Free Out of Place: A Memoir by Edward W. Said

sequestration was (in an extremely imprecise way) “good” for me. Only later did it occur to me that the kind of discipline my parents devised for me meant I was to regard our life and house as somehow the norm and not, as it most certainly was, fantastically isolated and almost experimental.
    As a rare escape I was sometimes allowed to go skating on Saturday mornings at a rink, the Rialto, near “B” Branch—a small shop maintained by my father mainly to sell pens and expensive leather gifts—on Fuad al-Awwal Street. The area was packed with bustling shops and department stores: Chemla and Cicurel across the street, Paul Favre, the large shoe shop next to “B” Branch, where, from a tired mustachioed middle-aged Armenian clerk in waistcoat and green eye-shade, we bought shoes for summer (sandals and light shoes) and winter (button- or lace-ups, black and dark brown). Tennis shoes and loafers were “bad,” and hence permanently disallowed.
    School always began in the big hall with the singing of hymns—“All Things Bright and Beautiful” and “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains” were the two that recurred most frequently—accompanied at the piano by omnicompetent Mrs. Wilson and directed by Mrs. Bullen, whose daily homilies were simultaneously condescending and cloying, her bad British teeth and ungenerous lips shaping the words with unmistakable distaste for the mongrel-like collection of children who stood before her. Then we filed into our classes for a long morning’s lessons. My first teacher at GPS was Mrs. Whitfield, whom I suspected of being not really English, though she mimicked the part. Besides, I envied her hername. Her son, Ronnie (Mrs. Wilson had a son, Dickie, and a daughter, Elizabeth; Mrs. Bullen had Anne, of course), like the Wilson children, was enrolled at GPS; all of them were older than I, and this added to their privileged remoteness and
hauteur
. Our lessons and books were mystifyingly English: we read about meadows, castles, and Kings John, Alfred, and Canute with the reverence that our teachers kept reminding us they deserved. Their world made little sense to me, except that I admired their creation of the language they used, which I, a little Arab boy, was learning something about. A disproportionate amount of attention was lavished on the Battle of Hastings along with lengthy explanations of Angles, Saxons, and Normans. Edward the Confessor has ever since remained in my mind as an elderly bearded gentleman in a white gown lying flat on his back, perhaps as a consequence of having confessed to something he shouldn’t have done. There was never to be any perceived connection between him and me, despite our identical first name.
    These lessons in English glory were interspersed with repetitive exercises in writing, arithmetic, and recitation. My fingers were always dirty; then, as now, I was fatally attracted to writing with an ink pen that produced an ugly scrawl, plus numerous smudges and blots. I was made acutely conscious of my endless infractions by Mrs. Whitfield in particular. “Sit up straight and do your work properly”—“Don’t fidget,” she then added almost immediately. “Get on with your work.” “Don’t be lazy” was the habitual clincher. To my left Arlette was a model student; to my right it was the ever-obliging and successful Naki Rigopoulos. All around me were Greenvilles, and Coopers, and Pilleys: starchy little English boys and girls with enviably authentic names, blue eyes, and bright, definitive accents. I have no distinct recollection of how I sounded in those days, but I know that it was not English. The odd thing though was that we were all treated as if we should (or
really
wanted to) be English, an unexceptionable program for Dick, Ralph, and Derek, less so for locals like Micheline Lindell, David Ades, Nadia Gindy, and myself.
    All our time outside class was spent in a little enclosed yard completely shut off from Fuad al-Awwal, the bustling