As a young man growing up in Cairo in the 1950s, Edward Said showed enviable talent in many directions, not least in music, remembers Selim Sednaoui in an interview with Fayza Hassan and Nancy Roberts-Moneir Edward Said would sometimes say that from his childhood years until his early manhood he suffered from an identity crisis. Who was he? Was he Palestinian or American? Was he an English-speaking Arab, or an Arabic-speaking American? And what about the languages he spoke? Which one came first, Arabic or English? Born in Jerusalem, but brought up in Egypt and attending an English school, Said wrote later that "I hadn't then any idea where my mother's English came from or who, in the national sense of the phrase, she was: this strange state of ignorance continued until relatively late in my life, when I was in graduate school" in the United States. According to Said, his mother spoke Egyptian Arabic, but her accent remained marked by the use of words that betrayed her Shami origins -- Shami or Damascene, as Said explains, being "the collective adjective and noun used by Egyptians to describe an Arabic speaker who is not Egyptian and someone who is from Greater Syria, i.e., Syria itself, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan; but Shami is also used to designate the Arabic dialect spoken by a Shami. " Was Edward Shami, then, like many of his schoolmates in Cairo? If so, he was less directly Shami than they were, because most of the Syro-Lebanese Christians he mixed with were Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox or Maronite, the Said family worshipping instead at the Anglican cathedral in Maspero Street. One more typical member of the Shami community who was a close friend of Edward Said while he was growing up in Cairo is pianist Selim Sednaoui, an Egyptian by birth. Meeting him for the first time at the Gezira Sporting Club, Selim remembers that Edward "was three years younger than I was, and I was, let's say, 22. I remember we went to the Salzburg Festival [in Austria] together in 1957, and we had known each other for a while. So it must have been in 1954, something like that. He was a tennis player, and so was I, and we started talking together, and I found out that he played the piano and had a great passion for music, again something we both shared. We had very similar tastes in life in general, which brought us close, and I took him to the Tiegerman Conservatory in Cairo." The piano, and classical music in general, later meant a great deal to Edward Said, and Tiegerman had a role to play in that. Ignace Tiegerman (1893-1968) was a Polish pianist who in 1931 settled in Cairo, where he remained until his death in 1968. At the early age of 10, Tiegerman auditioned for Leschestizky in Vienna and was accepted, thus beginning his studying with the legendary man and his equally legendary assistant Ignaz Friedman. Friedman's daughter Lydia told the music critic Allan Evans in 1980 "Do you know Tiegerman? He was a pupil of Papa's -- a Polish Jew who lived in Cairo. Papa said he was the greatest talent he ever worked with." Sednaoui remembers that "Tiegerman could have had a great career, but because of his health, he couldn't travel much and the climate of Egypt suited him. He had a conservatory on 5 Champollion Street, and I took Edward to study there, and Tiegerman took him in as a pupil. Edward had a gift for the piano, and I remember him coming to my place with Tiegerman to listen to records of pianists. I also remember Edward playing publicly, because there was an audition for Tiegerman's pupils every year in Ewart Hall at the American University in Cairo. Each one of us played a piece, and I recall that he played the Prokofiev Sonata No. 3, very well, by the way." Sednaoui also remembers traveling with Edward Said in search of musical experience, and he mixes his remembrances of the period with more personal memories. "On other occasions Edward and I would play for each other. We went to the Salzburg Festival in 1957 to hear Karajan conduct the Mozart Requiem. But each of us was coming from a different place in Europe, and I missed the concert because I was traveling from Italy by car through a pass called the "Gross Glockner," which is a very difficult corridor up in the mountains. There was a storm and lots of rain that day, and when I finally arrived in Salzburg, the concert was over. I was exhausted and went to the hotel, but Edward got there in time to attend. The next day, and for days afterwards, we went together to other concerts. And we went out together with girls, because we had the same taste in that, too. He was always very successful with women. He was a good-looking guy, and he had a lot of charm and intelligence and money. He had everything, you could say." However, anyone listening to Sednaoui's account of Edward Said's formative years will find it difficult to fit it with the portrait Said draws of his youthful self in his memoir Out Of Place, where he emerges as being shy and lacking in self-esteem. Sednaoui himself says that he was surprised by the book, finding "another side to Edward" in it. "I didn't realise at all that that had been a part of his youthful experience, since I thought that he was a very self-confident young man, very successful in many ways. I was very surprised when I read about his childhood and the doubts he said he had about himself and his lack of confidence. Either he overcame that later, or he was putting on an act when young, I don't know. But I never felt any insecurity in him at all. So this side of the book was a real discovery for me: as far as I could see when he wanted to do something he just went ahead and did it." Said graduated from his undergraduate studies at Princeton in 1958, and returned for a while to Cairo to assist his father in business, while Sednaoui was already helping his father run the Sednaoui family business, the famous department stores that had branches across Egypt at the time. "Initially, he was supposed to take over his father's business, which was the Standard Stationary Company in Cairo, located in Abdel-Khaliq Sarwat Street," Sednaoui remembers. "The store is still there, but it doesn't belong to the Said family anymore. However, I remember Edward at a certain time in his father's office running the business. He didn't like it at all. He said, 'I'm not cut out for that.'" The Sednaoui department stores were nationalised in 1961, and Selim's parents left the country for Switzerland, where he joined them a few months later. "I had to leave Egypt because of the Nasser regime, and Edward and I lost contact for a while," Sednaoui says. "I was in Switzerland working and studying music, while Edward was pursuing graduate studies in the US. After 1967, I decided to move to Lebanon, and in the late 1960s Edward came to Lebanon as well to improve his Arabic. He spent a year in the country and even considered settling there. But finally he was disappointed with it, and even complained about the attitudes of the local academic authorities. He would say, 'Here I am, and the American University in Beirut has never asked me to give a lecture. They should take advantage of my presence here.' Clearly, he was quite conscious of his value even at that time," Sednaoui remembers. "Finally, he decided not to stay. "He was 35 and already well- established in academia in the US. He had also been married once, and then had got divorced." "I can still remember Edward's courtship of his second wife, Mariam Cortas, who is Lebanese," Sednaoui continues. "I can still see them together, dancing cheek-to-cheek. Edward was always a good sportsman, and of their two children, Wadie and Najla, Wadie is a good tennis player, too, like his father, and he was number 25 in the Junior American league for the East Coast, I believe. I played him once here in Cairo, and beat him in one match. I was very proud of that game, so I told Edward that I had won a game against his son. He said, 'his mind must have been on something else.' It wasn't a very nice thing to say," Sednaoui laughs, but "he always had a sharp tongue." By the 1970s, Sednaoui and Edward Said had drifted apart, Sednaoui saying that "after 1975 we lost track of each other again because of the Lebanese Civil War. Edward was in the States, and he loved New York. He didn't feel American, but he loved New York. He used to say, 'It's falling apart, but where else can you live?'" However, later the two men's paths crossed again, once more because of a shared interest in music. "New York is the best city in the world for music, and Edward's career was really taking off there," Sednaoui remembers. "I went to see him in New York two or three times, which I had the opportunity to do because I sometimes gave concerts in the States. On my way back from a concert, I would pass by New York to see Edward. He had a very nice apartment, not far from Columbia University where he taught, and I went to his office a few times at Columbia. However, I never attended any of his courses. I'm sorry that I didn't spend a term in New York, to do some studying and be with him. I didn't take full advantage of our friendship, I must say, and this I regret." At the end of the 1970s, Sednaoui's relationship with Edward Said developed once more, when the two men met again in Egypt. "I came back to Egypt in 1977, because we had the opportunity to get our property back. Edward also came to Cairo at that time for a meeting of the Palestine National Council, of which he was a member, and we met at the Meridien Hotel. It was a very friendly meeting, very warm, very everything. He liked Cairo very much, and he especially enjoyed Egyptian humour: he always liked to hear and to tell Egyptian jokes." "Edward's father was a tough businessman. But I remember his mother better. She was tough, too. I asked him once about how he thought his cancer had started, because it's supposed to have a psychosomatic side. He gave me this answer: 'the death of my mother, and the fact that Yasser Arafat sided with Saddam Hussein over Kuwait [in 1990 / 1991].' He thought this was the worst thing Arafat could have done for the Palestinian cause, and it affected him a lot. Did it have a link with his cancer? I don't know. But that is what he said." Sednaoui also remembers Said's continuing interest in music and musicians, an interest which he shared. "When Edward and I met in later life, we listened to music and discussed pianists," Sednaoui says. "He was a great admirer of Glenn Gould, and also of Daniel Barenboim, whom he had met. When I was in New York in 1995, Edward asked me if I wanted to meet Barenboim. I said, 'Yes, of course.' Edward was too tired to go to Barenboim's hotel, so he called and said, 'a friend of mine from Egypt is coming to meet you.' I went to the hotel, the Four Seasons, and went proudly to the concierge and announced, 'I have an appointment with Mr. Barenboim.' 'Mr. Who?' asked the concierge 'Barenboim.' 'How do you spell that?' "I said to myself, 'he's not a music lover. B-A-R-...' I started spelling... Finally, Barenboim asked me to come up, and he was very gracious, offering me a gin and tonic. We talked about music and about Israel, and about how he was opposed to Israeli policies and open to the Palestinians. I found him much more modest and pleasant than I imagined he would be." Later, Sednaoui's relationship with Barenboim itself developed when Edward Said called him in Paris regarding a new project that the two men were planning together. "Two or three years later in 1998, I was in Paris, and Edward called me and said, 'You must meet a lady called Karin Davison,' who was in charge of public relations for Daniel Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony, which Barenboim conducted, 'Ms Davison will explain a project to you that Daniel Barenboim and I are putting together.' So I went to see her. She was renting a house in Montmartre, a German lady married to an American. She told me that Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said had had the idea of an orchestra made up of Arabs, Israelis and Germans, all the past and present enemies all together, as it were. So I asked 'What can I do?' And she said, 'we need Egyptian people to join. Do you have connections in Egypt? Can you do that?' 'Young Egyptian musicians,' I asked. 'Yes,' I said, 'I'll try.' "I went to the head of the Cairo Conservatory, and he said, 'Yes, it's a very good idea. I'll find a way.' And he found one, as he was convinced of the value of this project for his students. As it was the Germans were organising the event, because Weimar in the former East Germany was the cultural capital of Europe for 1999. He told the Egyptian minister of culture that there was a German project for Egyptian musicians to go and have master classes in Germany". "As a result, three or four cellists, three or four violinists, an oboe player and a few pianists went, because the Weimar seminar included an orchestra plus master classes in piano given by Barenboim and master classes in cello given by Yo Yo Ma, a great Chinese-American cellist. It was a golden opportunity for all these players. To thank me for my role in organising it, the Weimar people invited me, and I stayed at the Hilton Hotel with Edward Said, Daniel Barenboim, Yo Yo Ma, and all these top musicians. That was a great experience, I must say. Edward attended the rehearsals, which he was very interested in. At the end of the day, everybody met to discuss what had happened during the day, as well as their impressions of the experiment, of the relationship between Israelis and the Arabs, etc." "The initial selection of the musicians was made by each conservatory, which sent tapes of the students who wanted to participate, and these were evaluated by Barenboim and his assistant. They chose the best ones and reached, I think, a total of 60, with a balance between Israelis and Arabs. If they couldn't find, let's say, a clarinetist, they took a German to fill in. I attended the first auditions, which were by alphabetical order, mixing Arabs and Israelis and Germans. I was concerned that the level of the Arab musicians might not be as good as that of the Israelis. But while on average they [the Israelis] are better musicians, the Arabs were not bad at all. The Egyptian cellists were the best, and the two first cellists of the orchestra were Egyptian." Sednaoui also has specific memories of the meetings that took place during those days and of the attitudes shown by the Israeli and Arab participants. "Sometimes Barenboim would take the Israelis aside in one room, and Edward would take the Arabs into another for private discussions. I think the Egyptians were among the least enthusiastic about the whole exchange. I mean, they were very enthusiastic musically, but they were not enthusiastic about dealing with the Israelis, whereas the Jordanian, Lebanese and Palestinian participants were much more easy-going." "One evening, an Israeli cellist said, 'I don't feel at ease. They're putting pressure on us to become friendly with the Arabs, when we are just here to make music. But if I see an Arab musician on the other side of the border (he was in the army), I'm not going to tell him, 'let's play a Brahms sonata together.' I'm going to shoot him." "In reply, Barenboim said, 'listen, if you don't feel at ease, then the door is over there.' But the guy didn't leave, and I saw him one week later playing ping-pong with a Palestinian. ...Barenboim made a speech at the beginning of the period, asking, 'What's the idea of this experiment? Our governments up to now have said that we cannot initiate cultural relations before the political problems are over. But why don't we try it the other way round for once? If we start with cultural exchange, start to know each other a little bit, maybe something will work out.' That's all that was expected of this contact at first, which is fair enough." Today, however, the musical contacts that Edward Said and Daniel Barenboim inaugurated together have become part of the world's cultural calendar, and Sednaoui provides essential background on how this happened. "Every year this musical seminar now takes place," he points out. "In 2003, just before Edward died, it was in Seville, Andalusia, supposedly the place in the Middle Ages where Muslims, Jews and Christians all lived together in harmony. Not completely true, perhaps, but it was a nice idea. It was symbolic, let us say." However, Edward Said's health by this time was failing badly, and Sednaoui sadly remembers the final year of his illness. "The last time I saw Edward was in April 2003 in Paris. He was to have dinner with Laila Shaheed, representative of the Palestinian Authority, and her husband the Moroccan critic Mohamed Berada. Laila had asked Edward who he would like her to invite, and he mentioned me and no one else, which I heard afterwards and it touched me a lot." "After dinner, as we were walking to Laila's car, two French ladies recognised her from TV and said, 'we know who you are! We are with you! Courage!' I found this very heartwarming. In August 2003, the last time I spoke to Edward on the phone, he was going to the Seville session of the orchestra, now called the East/West Divan Orchestra, the name being taken from poems by Goethe. It now meets regularly every year, and last August the orchestra gave a concert in Ramallah conducted by Daniel Barenboim, which was broadcast live on television." Sadly, Sednaoui finally remembers that "at that concert, Daniel Barenboim said to the audience that 'Edward Said's dream has now come true, but that unfortunately Edward is not here to witness it.'"
