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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 April 1999 Issue No. 425 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 April 1999 Issue No. 425
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters
Hamdi Qandil:
'The singer, not the song'
Profile bySajini Dularamani
Your average person begins the day scanning the newspaper over a cup of coffee or tea, perusing the news items and commentaries in a few minutes. Not so Hamdi Qandil
He spends six hours a day wading through an array of magazines and newspapers, scrutinising every report and opinion article. This is why, when you get "the press through the eyes of Hamdi Qandil", in effect you are being treated to an expertly constructed concerto in which themes are deftly intertwined and played off against one another in a thought-provoking yet always harmonious whole. Qandil is not one to give his viewers the sledgehammer approach. Quite the contrary: he lures you with adroitly spun silken threads into a dialogue with a panorama of the Egyptian, Arab and international press. His mark -- unmistakable and irreproducible, certainly in the Western media -- serves as an affirmation that what counts is the singer, not the song.
Last March, Hamdi Qandil returned to Egyptian television with the programme Ra'is Al-Tahrir (Editor-in-Chief). He and his viewers discovered that the bond between them had not been severed during the quarter of a century since he stopped presenting his TV programme Aqwal Al-Suhuf (In the Press). This was the programme that linked his name to Egyptian television from 1961, when it was first broadcast, until 1969, when he was appointed as director of the Arab Broadcasting Stations Union. Yet however constant this bond, his career has been a series of abrupt and dramatic changes. Every phase appeared to end with a resignation or calculated withdrawal based on political, ideological and sometimes material considerations. But, as he says, "it was those around me who were taken by surprise. For me, there was a constant thread linking all the positions I adopted: to always take the decision that would conform to the dictates of my conscience, sustain my sense of dignity and integrity and ensure my peace of mind. I have always felt that I must reconcile myself with myself before I reconcile myself with others. Anyway, I consider myself lucky. Every time I left a job I found an alternative shortly afterwards."
In 1966, Qandil was delegated as media advisor to Jordanian television. The position was for six months; he only lasted six weeks, during which he aired one episode of Aqwal Al-Suhuf. When he was told that the content of that episode did not accord with the viewpoints of Jordanian officialdom, he packed his bags and caught the first plane out.
A week before Sadat's "corrective revolution" of 15 May 1971, when many senior radio and TV broadcasters as well as senior government officials were ousted from their jobs, he left his job with Egyptian television, having refused to conduct a disciplinary investigation of the technical team that had recorded Sadat's Labour Day speech. Jubilation at the Egyptian victory in the October War of 1973 brought him back to announce the good news. A year later, in 1974, he was selected as the manager of the Department of the Free Flow of Information and Communication Policies for UNESCO in Paris. That was fortuitous, because ennui had begun to set in again.
His 13-year absence from Egypt offered him the opportunity to gain expertise in Western media operations, especially satellite broadcasting. In addition to becoming an internationally recognised expert in this field, he also became a member of several scientific organisations such as the Washington-based International Association for Workers in the Field of Space Technology and the UN Committee for the Uses of Space in Media. This was a period during which he was at a physical remove, at least, from the peace process with Israel, the particular direction of which he disapproved of.
Hamdi Qandil's familiarity with the outspoken word and his fondness of writing have their roots in his formative years, even though he had never aspired to becoming a media celebrity. He was a top-ranking student. His mother wanted him to become a doctor, a natural career choice for high achievers, and he, too, had his heart set on the medical profession. Born in Cairo in 1936, he grew up in Tanta, where he received his primary education. His father, originally from Menoufiya, moved to Tanta, where he owned a few feddans of land on which he cultivated pears and grapes -- most of which he distributed to neighbours, friends and relatives. His was a model, middle-income family. His parents were devoted to one another and to raising their children -- three boys, of whom he was the eldest, and two girls.
Two people, beside his father, were influential in his formative years. The late Ahmed Abdallah had lived a good part of his life in Germany. When he returned to Tanta, he opened a medical practice there, and, more importantly for Hamdi, a cultural and sporting club. As a young boy, Hamdi would read a book or two a week on loan from this club and participate in a variety of sports. This is where he picked up his love of field hockey, which he continued to play through university. The other person was Ibrahim Mustafa, who pioneered the Muslim Youth Association. It was Mustafa who instilled in Qandil a fondness for reading, table tennis and scouting. But if, through such patronage, he acquired a love for the world of letters, a talent for forming the Arabic phrase, and a facility for learning foreign languages, the same cannot be said for the world of numbers. He hated maths and, however much he liked to spend money, he remained hopeless at investing it and keeping accounts.
Qandil's first foray into journalistic writing was for his school newspaper. Then, at least, editions of the paper were not impounded because of his articles, as would be his fate on several occasions later on in his career. The first time this occurred was because of an article he wrote criticising the expenditure of a million pounds to purchase King Farouk's yacht, the Mahrousa. The article appeared in Al-Ikhlas, a low-budget local Tanta newspaper. Its owner fired the young Hamdi a month after he began working for the newspaper, but not before the novice journalist had acquired a taste for newspaper ink, letter casting and manual page layout.
For these and other reasons, then, Qandil's ambition to study medicine was not to be fulfilled during the first stage of his university education. Although he and his school colleague Amr Moussa -- now minister of foreign affairs -- had always vied for first place in secondary school, during his final year, his father's illness made it impossible for him to study. He was therefore unable to qualify for medical school in 1952 and, instead, entered the geology department at the University of Alexandria. He lasted two months. Envious of his colleagues who had managed to enter medical school and pressured by his mother, he re-sat the secondary school examinations, and qualified for admittance to the Qasr Al-Aini Faculty of Medicine.
He moved to Cairo, where he spent from 1953 to '56 studying medicine. Drawn immediately into student political activities, he joined the National Guard and cheered for Mohamed Naguib in the battle for democracy of 1954. It was the Faculty of Medicine magazine, however, that sounded the definitive siren call. Incidentally, the first edition of this magazine, too, was destined for confiscation. True to form, Qandil had written an article criticising professors and university regulations. In all events, the students put their magazine together in a small lounge located on the second floor of the Akhbar Al-Yom building. Mustafa and Ali Amin, the newspaper's magnates, would pass the students on the way to their offices and stop and talk with them. Qandil could not believe his ears when, on one occasion, Mustafa Amin offered him a job with the newspaper. He recalls: "On a hot summer's day of 1956, I passed my second-year exams. I told Mustafa Amin even before I told my father. At nine o'clock that evening, I was appointed a reporter for Akher Sa'a magazine at a salary of LE15. I was in charge of the column featuring letters from the readers, and the horoscope."
Here, Qandil's university career took a third turn when, in 1956, he entered the department of journalism. Eventually, he would obtain his License in 1960 and, in 1964, a Diploma in Journalism from the Berlin Institute. During this period he worked for Al-Tahrir magazine. His salary took a step up, too, to LE25 a month. He also worked for a short time in Damascus for Al-Jamahir magazine, before being drawn to television, which began broadcasting in 1961.
The facility and aplomb with which Qandil shifted his studies, changed location and moved from one job to the next are enviable. Behind this confidence was his father's hand. When he was 18, Qandil's father gave him fifty pounds Sterling, put him on a ship to Europe and told him not to come back before a month was through. "He instilled in me a wanderlust, a thirst for knowledge, a sense of intrepidity, even if I didn't have a millim in my pocket." And move around he did, with nomadic frequency. "I took part in many international conferences. I was a member of the International Student Union in Prague. At one conference, I met Yasser Arafat, who was the chairman of the Palestinian Students' Union at the time. Once, I was invited, with 40 of my colleagues, to attend a meeting of the Moral Rearmament Association in Caux. We presented a play about the life of Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, demonstrating that Islam enshrines a body of ethical and moral values equivalent to those of Western religious ideology."
The richest period of his life was spent working for UNESCO in Paris. "The organisation I worked for from 1974 to 1986 was going through a period of internal upheaval. It was a time of clashes between the developing countries and the Eastern bloc, on one hand, and the West, on the other, over a new media order in which the developing world sought a greater say. The Department of the Free Flow of Information and Communication Policies, which I managed, was, in effect, the political bureau of the organisation. I personally led the battle to get Palestine accepted as a member and to get the US, the UK and Singapore to withdraw. I learned so much that I could never have learned anywhere else -- for example, how to bring a successful team project to fruition, how to research effectively, how to consult with the members of my team... I also acquired experience in politics and diplomacy and I was able to perfect my English and French. I had the opportunity to meet some very impressive Third World figures, against whom their Western counterparts paled. I produced a book a month on developments in international media and broadcasting in particular. I specialised in satellite communications and published several books and studies in that field."
So whatever happened to his dream to establish an Arab satellite station that would address the Arab communities in Europe and the US and counter the Western bias of the international media? That was the dream that made him leave UNESCO. He wanted to put all the theory he had learned into practice. His first venture into the satellite broadcasting business occurred in 1987 when he, together with Egyptian, Arab and foreign partners, founded the Eastern Satellite Communications Company. Lack of financing forced him to sell the company in 1992. It was turned into MBC, where he worked for three months, quitting because of political differences with the management, who thought he was a Nasserist. The second project he was involved in was equally unsuccessful. Ibrahim Nafie, chairman of the Board of Directors of Al-Ahram, and Ibrahim Se'da, director of the Akhbar Al-Yom organisation, nominated him to supervise the preliminary studies for setting up a private Egyptian satellite television station. Unfortunately, the project never got off the ground. In 1992 he received an offer to participate in establishing the Arab Radio and Television station (ART) and in 1996 he piloted his programme "With Hamdi Qandil". A year later, he had a row with the management over arrangements for broadcasting two interviews, one with Colonel Gaddafi on the anniversary of the Libyan revolution, the other with Iraqi Vice-President Tarek Aziz. He quit without knowing where he was going to go next. His serendipity prevailed, for shortly afterwards he got a call from Minister of Information Safwat El-Sherif, who asked him to come back to Egyptian TV. Qandil agreed immediately. "I felt I owed a debt of gratitude to the institution that built my fame when I was in my twenties. Also, working in Egypt is more immediately rewarding than anywhere else."
Still, he had not given up on the idea of setting up a private Egyptian satellite station, although he began to believe it was a dream that could not be accomplished in his lifetime. "The government opposed the establishment of privately owned television stations outside its control, and the business magnates whose vested interests are at stake had no interest in a forum in which the free and frank exchange of diverse opinions might jeopardise their relations with the authorities. Also, privately owned stations cannot afford to offer educational and social programmes, because they are not profitable."
But then, where are those red lines that restrict the freedom of the media? Hamdi Qandil answers confidently: "They are all an illusion. There is no document that gives specific guidelines. Rather, the lines are drawn by the people who work in the media in response to specific situations. Contrary to what many believe, the political leadership has no objection to greater freedom, but it wants people capable of understanding the delicate balances at stake. The most courageous person is he who can reach what he imagines to be a red line without tripping over it." He adds, philosophically: "Anyway, life is full of pitfalls. We have to fall on our face once in a while in order to learn."
Calculated risk, sensitivity and the ability to nudge the red line without overstepping it are the characteristics that make his programme, Editor-in-Chief, unique. From his daily survey of the press, he selects 500 items, of which he will only use 60 to 70 per episode to create a tightly woven package presenting his conception of the course of events. Some people think he is too domineering in the various aspects of producing his programme: very fastidious in selecting the material, in preparing the scenario, and selecting the décor, down to how the flowers are placed on the table. On the set, he moves to an expert choreography, timed to coincide with the transition from one idea to the next. That, he says, is not interfering in other people's work. Rather, it is professionalism and perfectionism. His motto in life and in his programme is to take a bold stance and explore new horizons. A certain rebelliousness is a virtue, he believes, as long as it is constructive.
Qandil can understand, and even sympathise with, the reasons why media officials must exercise a certain caution. Television, unlike the national press, is an official media platform. However, he adds, the television bureaucracy is such a shambles and so laden with red tape and negligence that one cannot make it budge.
In spite of the price he has paid for his political convictions, Qandil "the Nasserist" never joined the Nasserist Party, nor, for that matter, any political party or organisation. To him, Nasserism is a spirit, more than a set of rules and principles. It taught his generation self-respect, national pride and the courage to stand up against the great powers, as well as the ideals of social justice and national liberation. But "Nasserism goes beyond generation and class. We find proof of this in the enthusiasm with which the Egyptian people greet every earnest appeal to boycott Israeli products as a political and popular response to Israeli provocation."
On the other hand, Qandil feels that the Arab media can do little to counter Zionist influence in the US media. With stalwart realism, he says the Arab media is a manifestation of the state of the Arab world at present. Until that changes in substance, the media can only touch up the image a bit on the surface. "'You can't make sharbat from fisikh', as the popular adage has it," he says, referring respectively to a syrupy drink and a type of salted fish.
This blend of idealism and down-to-earth realism is evident in every facet of his personality. The woman who shares his life must be beautiful and intelligent, cheerful and strong of character. She should stand by him, work as hard as he does and be a capable housewife. In return, he is ready to hand her the keys of power and the chairmanship of the board of directors of domestic affairs. His mother started a career again after having completed her charge of raising the five siblings. And he has found his ideal in his current wife, the talented actress Naglaa Fathi, whom he met in 1992 and with whom he felt "an immediate chemical bond", which he had not found in his two previous marriages.
An ambitious media celebrity who blushes when asked about his successes, Hamdi Qandil has sweated and toiled in order to rise above his peers. A dreamer who keeps his dreams within his grasp, he also feels he has been blessed by a goodly dose of luck to reward his efforts. He had reached his most outspoken heights in his bitingly sarcastic column in Al-Alam Al-Yom. Now, he prefers to perform his inimitable song before the camera. Do not be deceived by the meekness in his eyes. An indomitable defiance continues to surge unabated in his mind, fueled by his daily finely tuned assault on the red line.
photo: Sherif Sonbol
