A matter of placement
By
Nigel Ryan
An octogenarian Australian sits besides the wife of an Indian diplomat, dictating. She types his words into the computer, occasionally pausing to ask for an explanation of some more obscure remark. Explanation given the process continues.
A weekly occurrence in the culture room of this paper, and one we would take easily in our stride. Regular readers will immediately recognise the octogenarian as David Blake, who for more than a decade was the music critic of these pages, during which period the Egyptian public was treated to a prolonged bout of extraordinarily perceptive, if slightly off the wall, music criticism from an extraordinarily perceptive, if slightly off the wall man. Mr Blake is now dead. The wife of the Indian diplomat, Preeti Singh, left for America several years ago and recently published a novel part of which is set in the offices of an English language newspaper in Egypt.
It is impossible now not to wonder how we could have been so blase about it all, walking into the office, seeing them together and thinking oh good, Mr Blake's piece is almost ready. Australian octogenarians are not, after all, a regular feature of Egyptian newspaper offices and few could have been more eccentric, and immediately recognisable as such, as Mr Blake. Nor is the wife of a senior foreign diplomat taking dictation a common sight in such places. Somehow, though, we came to assume that this was normal practice. It is not. It was simply that Hosny Guindy was our editor-in-chief. It is in remembering such scenes, at the time so seemingly inconsequential, that one begins to appreciate the extent of this particular editor-in-chief's achievement.
The most undemonstrative of men, whatever rocking of the boat he did he did quietly, so quietly you hardly knew it was happening. But make no mistake, carving out a space within which such tableaus could happen, within an institution as venerable and as set in its ways as the Al- Ahram institution, required a great deal of rocking. All the better, then, to make as few ripples as possible, to smooth over the inevitable wake. Hosny had a tremendous capacity for calming troubled waters. It is as enviable a skill as it is uncommon.
He carved out niches within which people might work. He did so anonymously, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. As if it is the most natural thing in the world to have a Scot -- me -- pontificating about Egyptian art, or an Australian on Egyptian music.
I speak only about the culture pages of this newspaper, pages on which I have worked since the inception of Al-Ahram Weekly. Cultural journalism stands at an odd intersection of interests, interests that are at times so pervasive as to make even the approach to the foothills of objectivity difficult. To suggest that Cairo's cultural scene is the ultimate village, that it is cliquey, capable of bouts of paranoia and inhabited by a great many people possessed of overbearing, if surprisingly fragile egos, does not constitute the giving away of secrets. It is probably the same the world over. What is particularly villagey about Cairo, though, is that I knew Hosny fielded a great many complaints from those who felt they had been subjected to unfair criticism. And not once did he mind, preferring often to not even to mention the incident. He required only the none pursuit of agendas, which I suspect might be as rare in the offices of newspapers as octogenarian music critics. As long as he was convinced you had maintained an objective position he did not mind who was complaining on the other side of the telephone, something for which I shall remain eternally grateful.
I arrived in Egypt in my late 20s, and apart from the first nine months in Cairo my stay has been intimately connected with work on this paper. In many ways Cairo is the city in which I grew up: certainly the 13 years I have worked at the Weekly are the longest I have spent in a single job. That this proved possible was due only to the unmitigating support of the editor-in-chief, whose friendship I shall cherish.
Once he told me that the two things the expense of which he never begrudged were flowers and perfume. It was typical that whatever materialism he professed should have focussed on the fleeting and the ineffable. But then nor did he begrudge the cost -- and it was probably higher than most of us could imagine -- involved in carving out a niche for the many of the people he employed.
Decency is an underrated virtue. Perhaps it is underrated because it is undemonstrative. It spurns the limelight, and in doing so refuses the brasher trappings of success. It is, perhaps, an unfashionable virtue, as uncommon as the pursuit of self-interest is common. Hosny possessed rather more decency than one could reasonably expect. It has always been a rare commodity. Now it is rarer still.
I do not expect to see another eccentric octogenarian sitting in the corner of the office, dictating to the wife of an Indian diplomat. Such possibilities passed away with Hosny. It was the greatest of privileges to be around while he made such things happen.
