I calculated this past week that I knew Edward for exactly ten years. I first met him in the fall of 1993, as the uncle of Ussama, a friend in graduate school. A couple of years later, that friend became my husband and Edward Said my mama-shoshur. I had of course "encountered" Edward Said some years earlier, across the formidable pages of Orientalism in a college seminar; after all, few students in liberal arts programmes in the United States complete their degrees without encountering Edward Said's texts. My graduate studies at Princeton overlapped with Wadie and Najla's undergraduate years there and Edward and his wife Mariam would drive down often for Sunday brunch with all of us at one of the handful of restaurants in Princeton. I still remember how nervous I was going up to NYC to have Thanksgiving dinner at the Saids, I think my first meal with them….I wondered, could I possibly survive an entire meal at the same table as the great Said himself? What I discovered that afternoon and was confirmed over the following decade was that Edward was also a human being, with a wonderful sense of humour and vast knowledge of the world. Indeed, his immense erudition made it easier for him to converse with a wide variety of people as did his firm belief in focusing on commonalities rather than differences between individuals and between peoples. At some point along the past decade, he dubbed me "the Bengali Bulbul" and the name stuck, despite my protests that Bulbul was my mother's name and that it was therefore highly inappropriate, according to my understanding of our culture, that the name be applied to me.

Ussama and I got engaged in Paris in the summer of 1995. Edward was in Paris that summer, living alone and writing in a friend's apartment. My parents organized a small dinner to celebrate our engagement and Edward joined us as a member of the bor-pokkho. When I greeted him, I noticed his rather unusual tie. In the place of dots, paisley, diamonds, or some other such familiar pattern, his tie sported tiny snake charmers. I looked up at him, a look of puzzlement on my face. He looked back, clearly waiting for me to figure it out. I did and with all the mock indignation I could muster, exclaimed, "I see…we are your Orient!" He chuckled mischievously, clearly pleased with himself for having been able to find "just the right tie" for the occasion. Ussama and I got married in Princeton that November and of course the Saids drove down from New York for the event (with the exception of Wadie, then in Egypt). In the years that followed, we shared many meals with Edward, formal and informal, and saw him address packed halls in Houston, Cairo, California, London, and Beirut. At one of the conferences in Beirut, I was fortunate to meet his dear comrades Eqbal Ahmed and Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, both of whom also passed away in the last few years.

Edward was truly a star in both the academic and activist worlds, yet he defied stereotypes about both these categories. He was never absent-minded, always impeccably dressed, and never too big to be hurt by personal attacks. He wrote beautifully and without the jargon that plagues the work of many academics. This rendered his academic writing accessible to educated individuals outside his field and his more political writings to readers all over the world. Edward was indeed larger than life, both to the outside world and within the family. He loved life and he loved his work. He wrote, lectured, and traveled relentlessly despite his illness and did so until the last possible moment. He cherished his clothestailored shirts, handmade shoesand savored good coffee, fine food, and dark chocolate.

Edward and I would often speculatenot terribly seriously for this was hardly a serious matterabout which of us had completed the Harvard-Princeton sequence in the "right" order. He had attended college at Princeton and completed his Ph.D. at Harvard. I had done the reverse. Another favourite topic of conversation was the peculiarities of South Asian English. He would also occasionally, half-seriously, ask if I knew what Gayatri (Spivak) actually did with the poor rural women she met on her visits to Bangladesh and discussed in her work.

Edward was already aware of his illness when I first met him ten years ago. Over the course of this decade, he had several difficult spells and painful treatment sessions, yet he always managed to pull through. When he became extremely ill two weeks ago, his wife and sisters realized that this time seemed different. Sitting in Houston, we received hourly updates on his deteriorating condition, yet neither Ussama nor I were ultimately prepared for what seemed increasingly inevitable. On Saturday morning, we flew up to New York to be with the family and attend the funeral. And what a funeral it was. Politicians, activists, writers, academics, and relatives from the Arab world, Europe and the United States, gathered to pay homage to this man who had touched their lives, hearts, and intellects in so many different ways. The fabulous lunch that followed the service was catered by the same woman Mariam had recommended to us for our wedding in Princeton. The active participation of Edward's good friend, the Israeli pianist Daniel Barenboim, in the funeral service was testament to Edward's remarkable ability to reach across seemingly insurmountable barriers. That same evening Barenboim recorded an interview with Charlie Rose, a self-avowedly intellectual talk show host on public television; it was broadcast three days later, on Thursday night. Charlie Rose began the interview by repeatedly describing the friendship between Edward and Daniel as surprising, as a friendship between two men who could not be more different. This was yet another example of the U.S. media's inability to see the world except in terms of irreconcilable differences, a tendency Edward had always criticized and struggled against, calling on all to focus instead on the "traces" that we share with one another. Barenboim, to his credit, began his response by pointing out that, while he was indeed Israeli and Edward, Palestinian, they had a great deal in common, and that he, in fact, considered Edward a soulmate.

I last saw Edward in London in mid-May. We were on our way from Houston to Beirut and Dhaka for the summer. We had dinner together at his sister Rosemary's apartment. I am glad that our one-year-old son Sinan had this opportunity to meet his great-uncle Edward, even if he did not at all appreciate the significance of the encounter! It makes me sad that Sinan will not have a chance to know Edward the man except through the stories we tell him. One thing is certain though: he, like countless others, will get to know Edward W. Said the consummate public intellectual through his writings, documentaries, and recordings of his speeches. And I sincerely hope that he will pick up where Edward was forced to stop, and speak the truth and fight injustice, even in the face of overwhelming hostility--as should we all.

Elora Shehabuddin teaches women and gender studies at Rice University, Texas.