The Palestinians have created many myths about their history in the 20th century probably because they don't want to think about what actually happened. This myth however is the most unlikely. An American-Palestinian boy from a rich family who spent his childhood in Egypt moves to the USA for his education, beomes a respected academic and creates the myth of his blissful childhood in the family home in Jerusalem. He recalls childhood Jewish friends from school and the dangers of life in 1940s Jerusalem until the family flees Palestine in 1947 along with the other 30 or 40,000 Palestinians wealthy enough to do so before the fighting begins. He embroiders this story for decades even appearing in films in front of the "family home" now stolen by the Israelis and he becomes a living symbol of Palestinian truth-telling, dispossession and alienation. When his fraud is revealed, there's no mea culpa. Like all good myths it has a grain of fact. Said's father came from a Jerusalem family and while he lived mainly in the USA and Egypt there was a house in Jeruslame owned by his uncle's family which Edward was born in and visited ocasionally with family. By a weird twist of fate, the renowned Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, rented an apartment in that house for many years before being evicted during WW2. For Said's "stories see In Search of Palestine - Edward Said

The Myth of Edward Said's Palestinian Childhood

Edward Said attained academic fame with his book 'Orientalism' which argued that European academics constructed a false, romanticized, and demonized image of the "Orient" (the Middle East and Asia). It served as a tool of power used to justify Western imperialism and colonial dominance. Actually I would have thought that Western technological and military power over the "Orient" was what caused the imperialist conquests and colonial dominance. No justification was required by the people who actually did the conquering. Said claimed that Western representations of the diverse "Oriental" societies rely on recurring stereotypes and clichés. Now there's a surprise. The book ran through the academic world like a Maxim gun through the Sudanese at Omdurman. "We are not worthy of your Oriental scorn" they cried.

Edward Said's father, William "Wadie" Said, a more remarkable man that his son, emigrated to the USA before WW1 for all the usual reasons, Palestine being a poverty-stricken shithole. He joined the US army in WW1 thereby receiving US citizenship for himself and his children. He returned to the "Orient" in the late 1930s and began a business, the Standard Stationery Company in Egypt. He did well and brought up his family in the wealthiest suburbs of Cairo with occasional visits to the family back in Jerusalem. In November 1935, during one of those visits, Edward Said was born. He was educated at the very elite Victoria College, where one of his classmates was Omar Sharif.


Omar Sharif (right) with classmates at Alexandria's Victoria College. Alumni Inc. Youssef Chahine & Edward Said

Edward went to the USA in 1951 to another prestigious school. In 1952 the stationery offices were burnt down in nationalist riots but it was re-established and operated for another decade. By 1963, Nasser's sweeping socialist regulatino and nationalization policies made it impossible for foreign, affluent businessmen to operate, Said moved the family permanently to Beirut. He was part of an exodus of international businessmen, Jews, Greek, Armenians which damaged the economy. Said was, after all, a foreigner with an American passport and accent. Beirut remained the family's primary Middle Eastern home, where Edward Said would regularly spend his summer vacations.

"50 years after we left Palestine …" Said's family never left Palestine, they lived in Egypt. "Jewish terrorists bombed the King David Hotel in 1946. The wreckage could be seen from our house. I recall the rising sense of danger, British soldiers on the alert and news of impending war between Palestinians and Jewish forces. But my childhood memories of Jerusalem are of a small mixed city, an even smaller Anglican community, peaceful and pleasant with only occasional reminders that all was not well. As a child of 10, the bombing of the King David Hotel made only a fleeting impression on me. Much clearer was that of a Jewish classmate of mine at St. George's school. This guy I remember, he was in my class, David Ezra. He was slightly older, yes, I remember him very clearly from my time because I think there were maybe 2 Jewish boys in the class but he was quite striking, he was a bigger fellow than I was and I sat next to him in the back of the class. And it's strange how he's stuck in my mind all these years." David Ezra is adamant that Said did not attend school with him and, in fact having poor eyesight, always sat at the front. There is no record at the school of Edward Said's attendance.

Said: "This is a scene of my sisters and me playing together before my family lost its home in Jerusalem." The house belonged to an uncle and was not Edward Said's family home though he was born there.

Voiceover: "He became a refugee in 1948 and then spent 40 years studying and teaching in the United States." Said lived his early years in Egypt and left there in 1952 to attend school in the USA. He was a US citizen. Question: "How old were you when you last saw the house?" "I was 12, December of 1947." The Saids lived in Cairo, I cannot believe that Said's father would do something so dangerous as to take his family to Jerusalem in December 1947 when shops were looted and burned and armed street fighting had begun. Palestinians of their class had already fled the fighting.

The house was split into 2 and later 3 apartments. It was never a family home. From 1938 to 1952 it held the consulate general of Yugoslavia (first the kingdom and then the communist regime). From 1938 to 1942 two levels of the house were leased by renowned Jewish Philosopher, Martin Buber, until Edward's aunt cancelled the lease. Said twisted this fact into a snide attack of Buber: "The house from which my family departed in 1948 - was displaced - was also the house in which the great Jewish philosopher Martin Buber lived for a while, and Buber of course was a great apostle of coexistence between Arabs and Jews, but he didn't mind living in an Arab house whose inhabitants had been displaced." Now that's a low blow. Very poor form indeed.