialism is Said's construction of Albert Camus as colonialist based on his reading of Camus' first novel, l'tranger . I think Camus is a lot more complex than what he was portrayed to be by Said. I also feel that Said excessively praised Satre, Camus' nemesis, in his other writings).

Apart from the erroneous interpretation of Orientalism and appropriating it for the politics of blame, i.e. attributing everything evil to the west, it is also often misunderstood that Said's re-reading of the western canon suggests that these novels should be jettisoned in favour of new writings by feminists, blacks, and third world novelists as is the tendency among deconstructionists in American campuses.

Quite the contrary. Despite his indictment of western canonical writers as helping absorb the ugliness of imperialism for, if not abetting it in western consciousness at home, from the point of view of literary quality and aesthetics, to him their masterpieces and works of genius represent collective humanity's great cultural legacy. He derived immense personal joy reading and re-reading the Austen and Conrad novels.

Opera lover

In matters of taste and sophistication, Said is conservative and traditional. He admired the music of Beethoven and Bach, himself an accomplished classical pianist, and he loved the opera. The passion for music and opera was cultivated by his mother as he was growing up in Cairo, taking him to performances by (Sir) John Gielgud and watched Furtwangler conduct the Berlin Philharmonic.

But perhaps Said's reputation and stature as a public intellectual would not have been where they are if not for his writings and position as the most articulate spokesperson, champion and defender of the Palestinian cause.

A priori, his influence and impact as a leading scholar of literary and cultural criticism through Orientalism and his later works have undoubtedly primed him for his political role on Palestine.

In the US, where the Zionist cause is very well buttressed by a network of powerful and wealthy Jewish lobbies and organisations whose influence on the US administration is well known, and by journalists, scholars, think-tanks and corporate luminaries that render a public and media culture that is almost automatically pro-Zionist and anti-Arab, Edward Said virtually battled for the Palestine cause single-handedly, certainly not helped by the shallow, anti-west Muslim fundamentalist discourse, the rise of terrorism by Muslim militants and the repressive political milieu of the Arab world.

In many of his writings and interviews, he repeatedly stressed that the crushing defeat of Egypt and Syria in the 1967 war was the great event of his political life. He became intensely involved in Palestinian political activity when he visited Amman in 1969 - 1970, where he met Arafat for the first time at the National Council Meeting (he was not a member then).

He was there right up until the Black September of 1970. Thereafter the movement moved to Beirut (and to be expelled later in 1982 with Israeli's invasion of Southern Lebanon). A relative of his, Kamal Nasir was one of the three leaders assassinated by the Israelis in 1973.

PLO member

Said became a member of the Palestine National Council, a sort of PLO's parliament in exile in 1977 where he sat as an independent and was never a member of any Palestinian political parties or the PLO itself. Said was largely responsible for the drafting of the 1988 Declaration of Statehood (the Tunis Declaration), and through his writings and media interventions on Palestinian issues, he came to be seen as the voice of Palestinian nationalism.

Understandably, he paid a great price for his role which his father had a premonition on his death bed, telling him, "You are a literature professor. I fear what the Zionists will do to you". He became the object of vilification and abuse in the media by pro Zionist journalists, calling him "the Professor of Terror" He received numerous death threats from Jewish extremists, his office at Columbia University was firebombed and his lectures on American campuses drew protests and physical disruption.

Up to this point readers might think that Edward Said grew up in a very political Palestinian family. Contrary to that, he was shielded from Palestinian politics by his parents, even if they suffered personal loss with the birth of Israel in 1948, albeit to a lesser degree compared to other members of his extended family.

Drawing from his memoir Out of Place (1999) and Power, politics and culture - interviews with Edward W Said (2001), he was born in Jerusalem, but grew up mainly in Cairo, where his father ran a very successful stationery and office equipment business. His father, Wadie, lived in America from 1911 to 1920, ostensibly to escape being conscripted into the Ottoman army to fight a war in Bulgaria.

Wadie became an American citizen by dint of having lived there and served in the US army in the trenches of World War I in France. That was how Edward and his four sisters became American citizens even if they have never stepped foot on US soil until their teens. However his mother Hilda, daughter of a Baptist minister from Nazareth only travelled (with great difficulty at American immigration check points) with Palestinian laissez-passer and later, a Lebanese passport.

The family lived in an exclusive, mainly expatriate district of Zamalek and Said attended prestigious schools alongside children of diverse nationalities (Cairo was very cosmopolitan in the 40's and 50's). In 1951, at 16 he left Cairo to study at Mt Hermon Prep School in Massachusetts, following which he attended Princeton University and finally Harvard Graduate School for his PhD.

His 'otherness'

In the memoir he recorded some of the bitter childhood experiences in his encounter with westerners in Cairo. Once, walking home at dusk with his friends across the fields of the exclusive Gezira Club of which his family was a member, he was told off by the Club's Hon Secretary, Mr Pilley, "You are an Arab, you are no supposed to be here!".

He was disappointed when his father did not share his indignation and failed to speak up to the Hon Secretary as promised, "He had allowed Mr Pilley to get away with it!", Said remonstrated.

He was also aware that his English expatriate teachers at Gezira Preparatory School and later Victoria College punished him severely, out of proportion to his deeds, because he was Arab. Later at Mt Hermon, he was conscious that his "otherness", being an arab among middle class white kids, prevented him from being given the top honours despite his outstanding academic and sporting achievements.

But it is above all his moving account of the personal experience and witnessing of loss and dispossession that gives readers insight into his subsequent engagement as intellectual - activist on the issue of Palestine.

The Said family would leave Cairo and spend the summer in Jerusalem among his extended family every year. But the family spent the entire 1947 there, with Edward's schooling transferred to St George's School (also his father's) for that year.

On November 1, 1947 on his 12th birthday, he recalled the puzzling vehemence with which his oldest Jerusalem cousins, Yousif and George, bewailed that day, the eve of the Balfour Declaration, as "the blackest day in our history". His parents and relatives, sitting around the table with his birthday cake assumed that he shouldn't be informed about something as complex as their conflict with the Zionists and the British. After the Declaration, Jerusalem was divided into restricted zones maintained by British army and police checkpoints, and the city became tense with the politics of the time.

Said's family left for good Talbiyah, the wealthy Christian district of West Jerusalem in December 1947. His extended family were driven out in stages in 1948 when Jewish settlers took over their homes, becoming dispossessed refugees overnight from genteel, well to do Arab Christians.

Palestine tragedy

Back in Cairo in 1948, despite his parents protectiveness, 13-year-old Said began to understand what the tragedy of Palestine meant, witnessing the suffering of refugees that sought the help of his aunt Nabiha in her crammed apartment, herself a refugee who had settled a few blocks from where his family lived,

"My strongest memory of Aunt Nabiha is of her weary face and complainingly pathetic voice recounting the miseries of 'her' refugees and the even greater miseries of prying concessions out of the Egyptian government ... . This calculated harassment of defenseless, dispossessed and usually very poor Palestinians became my Aunt's obsession ...".

But three years later his father sent him off to the United States, and Said immersed himself in his studies. Palestine and Middle East became a distant world. "The remoteness of the Palestine I grew up in, my family's silence over its role, and then its long disappearance from our lives, my mother's open discomfort with the subject and later aggressive dislike of both Palestine and politics, my lack of contact with Palestinians during the 11 years of my American life at a great distance from the Palestine of remote memory, unresolved sorrow and uncomprehending anger...".

But it was the aftermath of the 1967 war that drew him back to the region when the world he knew completely fell apart.

By 1991 during the preparations for the Madrid Peace Conference (the precursor to Oslo) Said became disillusioned with the leadership of the Palestinian movement. Arafat had taken the fatal stand of supporting Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War.

Said was scandalised by PLO's slavish fawning towards the United States, accepting everything they wanted, all because of Arafat's miscalculation a few months earlier. The Palestinians were negotiating from a very weak position, not helped by their inability to fix a collective goal, fractiousness and endless repetitions of old arguments. For him it was a premonition of the Palestinian failure at Oslo.

As Said had predicted, Oslo did not bring real peace because the imbalance of power forced the Palestinians to accept the concessions of the United States and Israel. The Palestinian State was clearly not a viable one, but rather discontinuous "Bantustans", economically strangulated and dependent on Israel, whilst the latter remained in control of overall security, and kept expanding its settlements and continued the demolition of Palestinian homes in defiance of the agreement.

Said became bitterly critical of Arafat's corrupt and mafia-like Palestinian Authority, which in his eyes was doing Israel's bidding of policing the Palestinians and its dirty job of repressing dissidents. Said's essays on the failure of Oslo, mainly written for Arab and European newspapers, were collected in The End of the Peace Process - Oslo and after (2000).

Utopian dream

If Said was among the first to recognise the right of Israel to exist in the quest for peace, the fall-out from Oslo and his disillusionment with Arafat's leadership led him to repudiate the two-state solution, and to advocate a bi-nation state: the peaceful coexistence of Arabs and Jews enjoying equal rights and shared citizenship. One of the means towards this goal is another of Said's passion - music.

He collaborated with Argentine born Israeli conductor and pianist Daniel Barenboim, and together they founded the West - Eastern Divan orchestra. It brings together young musicians from Israel and Arab countries for summer workshops and concerts, most recently at the London Proms a month before Said died. Through their collaboration in "overcoming historical antagonisms and promoting dialogue", they were jointly awarded Spain's The Prince of Asturias Concord Prize in September last year.

Although this is ultimately desirable, on this point Edward Said I think was perhaps overly idealistic, indeed utopian, given the prevailing sentiments on both sides. Israelis who share fully Said's vision of democratic bi-nation state is extremely small. Israeli reservists who refuse tour of duty in the Occupied Territories and the Peace Now activists who demand withdrawal to the Green-line (1967 border) still cling to the vision of Israel as a Jewish state.

Their opposition to Ariel Sharon's aggression and their willingness to recognise Palestinians' right to a viable state is largely driven by the pragmatism of safeguarding Israel's integrity through a genuine peace process. The idea of sharing the state with four million Palestinians enjoying equal rights of citizenship is an alien one for Israelis.

Similarly Hamas was just warming up to the idea of having to accept Israel's right to exist based on pre- 1967 borders until the recent escalation of violence and breakdown of ceasefire. It would take a quantum leap from total rejectionism to a bi-nation, shared state. A more workable one in the eyes of many people is a just two-state solution based on UN resolution 242 for a start.

In closing, those who knew Edward Said or admire his works mourned the passing of a great thinker, a passionate advocate of justice and peaceful coexistence among peoples, and an articulate voice of the Palestinian people whose plight seems further away from a just resolution.

His sheer range and the remarkable depth of his expertise, and the passion with which he pursued them would be almost impossible for anyone to emulate. Part of that, as he frequently alluded to in his writings, was a product of his unique situation of being an exile, of being always on the margins and "out of place", born of a tumultuous, irrecoverable disruption of the culturally rich and diverse Eastern Mediterranean world that he so loved.

He epitomised the role of the public intellectual as amateur in the original, french sense of the word, that of being engaged, championing the oppressed against injustice, and of speaking truth to power. The world has lost a great teacher.

Edward Said - the passing of a great teacher (Part 1)