Summary of Edward W. Said's Out of Place

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I have never known what language I spoke first, Arabic or English, or which one was really mine beyond any doubt. I have always spoken Arabic and English together, and they have always been connected in my life.

#2 My mother, who was Palestinian, spoke English fluently. She had a classical Arabic accent, but she spoke English like a Shami, which is the collective noun used by Egyptians to describe both an Arabic speaker who is not Egyptian and someone who is from Greater Syria.

#3 I could not absorb all the details of the royal family, and I could not understand why my mother was not a straight English mummy. I had two alternatives: I could adopt my father’s assertive tone and say I was an American citizen, or I could try to construct my real history and origins into order.

#4 My father, Said Wadie Ibrahim, was born in Jerusalem in 1906. He never spoke much about his childhood there, except that he was famous for dribbling a ball from one end of the field to the other, and then scoring. He eventually left Palestine to avoid conscription into the Ottoman army.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822518698

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Insights on Edward W. Said's Out of Place

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I have never known what language I spoke first, Arabic or English, or which one was really mine beyond any doubt. I have always spoken Arabic and English together, and they have always been connected in my life.

#2

My mother, who was Palestinian, spoke English fluently. She had a classical Arabic accent, but she spoke English like a Shami, which is the collective noun used by Egyptians to describe both an Arabic speaker who is not Egyptian and someone who is from Greater Syria.

#3

I could not absorb all the details of the royal family, and I could not understand why my mother was not a straight English mummy. I had two alternatives: I could adopt my father’s assertive tone and say I was an American citizen, or I could try to construct my real history and origins into order.

#4

My father, Said Wadie Ibrahim, was born in Jerusalem in 1906. He never spoke much about his childhood there, except that he was famous for dribbling a ball from one end of the field to the other, and then scoring. He eventually left Palestine to avoid conscription into the Ottoman army.

#5

My father’s story of coming to the United States was a sort of official version that instructed and informed his listeners. But it also collected and put solidly in place what he wanted known about himself before he married my mother.

#6

My father, who was a salesman for ARCO, crossed the border and enlisted in the American Expeditionary Force when he heard that there was to be no such battalion. He returned to Cleveland and set up his own paint company.

#7

After returning to Palestine in 1920, William A. Said became a successful businessman and Protestant resident of Cairo. He was well-off enough to get married in 1932, and took his much younger wife for a three-month honeymoon in Europe.

#8

I grew up with my father, who was a taskmaster, trying to create a world very similar to a giant cocoon. He controlled me and my mother, and we lived in fear of his reactions.

#9

My mother, like my father, was a very private person. She was born in 1914, and she never went to school in Beirut like me. She was a brilliant student, and she had no men in her life.

#10

My mother, who was born in 1932, was married in 1932 to my father, who was born in 1891. She was wrenched from a happy life in Beirut and was given to a much older spouse, who promptly took her off to strange parts and then set her down in Cairo.

#11

Melia was a very important figure in the life of my parents. She was a teacher at the American University in Cairo, and she helped my mother understand the complex Cairo social system. She never showed any hesitation or uncertainty, and she had a distinct method for every social class and subclass.

#12

Auntie Melia took care of Hilda, and showed her where to shop,