{"id":358924,"date":"2023-10-11T23:50:10","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T02:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/najla-said-tells-emotional-story-of-edward-saids-life\/"},"modified":"2024-03-22T17:02:47","modified_gmt":"2024-03-22T20:02:47","slug":"najla-said-tells-emotional-story-of-edward-saids-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/najla-said-tells-emotional-story-of-edward-saids-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Najla Sa\u00efd tells emotional story of Edward Sa\u00efd\u2019s life"},"content":{"rendered":"

S\u00e3o Paulo \u2013 A touching speech by writer, playwright, and actress Najla Sa\u00efd<\/strong> closed the seminar The Intellectual Legacy of Edward Sa\u00efd<\/em><\/strong> this Wednesday (11) at SESC 14 Bis, in S\u00e3o Paulo. Sa\u00efd\u2019s daughter told about her trip to Gaza with her family at 18, life in New York, conversations and letters with her father, and responded to current events.<\/p>\n

Najla Sa\u00efd wrote a play called Palestine and has performed it in many countries, including the United States. She wrote the book Looking for Palestine: Growing Up Confused in an Arab-American Family<\/em><\/strong> based on the autobiographical play.<\/p>\n

The author said she found in literature a passion she shared with her father, and they talked about the books she was reading at school, such as Jane Eyre<\/em> by Charlotte Bront\u00eb and The Stranger<\/em> by Albert Camus. \u201cThe first lesson I got from my father was how to read a book,\u201d said Najla Sa\u00efd. He was outraged by the woman trapped in the attic in Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel and by the nameless \u201cArab\u201d described in Camus\u2019s work, and she learned about critical reading and colonialism.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very grateful to have learned from him since I was little,\u201d said Najla Sa\u00efd, who also said she never read her father\u2019s books, except for the preface to Orientalism<\/em>, his best-known work. \u201cHe was the father of postcolonialism studies, and I was four when he wrote Orientalism<\/em>. He explained to me how Arabs were portrayed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Sa\u00efd told his daughter about the importance of Palestinian self-determination, and on a more personal note, she reported her father collected pens, smoked a pipe, and spoke sometimes with an English accent, sometimes with an American accent. \u201cHe was a humanist who spoke truth in the face of power,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

As a teenager, Najla Sa\u00efd said she felt uncomfortable with her Arab background living in New York. \u201cI was 13 or 14 when the first Intifada started [in 1987]. Then, I saw myself as Palestinian and Arab. Today, I am proud of my roots,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

On September 11, 2001, Najla was already an actress and said, as an Arab-American, it was crucial to become who she was. She established a theater company with friends from different backgrounds and staged a play on the perception of Arabs in the United States. \u201cMy father was very proud,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In 2002, she wrote Palestine<\/em> and debuted Off-Broadway on New York\u2019s alternative theater circuit. \u201cI was petrified of assuming my identity to the world. I learned to be a humanist, to use the word Apartheid to describe Israel, and I told my story as a minority and let it speak for itself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The main point of the play and the author\u2019s book was a text she wrote in her diary on June 16, 1992, about her trip to Gaza with her family when she was 18. \u201cDad hadn\u2019t been to his country for 40 years,\u201d she said. According to her, the stench of open sewage could be felt inside the car with the windows rolled up. They had lunch at the home of an important family; the men went to one room and the women to another, something that caught her attention. Her father talked about the demographic density of the Gaza Strip, among other significant facts about the city, and she said she didn\u2019t need to hear it because she was living in it.<\/p>\n

Regarding the recent events in Gaza, Najla Sa\u00efd said she is terrified and very scared. She thought about what her father would say and said he would count on her knowledge of the facts, and that was what she always had. \u201cBut this [Zionist] propaganda got out of control, and I was terrified,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Najla Sa\u00efd ended her speech with an emotional letter her father wrote to her when she was a teenager, which she had framed and had been in her living room for twenty years. \u201cI was a rebellious teenager, and sometimes we communicated through letters because it was the easiest way to express ourselves,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe practiced what he preached, lived how he said he lived, and acted accordingly,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Translated by El\u00fasio Brasileiro<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The writer, actress, playwright, and daughter of Palestinian scholar Edward Sa\u00efd closed the seminar The Intellectual Legacy of Edward Sa\u00efd on Wednesday (11). She told about her trip to Gaza with her family at 18, life in New York, and reacted to current events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2305,"featured_media":356778,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[16901,4970,31497,45988,29462,29473,34027,29300,537],"class_list":{"0":"post-358924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-edward-said","9":"tag-faixa-de-gaza","10":"tag-gaza-en-2","11":"tag-looking-for-palestine","12":"tag-najla-said","13":"tag-orientalism","14":"tag-orientalismo-en","15":"tag-palestina-en-2","16":"tag-palestine"},"wps_subtitle":"The writer, actress, playwright, and daughter of Palestinian scholar Edward Sa\u00efd closed the seminar The Intellectual Legacy of Edward Sa\u00efd on Wednesday (11). She told about her trip to Gaza with her family at 18, life in New York, and reacted to current events.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2305"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}