Operation Egyptian perspective

By Mona Anis

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When, 20 years ago, the then CEO of Al-Ahram, Ibrahim Nafie -- in liaison, no doubt, with the institution's top journalists -- decided to launch an English-language publication, it was to the late Hosny Guindy that he entrusted the project. Hosny, thus far the foreign-desk editor, became the founding editor of Al-Ahram Weekly ; and it is to Hosny's vision for the paper as a 'bridge of understanding' that almost everything of value in the last 999 issues is due. Only he could have invested the project with the quality readers have come to associate with the Weekly. It was his dream, and he recruited those who could help him realise it against all odds. The first issue of the Weekly hit the newsstands on 28 February 1991. It carried an editorial drafted by Hosny and signed by Mr Nafie, which professed awareness of "the problematic relationship between the Middle East and the West, which has been due in part to the inaccurate perceptions we have of each other." While Arabic remains "the basic component of Arab culture, interacting with Arab reasoning and psychology, which non- Arabs find hard to understand within its proper context", it is still possible to present "the Egyptian perspective" on the relevant events through the medium of English. Feedback from the readership, the editorial added, was paramount: "Only through this interaction can a real bridge between the two worlds be established -- a bridge joining the English-speaking world to a world whose language often obscures or prevents others from understanding it fully.

These words expressed a realistic need that we all felt during the hectic few months before the launch. At the time the clouds of war were gathering over the region. In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait; events began to unfold rapidly in the wake of the invasion. The UN Security Council set 15 January as the deadline for Iraq to withdraw; and in the first two weeks of 1991, international parties were engaged in last-ditch attempts to avert the war.

The first zero issue of the Weekly, dated 17 January, carried a photo of an anti-war rally in Washington DC with banners reading "Remember Vietnam". On Tuesday 15 January 1991, while we raced to finish the paper in time for the press, the world was holding its breath for midnight, when Iraq's deadline would expire. Like most people we hoped against hope that there would be no war. Late on Wednesday we were still helping the non- English-speaking layout staffers to hand-paste the linotype columns in the right order when, the paper's deputy editor, Hassan Fouad, walked in to announce the launch of Operation Desert Storm. The pleas of the antiwar demonstrators had fallen on deaf ears, so did the warnings of the leading political analyst Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, who was quoted inside our first zero issue saying: "If war breaks out, the consequent scene would be reminiscent of the world after Noah's flood."

Operation Desert Storm continued to be top news in the next issues, and its ramifications continued to constitute a major focus of analysis in every one of the 999 issues of the Weekly that have since appeared.

As for the newspaper itself, the team who conceptualised it numbered some 20 journalists, copy editors and translators, both Egyptian and native speakers of English. In addition to Hosny Guindy, there were three senior staffers of Al-Ahram who oversaw the work: Hassan Fouad, the Weekly 's first deputy editor; Mohamed Salmawy, its first managing editor; and Samir Sobhi, page layout manager for 14 years, now editorial consultant.

There is personal irony in those memories. Initially no more than a transit passanger, present for a few months only before returning to England to complete my Ph.D, I am now not only the paper's deputy editor but the only full-time employee of Al-Ahram remaining from the initial core team. Fellow journeymen are still contributing, even if they are no longer coming in; others have jobs elsewhere. And then there are those who are no longer with us. It feels right to remember them while we celebrate 1000 issues.

No amount of praise will do justice to the late founding editor, whose premature death in 2003 left the staff devastated. Hosny sought the help of contributors he believed would enhance the credibility of the paper; and of those no one raised its international profile more than Edward Said, who turned to the Weekly with his denunciation of the Oslo deal before it was concluded. Said was impressed that Hosny agreed to run an opinion piece in sharp disagreement with Egypt's official stance, which he thought an Al-Ahram publication would not do. He addressed world opinion through the Weekly twice a month from then until the last month of his life -- or, to be exact, the last month of Hosny's life. Hosny passed away in August 2003, and in September, too ill to write, Said himself passed away. Of all the cruel blows dealt us, the loss of those two men within a month of each other was by far the cruellest.

Another eminent contributor, who died four years ago, was the senior political analyst Mohamed Sid- Ahmed. The range of interests and knowledge of international affairs informing his columns was remarkable. Sid-Ahmed's last column appeared on 16 February, two days before he died. And second to Sid-Ahmed in the number of columns contributed to the paper is David Blake, the Weekly 's music critic, who started writing in the zero issues and continued to provide his devoted readers with an inimitable, quirky record of the Cairo classical music scene until a few weeks before his death in February 2002, at the age of 85. That a septuagenarian Anglo-Australian aristocrat like David Blake should find his way to the Weekly and be made to feel welcome among its staffers is testimony to Hosny's originality and humanity. Mr Blake, as the staff fondly called him, went on writing even while he battled with the cancer that dogged the last three years of his life in a display of commitment and dedication to music, and to the Weekly 's readership.

Of those who worked behind the scenes -- their names rarely appearing in bylines -- special mention must be made of Wadie Kirolos and Hassan Fouad. Ustaz Wadie was the paper's assistant editor and Home Page editor from the very beginning until his death in December 2001. The Weekly 's home reporters are all his students. Ustaz Hassan, who passed away at the start of 2006, was the paper's deputy editor between 1991 and 1993. Though he moved to edit the international edition of the Arabic daily, he continued to visit us frequently, attending editorial meetings and making himself available for advice. To those departed coworkers and to others -- Steve Nimr, Mohamed Shebl and Hamdi Saad El-Din, who joined shortly after the launch -- our thoughts turn with gratitude.

Finally, and now that we are celebrating having successfully completed 1000 issues, it remains to thank Assem El-Kersh, the paper's editor for the past five years, who is overseeing celebrations marking this important milestone, and wish him every luck in his efforts to open up new horizons for the newspaper and its readership.