Tamim Al-Barghouti,in New York, attends the funeral service for Edward Said Last Monday the funeral of the distinguished Arab-American scholar and passionate proponent of the Palestinian cause, Edward Said, was held at Riverside Church in uptown New York, not far from the Columbia University campus where he had taught until the end of his life. Earlier Said's family had announced that the service would be private, open only to family members and closest friends, but in the event the church was turned into the site of a large-scale pilgrimage, with many of the innumerable mourners present having travelled thousands of miles to pay their final respects to this unique figure. Americans, Arab- Americans and Arabs formed the vast majority of a remarkably multinational constituency listening to the tributes paid to Said. Daniel Barenboim, Chief Conductor for Life of the Staatskapelle Berlin and a close friend of Said's, played Mozart, Bach and Brahms on the piano, the musical instrument Said loved the most. Opening with a traditional invocation, the Reverend James Forbes ended the ceremony with a similarly traditional benediction, while the Reverend James Fitzgerald, describing Said as a great thinker and an honest man who had boldly stood up for his views, was likewise conventional in his speech. The more intimate side of the service was left to the Reverend Fouad Bahnan, a Lebanese national who has been close to the Said family since 1982. The sermon he delivered in Arabic moved even those with no knowledge of the language, his voice communicating the depth of his grief. Bahnan's sermon, which spoke for many Arabs, emphasised Said's Palestinian identity and expressed the wish that, one day, when Palestine emerges from the affliction of occupation, Said would be buried in Jerusalem, his rightful resting place. Bahnan's anger and the serenity of Barenboim's piano-playing embodied the duality of Said's mission, the one emphasising the Palestinian cause, the other its advocate's humane and polyphonic leanings. To many Israelis, Barenboim, an Israeli national, had declared himself a traitor when he visited Ramallah to play the piano for Palestinians under siege. Together with Said he founded the East- Western Divan, a forum for young Israeli and Arab musicians to learn music together, something greeted with suspicion on the part of Arabs opposed to normalising relations with Israel. To them, any dealing with Israel is to be denounced, since being Israeli in and of itself implies taking the place of a Palestinian by force of arms. Arab and Israeli denunciation notwithstanding, Barenboim's presence side by side with Bahnan was testimony to Said's salutary ability to combine divergent strands in himself, and a fitting homage to his passion for contrapuntal voices. Said's son, Wadie, gave a poignant speech, the physical resemblance between father and son -- Wadie's height and sturdy build -- making it all the more touching. Wadie's steady voice and his captivating smile also recalled his father's ability to smile in the face of all manner of hardships, including the illness he stoically endured for 12 years. The piano played again, followed by Najla Said, the scholar's daughter and an actress by profession, reading Waiting for the Barbarians by the Greek Alexandrine poet Konstantinos Kavafis (1836-1933), one of her father's favourite poems, she said. The poem recounts the confusion that besets the Romans when the long- awaited arrival of the Barbarians is delayed, and rumours circulate that they will never come. The assembled people, waiting for the Barbarians and postponing any decision until they come, ask in bewilderment, "Now what is going to happen to us without the Barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution." Read in the context of Edward Said's funeral service, the poem lent itself to various interpretations. Who thinks of whom as "Barbarians"? Whatever the answer might be, to many Arab newcomers in the United States, the loss of Edward Said is ominous at a time when neo-colonialism and collective enslavement is in full swing. With American troops occupying Iraq and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pressing on with his criminal policies, aimed at exterminating the Palestinians, to be deprived of Said's sobering voice is a cruel calamity indeed. At the end of the ceremony, as the coffin was being escorted out, people lined up to offer their condolences to Said's family in a reception area adjoining the chapel. All were united in the sense of loss that the absence of Edward Said entailed. However, Arab students like myself, who came to the US in search of that small oasis of academic freedom that Edward Said so brilliantly guarded, felt like orphans confronting an uncertain future. The same could be said of Arab- Americans in general: with Edward Said's death, the Arab presence in the United States has lost even the small margin of articulate self-assertion that he provided. This has happened at a time when that margin of self-assertion is more needed than ever. As Edward Said is escorted to his final resting place, the margin narrows by the minute.
