The experience of exile greatly impacted on Edward Said's intellectual, literary and political writings. Exile, Said writes, creates a terrible rift between one's self, people, land, language and culture. This paper investigates the condition of exile and how it frames Said's shifting ideas of humanism in a postcolonial world. I argue that Said's readings of humanism and faith in the humanities can serve as a forum for understanding the incomprehensible situations of world conflict. This paper considers concepts critical to Said's concepts of postcolonial humanism that we cannot afford to dispense with but must rethink to redress the situation of exile that is the cause of so much unrest in the world today. Postcolonial humanism attests to the particularity and diversity of human experience across a range of shared and unthinkable histories, which bears witness to and reminds us of a shared humanity. With Said, I will argue for a postcolonial humanism without need of identity, nation or property and for the renewal of principles of sustainable exiled existence that we can live with. Despite the politicised grievances we unevenly hold against a world turning against us, there is still something important to learn from our shared postcolonial condition. Said's writings on exile, I suggest, have relevance for those committed to the engagement of ideas and understanding in a world increasingly marked by mass violence, ecological devastation and destruction.