Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, a former professor of political science at Northwestern University who later became vice-president of Bir Zeit University on the West Bank, died at the age of 72 on 23 May in his Ramallah home, after a long illness. I learned of his death as I was walking out of Tel Aviv airport on my way to see him. He was my oldest and dearest friend, remarkable as an introspective thinker and a charismatic political teacher and leader, whose insight had sustained a friendship that lasted nearly fifty years. There were hundreds of mourners at his funeral in Jaffa, and at the 'azza - the wake - at his home and the Qattan Centre in Ramallah. Several of his friends spoke at the commemoration, held in a theatre in Ramallah the day after he was buried next to his father in a hillside graveyard overlooking the cove where he used to take his visitors for a swim - always refusing to visit the adjoining Israeli beach café, which looked very inviting just the same. One of the speakers at the funeral in Jaffa was Faisal Husseini, who was to die exactly a week later in a Kuwait hotel room.

LRB 13 December 2001 | PDF Download