Surely every nation must have these two kinds of citizen, the one who out of choice or lack thereof, lives at home, and the one who out of choice or lack thereof, lives away from home: the migrant worker, expatriate, refugee, wanderer, student, exile. I am of the second type, a South African living in London.

I came here to study, but also it would seem, to my astonishment, to complicate, frustrate and confuse most local perceptions of what it means to be a South African. Here, I am frequently not perceived to be one and have sometimes had my identity vehemently contested. I don’t look South African.
I don’t sound South African. In other words, I don’t fit into the British-designed box, finely carved over centuries of imperial observation and description, and forever intended to contain the native from the former colony. As a result, it is my claim of who I am rather than their assumption of who I should be, which warrants contestation.

It is in his relentless confrontation of power and his eloquentcontemplations of contested identity that Professor Said most inspired me:
“I have retained this unsettled sense of many identities – mostly in conflict with each other – all of my life, together with an acute memory of the despairing feeling that I wish we could have been all Arab, or all-European and American, or all-Orthodox Christian, or all-Muslim, or all-Egyptian, and so on. I found I had two alternatives with which to counter what in effect was the process of challenge, recognition, and exposure and remarks like “What are you?”; “But Said is an Arab name”; “You’re American?”; “You’re American without an American name, and you’ve never been to America”; “You don’t look American!”; “How come you were born in Jerusalem and you live here?”; “You’re an Arab after all, but what kind are you? A Protestant?”

Said’s observations have encouraged me to formulate counter questions. How, I ask, is someone from a country with a rainbow of ethnicities supposed to look? How is someone from a country with 11 official languages supposed to sound? But such challenges almost always unsettle and infuriate an homogenised view of the world which is unable to deal with and respond creatively to diversity. Home Minister David Blunkett’s proposed English Language instruction which is intended to form part of a Britishness Test is clearly ignorant of the determination to learn English, which most migrants already bring with them; the pursuit of English is for many fellow migrants their sole reason for being here. It is lamentable that the English never reciprocate. On The Island, imperialist constructions continue to hold way.

Not fitting into boxes can be a isolating. Refuting the many fervently being carved in multi-culturally sophisticatedwe-always-have-an-Indian-take-away-on-a-Friday-night-and-some-of-our-best-friends-are-Muslim 21st century Britain, can be lonelier still.

But today, in the prevailing black and white atmosphere in which complex individuals are either bogus or genuine, with or against, and in which culturally and religiously complex countries are simplified and reduced to an evil axis, felt like the loneliest of them all because today, Edward Said, for whom “it took about fifty years to become accustomed to ‘Edward’ a foolishly English name yoked forcibly to the unmistakably Arabic family name Said,” and whose admition to an “overriding sensation was of always being out of place” made not belonging an easier condition to bear, fell silent.

Many able volumes have been written about Professor Said’s remarkable breadth of scholarship and eclectic range of interests. His determined disregard for the boundaries of his field of expertise – English Literature – and his enthusiasm to liberate himself into the role of amateur so as to speak the truth to power, have been an inspiration to many who admired his work and fundamental to my own. But today I found myself reaching for his memoir Out of Place, when I struggled with the news of his death. The themes of his life work are everywhere present and the personal is always pertinent to the political:

“Out of Place is a record of an essentially lost or forgotten world. Several years ago I received what seemed like a fatal medical diagnosis, and it therefore struck me as important to leave behind a subjective account of the life I lived in the Arab world where I was born and spent my formative years, and in the United States, where I went to school, college anduniversity. Many of the places and people I recall here no longer exist.
After I finished the manuscript, I made a trip to Jerusalem. One of the routine questions I was asked by Israeli officials (since my US passport indicates that I was born in Jerusalem) was exactly when after birth I had left Israel. I responded by saying that I left Palestine in December 1947,accenting the word “Palestine.” “Do you have any relatives here?” was the next question, to which I answered, “No one,” and this triggered a sensation of such sadness and loss as I had not expected. For by the early spring of 1948 my entire extended family had been swept out of the place, and has remained in exile ever since.”

Said’s memoir resonates not only because of the interrogations I encounter regarding my own identity in Britain but because I am a South African. South Africans don’t all have lived experience of exile, but we have all lived under a dispensation which banished many of our citizens into it. And those of us who were able to remain at home know what it is like to feel out of place in the land of your birth. We have faced interrogation at home, and have been piled mercilessly into boxes according to the texture of our hair, the thickness of our lips, the hew of our skins. But I fear that since our own battles against degrading boxes have been bravely fought and won, we have become complacent, secure and self-congratulatory in our achievement of democracy. And not without reason. Why should we not applaud that achievement. For us, democracy was, thankfully, homespun, not made to foreign order.

But there are those for whom the struggle has not ended and we must never forget that Apartheid is not yet dead. It rages with impunity in the Middle East’s only democracy where Arabs cannot marry Israelis, where Palestinian migrant workers continue to be herded into Israel to toil by day, and then returned to refugee camps in the Occupied Territories to be bombed by night. The victims of Israeli Apartheid are still made to spend mindless hours at Israeli checkpoints having identity documents scrutinised by boys with guns, while the gigantic Apartheid Wall being constructed at the cost of $1million per kilometre will ensure upon completion that Palestinians inside it will, in effect, be living in the largest open-air prison on earth.

As South Africans we have lived under such suppression and are uniquely placed to comment and campaign against a system which is every ounce as evil as the one we have overcome. For us to turn a blind eye now and watch withcomfortable indifference while the selfsame boxes which once restricted us, are being built for others, would be callous and immoral.

While I sympathise with the instinct to see foreign political scenarios as complex, I recall frequently having to contend with hearing Apartheid South Africa described as complex by observers wanting desperately not to have to take a stand. Yet what was complex about Apartheid? On what grounds was it possible to condone? These are the simple questions which enfranchised South Africans are qualified to ask in relation to the continued Israeli occupation of Palestine. We must always be vigilant against the smokescreensof bigotry and propaganda designed to mystify, condone and perpetuate injustice. We are the benefactors of the most advanced written constitution in the world; it is our turn to use its privileges for the benefit of those who continue to be as viciously oppressed as we once were. To this end, as atribute to Edward Said, I invite you to click on the following links to the Palestinian National Initiative which Said helped set up, and to that of its Chairperson, Mustafa Barghouti:

http://www.almubadara.org/en/

http://www.palestinemonitor.org/mustafa/mustafas_page.htm

Prime Minister Blair has asserted that history will remember him, Blair, well. That has been the hope of leaders through the ages and we can be certain that his version of history will have its acolytes. Edward Said’s death is untimely and premature and it is hard to accept that that terminal and irreversible noun, death, can now be attributed to him. A light has gone out, and like his countless admirers the world over, I am very sad indeed and lament that we can no longer look forward to the invaluable contribution he would without doubt have gone on to make.

But we must not fall silent too. Professor Said has left us an articulate legacy in his writings, and he now continues to live in all who have been touched by them. We will mourn his death, and then we will pick up the mantle. We will reach for our pens and write our stories, as he did, honestly, untiringly and with integrity, again and again and again. We will not leave Prime Minister Blair to write our history. He could not deal wisely with the sword and cannot be trusted with the power of the pen.

Edward Said
Jerusalem 1935 ­ New York 2003

Please also visit:
http://www.anthonynolan.org.uk/.