Abdul Wahab El-Messairi, in Memorium By Aslam Farouk-Ali

Abdul Wahab El-Messairi, in Memorium

By Aslam Farouk-Ali

Damascus, Syria
PIC, July 7, 2008

Abdul Wahab El-Messairi passed away on Thursday the 3rd of July in the Palestine Hospital in Cairo at the age of seventy. There is a befittingly poetic resonance about the name of this hospital – the place of his final struggle – when one considers that El-Messairi had devoted almost his entire intellectual career to the defense of the Palestinian cause. Over the past few years El-Messairi had been fighting a prolonged battle with a form of brain cancer that ultimately cost him his life; what the cancer could not do was to rob him of his intellect! El-Messairi remained fully engaged as a thinker until his very last breath.

In an intellectual career spanning over more than thirty years, El-Messairi managed to write over 50 books and scores of articles on a diverse range of topics ranging from Zionism to Postmodernism, Secularism, Muslim Political Thought, Palestinian Liberation Movements, the Intifada, Palestinian Poetry and English Literature. He also found time to indulge in his hobby of writing children stories.

Even though he leaves behind a written corpus that very few will ever be able to match in terms of depth, breadth and sheer quantity, he did not allow his sickness to slow him down. When death came knocking he was putting the finishing touches to his study on the history of English poetry and was planning to write a book on Egyptian humour.

El-Messairi was a careful observer of the human condition and his writing therefore addresses a broad audience. Even his children stories are motivated by his philosophy. In his version of Cinderella, the beautiful maiden that puts on the glass slipper does not immediately agree to marry the dashing prince: she decides to go to university to continue her studies and the prince, being not only charming but prudent as well, is understanding enough to wait for her.

Nor was El-Messairi willing to be constrained by the limits of our common vocabulary when giving expression to his ideas. If he could not find the appropriate words to describe what he wished to say, he would create them. For example, he was never satisfied with using the terms subjective and objective, arguing that they fail to account for the cultural biases that people are prone to. He therefore chose to speak about reality in terms of paradigms that were more explanatory or less explanatory. Such terms create for us the space that is needed to transcend our own cultural baggage and to look at things from a different perspective, which is a prerequisite for understanding the other.

This does not however imply that we should not pass judgment. El-Messairi showed no prevarication in his thought and always strove to explain his position. While he was happy to admit that he became a Marxist at the age of sixteen, he was not at all uncomfortable to declare his new found faith after the birth of his daughter, an experience that helped him understand the limitations of materiality.

These limitations also explain his fascination with Samuel Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, one of his last published works. El-Messairi translated the epic poem into Arabic and published it in a bilingual edition, along with a long interpretive essay. Coleridge’s poem comes alive in El-Messairi’s reading. Reflecting on the Poet’s words “He prayeth best, who loveth best / All things both great and small”, El-Messairi finds an acknowledgement of the transcendent reality and a rejection of vulgar materialism. As he explains: “In the universe of pure matter, […], there are no values, sanctity or specificity. In such a value-free existence there is no ultimate point of reference, and no basis for moral or aesthetic distinction, sheer power, might and brute force are the only way to resolve difference and resolve conflict.”

It therefore comes as no surprise that El-Messairi was categorical when it came to condemning racism and colonialism or in rejecting submission to any regime of political power. After South Africa attained liberation, he urged Palestinians to draw lessons from their experience. In 2006 Elmessiri delivered a paper at a conference in South Africa on Zionism, arguing that no matter what the odds were against the oppressed people of Palestine, there was no reason to surrender to the status quo: “God has given us minds to think and reason with, and an ability to transcend the limits imposed on us by our social and political surroundings, if we have enough imagination and tolerance.”

If one carefully examines El-Messairi's life, there is an added lesson to be learnt from his posture, in addition to all that can be learnt from his words: El-Messairi was a man that chose to live in the Empire of the Mind; where there are no shackles and were freedom is absolute. In this space, not only did he discover his freedom, he discovered his faith as well. May God bless this solitary companion and shower him in the Divine Light.

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