Regular contributors and leading journalists pay tribute to Hosny Guindy, Al-Ahram Weekly's editor-in-chief since its inception
Spirit of transparency
I made the acquaintance of Hosny Guindy years ago and he was always delicate, gentle and remarkably transparent. His voice never rose, he was never angry with anyone. His capacity for tolerance and sympathy verged on the superhuman. Towards the end of his life he transformed his suffering into a form of serenity.
I remember my last meetings and phone conversations with him: to my mind he continued to embody the decent, reasonable patriot who cared deeply about every aspect of Egyptian life without ever expressing that concern in an exaggerated or unpleasant way. He believed in freedom and remained in love with journalism; under his guidance Al-Ahram Weekly became a free and objective forum in which every orientation or opinion could be expressed. It was only to be expected that the foreign press should quote widely from Al-Ahram Weekly and foreign diplomats in Cairo came to rely on it as a source of information and opinion.
In addition to all this Guindy was supremely humane. He knew how to disarm people, extracting the best from them while neutralising tensions. He was a remarkable husband and father. The purity of his spirit will no doubt live on in his daughter Yasmeen. The screen through which he viewed the world was transparent, soiled by neither hatred nor self interest.
The loss of Guindy is therefore multifold: a devoted journalist, an angelic family man, an invaluable friend. Our only consolation is that, through death, he has finally shed his pain; and that his transparent spirit will hover around us for as long as we live.
Mustafa El-Feki
Chairman of the People's Assembly's Foreign Affairs Committee.
A noble journalist
Hosny Guindy left us suddenly. Those close to him have lost a beam of light, a pleasant breeze that ameliorated the harshness of life. He liked everyone and everyone liked him. He extended his always helping hand to anyone who asked for it, expecting nothing in return. He smiled even as he suffered the exhaustion of debilitating illness, sparing others the possible distress of his pain. The smile never left his face.
He occupies a very special place in our hearts because of the rarity of the qualities he embodied. His morals, behaviour, thought, his style of work and management, his salutary honesty with himself and others -- I can safely say that I have never encountered anything like it. My relationship with him was equally rare: we understood each other intuitively and could understand each other without exchanging a word. I never told him I was fond of him, nor did he tell me he was fond of me. Our encounters, however long the gaps separating them, always reflected these sentiments. We would be separated for a month, even a year, but when we met we would resume our conversation as if it had never stopped. Sometimes, like true friends, we conversed in silence. He was not talkative though he carried inside him vast reserves of sympathy for his friends and colleagues. He was a fountain of disintersted goodness.
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Meeting with President Mubarak while on a visit to Al-Ahram, to Guindy's right: Ibrahim Hegazi, the chief editor of Al-Ahram Al-Riyadi and Abdel-Wahab Motawei', the chief editor of Al-Shabab magazine
Hosting Edward Said at the Cairo Capital Club. Said is surrounded by Mona Makram Ebeid and Mursi Saad El-Din (l) Ibrahim El-Mo'alem and Guindy (r)
...with Egyptian Nobel Laureate Ahmed Zuweil
...visiting Naguib Mahfouz following an attempt on the Nobel Laureate's life
...with mentor, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, and life-long friend and colleague Samir Sobhi
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Guindy was a rare journalist and an equally rare human being. Yet he never expressed, probably he never even felt, his own importance. If someone expressed such an opinion he would promptly shrug it off, insisting that he was merely a journalist trying to live up to his duties. He was a rare human being because he had an immense capacity for love, tolerance, forgiveness and cooperation. He was an equally rare teacher: everyone who worked with him learned, yet he made people feel as if he was learning from them. He never spoke of himself or of his achievements nor would he address the younger or lower-ranking with a superior attitude.
Samir Sobhi, one person who knew him well, calls him "the noble journalist", an apt adjunct indeed. Nor did his students at Al-Ahram Weekly disagree with it: invariably they testified to him being a brother, a father, a teacher. Ali Ghoneim described him as "a pillar of the Egyptian press", Sami Metwali as his "lifelong, respectable friend", Ibrahim Hegazi as "a symbol of humanity", and a host of senior Al-Ahram editors as "a dear friend".
I first met him when I arrived at Al-Ahram at the start of 1970. He was a delicate young man: thin, calm, with a remarkably low voice, working quietly, as if at prayer. At the time he was an editor at the foreign desk -- its head was Jacqueline Khouri, another teacher who functioned as if she was just starting out in the profession -- meticulously, with devotion. She was like a mother to me and my colleagues. At four in the afternoon she would gather her editors, and any other acquaintances she might encounter on the way, and invite us all to lunch in the Al-Ahram restaurant acquiring, in the process, the nickname of "the duck and her little ones".
What pleased her about Guindy, in particular, was his tireless devotion and capacity for discipline -- working ceaselessly and never demanding additional credit for it.
Later I encountered him as deputy head of the foreign desk, then as head and nothing about him seemed to change. He was as simple, calm, polite, modest, meticulous and devoted as he had always been. He checked facts and listened to other people's opinions; if he felt they were right he never thought twice about conceding. He had neither guile nor enemies and he never enaged in the wily interchanges of the workplace; he never argued with anyone. He never sought promotions: each time he was appointed to a higher position he would initially resist the move, saying he was perfectly happy where he was. He did not have a self-serving bone in his body.
"I don't believe you're so good. You must be the greatest actor. Some day we'll discover the truth," I used to tell him. Later I knew that he was that good -- that he possessed the kind of goodness you only encounter once or twice in a lifetime. People like Guindy cannot help but impact on those who surround them. It is as if they infect them with a virus of virtue. Everyone who worked with Guindy ended up acquiring some of his traits.
When he was in the process of founding Al- Ahram Weekly I discovered his stamina and endurance; he was so exhausted at times that he would drag his feet yet still he personally oversaw each and every aspect of the work.
It is due to his devotion that Al-Ahram Weekly became the superbly civilised, English-language face of Egypt, achieving greater and greater success as time went by. Yet no one was made aware of the effort Guindy exerted in the process. People felt almost as if the Weekly came out by itself. Even during the illness that eventually took his life, or the bouts of Mediterranean fever from which he regularly suffered, he could, more often than not, be found in his office working away.
My only consolation on losing him is that he left behind students who loved and learned from him, and who will continue to give off some of the energy he inspired.
Ragab El-Banna
Chairman of the board of Dar El- Ma'aref and editor-in-chief of October magazine.
Impeccable judgment
Hosny Guindy was already a key member of the foreign desk when I first joined Al-Ahram in the summer of 1968. Mr Guindy, with his unassuming manner and disarmingly affable smile, was the most welcoming among the group of highly professional newsmen who were the papers' eyes and ears on world events. They were the best such team in Egypt at that time.
These were the heydays of Al-Ahram under Mohamed Hassanein Heikal who, in seeking to transform the newsroom and the newspaper decked the foreign desk with such luminaries as Mohamed Hakki, Salama A Salama, Hassan Fouad, the late George Aziz and a long list of other distinguished writers.
Mr Guindy's manner and style stood out among this highly competitive group. He worked quietly, did not get carried away with the drama of the newsroom and was always available to chat amicably with his many colleagues. He had a habit of moving gracefully around the newsroom discussing work-related matters rather than using the telephone or sending messages around.
Over the years Mr Guindy's leadership asserted itself through his impeccably good judgement, his quiet persuasion, his untiring dedication to his work and his example-setting style. He rose in the ranks of Al-Ahram under successive editors to become head of the foreign desk, then became one of the deputy chief editors who managed various departments of Al-Ahram daily.
Eventually he was given an assignment of major significance: to found a state-of-the-art newspaper in English to be published by the Al-Ahram Organisation.
The task, which could have easily targeted selected translations from Al-Ahram daily, proved to be his greatest challenge and his ultimate success. In his quiet but untiring manner he consulted widely and agonised endlessly over a vision of a world-class newspaper until one was born.
Over the years his personality traits became inextricably twined with the high professional qualities he set for Al-Ahram Weekly and the remarkable team that produced it. Editor, editorial team and the newspaper became one, a success unparalleled in modern Egyptian media.
Under his stewardship Al-Ahram Weekly had, within a few years , built a formidable following among readers and contributors of the highest repute. Eventually the paper was able to distinguish itself as simply the Weekly, coming of age and literally shedding its namesake of high repute!
The qualities of the Weekly and its credibility were such that it became the forum of choice for notable thinkers of national and international stature such as Edward Said, Rushdie Said and many others.
Perhaps Mr Guindy's greatest contribution to the success of the Weekly was his ability to attract talent, young and mature alike, from the four corners of the earth to join his team. What attracted them the most was that unlike the pale publications that abound in the region he and his editorial staff enabled the Weekly to reflect the burning fires of independent thinking in Egypt, the region, and the world.
His fierce devotion to Egypt and its welfare, to Palestine and other pan-Arab causes, to culture and the arts, was complemented by his equally deep devotion to his family, his wife Moushira, his daughter, Yasmeen and to his many friends.
Hosny Guindy will be greatly missed, but the Weekly will live on.
Ahmed M Abushadi
Writer and former Al-Ahram journalist
The last deadline
Alexandria, 12 August -- It is not uncommon for a columnist to be asked to write an obituary for a cherished friend who has suddenly passed away. What is uncommon is that he should commemorate this event on a day that coincides with his own birthday. If this sounds like the all too familiar paradox of life and death it serves also as an apt metaphor for the quiet drama that was Hosny's life, his accomplishments, his illness and sudden death two days ago.
Hosny lived a quiet but rich life. When he departed he did so in his own style: not with a bang and not with a whimper but with a sense of calm and dignity. He was a disciplined person with a deep sense of duty. He quietly expected others to match his own levels of responsibility but was never angry at anyone who failed to do so. He was either surprised or, at worst, disappointed. "Yaa akhee....(my brother)...." was his favourite way of beginning to express surprise at a disappointing situation or person. He was politely critical, but he always introduced his criticism with a pleasant compliment.
When I met Hosny at Al-Ahram almost 35 years ago I was impressed by his sense of commitment and respect for deadlines. Deadlines, of course, are an integral part of journalistic culture. Hosny, in particular, seemed to be born with an inherent sense of that culture, something that remained a hallmark of his life and career. On 9 April, when Baghdad fell to the invading allied forces, Hosny called. It was Wednesday and only a few hours before the deadline when the Weekly went to press. He said calmly they were "throwing out the front- page" and wondered if I could write a news analysis on the situation. "How much time do I have?" I asked. "About three hours," he answered, in a tone both friendly and professional, and then he passed me on to Hani Shukrallah, the Weekly's managing editor. There was a crisis, no doubt, but Hosny's tone never betrayed that.
Hosny's professionalism, commitment and personality has made the Weekly what it is today -- a newspaper few Egyptian publications can match in wealth of content and seriousness of purpose. Hosny has left behind an enduring legacy that will always be a testimony to his leadership and professionalism. Hosny has met his last deadline.
For me, as for many of his friends and admirers, Hosny will always be there, looking me in the face with a glitter of excitement in his eyes and a shy smile on his face every time I look at the Weekly. But there is a difference. With the loss of Hosny, part of every one of us will be missing.
The 16th century English poet John Donne famously wrote:
" No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee".
Ayman El-Amir
Writer and former Al-Ahram journalist
An unassuming man
It was left to Hosny Guindy to start our dream, in Al Ahram, to have an English language newspaper. We had been dreaming of one since the early 1960s. Friends, especially foreign correspondents, used to wonder why it was that a great capital like Cairo did not have an English language newspaper: it had two French dailies but the running joke about the Egyptian Gazette was that it was neither Egyptian nor a gazette. I even received a telegram (this was before telexes, faxes and e-mail) from Nawal Mehallawi asking me to end my fellowship with the American Political Science Association because "Mr Heikal wants to start an English language newspaper." That was in 1964. It did not happen and I left Egypt in 1972 without seeing the realisation of that dream. It was to be left to the most unassuming member of the foreign desk to take on the burden for all of us, and indeed for all of Egypt.
I am sure many of my colleagues are better qualified to speak about the Weekly. None, though, can mourn Hosny as I mourn him. I feel the world suddenly lonely though I know that his gentle, reassuring soul will always be with us.
Like most Egyptians living abroad I sometimes feel anxious about what I hear and read on Egypt. Whether on the phone or in person during my frequent visits it was to Hosny I would turn for reassurance. I still remember him telling me recently: "You should always assume that people act in good faith and always mean well."
It was his personality and integrity that made him the loveable leader that he was. I never saw him angry. I have always believed to my finger- tips in the Egyptian character. I believe that all our youth need is a diamond cutter, one skilled in collecting the rough hewn rocks from the soil of this land and capable of cutting them in such a way that they might shine like diamonds. Hosny had this quality.
If nobility is a matter of character Hosny was one of the noblemen of our time.
His modesty was legendary. He never sought the company of the rich and famous. He was very surprised when a former American ambassador once asked to visit him and spent an hour discussing the Weekly. He never ran after the limelight, preferring instead the company of his family. Indeed, I am reminded of what the Pope said of Gamal Abdel-Nasser after his death, that he was faithful to his family and led a clean life. He was diligent in his search for truth and extremely proud of all his colleagues regardless of their age or experience.
This frail man made of the Weekly the best paper in Egypt, and one of the best in the world. When Ahmed Maher was ambassador in Washington he urged me to write for the Weekly. 'Everybody reads it,' he said, 'and I mean everybody.'
Hosny was able to recruit the best names to write for it, and feel proud that they do. It is always cheering for me to hear people in New York, Boston, or Chicago say they always look forward to reading the Weekly. A quick glance at the letters to the editor tells all you need to know about the breadth of readership.
Hosny was one of the most loyal of members of the journalistic profession. He was one of its most decent practitioners, elevating its practice with his ethics, integrity and non-partisanship. I know, Hosny habibi, that you are looking down on us, smiling as always. May the peace of God and his angels be with you. You will be a wonderful role-model for generations to come, a sorely missed colleague, brother and, as I always referred to you, an adopted son. It is always cruel to have a son pass away before oneself. God bless you.
Mohamed Hakki
Veteran Al-Ahram journalist resident in Washington, DC.
A symbol lost
People have always disagreed about everything except, perhaps, about death. Everyone knows that death is inevitable, real. Everyone will die, there are no exceptions and no intercession or intervention that can postpone or prevent it. And no one knows the time of his death. This singular point of agreement sadly never goes beyond verbal confirmation. If people truly understood it and acted on that understanding our lives would not be so ugly, so full of lies, deceit, hypocrisy, injustice and oppression.
Hosny Guindy departed this life as quietly as he did everything. He was serenity itself. It would be presumptuous to talk about Guindy the journalist; he is above assessment. All I can say is that journalistic talent, combined with thorough knowledge and immense experience are all elements that can be replaced. The path leading up to their realisation may be a long and difficult one but it is far from impossible to traverse.
Far more difficult to achieve, though, if not impossible, is the combination of these elements with the vast degree of tolerance and humanity, the confidence, calm and modesty that is Hosny Guindy. The loss of such a combination is grave, and it has been incurred not only by Al- Ahram but the entire country.
Ibrahim Hegazi
Editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Al- Riyadi and deputy chairman of the Press Syndicate.
A season of grief
Distress at the news of the death of Hosny Guindy has descended as heavily, as unbearably, as the August heat. As the priest announced his departure from the realm of torment to the realm of prosperity it was not surprising to see tears in the eyes of almost everyone present, and there were a great many people in the church that afternoon. It is hard to imagine anyone who knew him not grieving.
In life, and particularly in the arena of journalism, it is all too easy to confuse courage with vociferousness, success with becoming a household name. Hosny Guindy's career illustrates the lie at the heart of such assumptions. His success was based on sincerity and devotion, on stylistic appeal and logical persuasion. Such were his virtues as a young foreign desk editor whose tasks included the selection, translation and presentation of material transmitted through press agencies and private resources. This process demands more than proficiency in English: it involves awareness of the subtle variations of both English and Arabic and familiarity with the implications of each term and expression.
It was his excellence in such intractable aspects of the job that encouraged Ibrahim Nafie to give him the responsibility of starting Al- Ahram Weekly in 1990. Debates as to how to put together an English-language newspaper that could live up to the reputation of Al- Ahram were eventually resolved in favour of Guindy's view -- the Weekly must be independently written, not a compilation of translations of Al-Ahram articles, it should offer an Egyptian-Arab perspective on local and regional events as well as a window onto Egyptian and Arab culture and arts; its language and content should maintain the highest possible standards.
Guindy, who was asked to make his own decisions, chose to take his time, trying out different ideas and producing many experimental issues before finally settling on a formula and a quality he felt could be maintained. I was fortunate enough to participate in this process when he asked me to assume responsibility for news and features, a task I undertook with the help of a group of young men and women (many of them have now become excellent journalists) for three years. During this time I became very close to Hosny. Together with Samir Sobhi, the Weekly's layout editor, I prodded him to submit the final proposal which was quickly approved by Nafie. That night we stayed up till morning, celebrating and trying to take the edge off Hosny's anxiety.
We treated the new newspaper with the care reserved by a mother for her newborn, staying at the press observing every stage of preparation, full of apprehension. And there would be no end of phone calls from Hosny's wife, Moushira, who pleaded with him to look after his heath and sometimes used his daughter Yasmeen, then a child, to persuade him to return home early. But Hosny was of the generation that considered work a form of worship, as the saying goes. His devotion never waned and Nafie all but forced him to seek treatment abroad. No sooner was he back than he again immersed himself in work, in defiance of his doctors' advice. Even his Weekly colleagues would urge him to look after himself but he could not bear to be away from work for a single day.
And all the while he was quiet. He did not complain or cry out. He never succumbed to the increasingly crippling pain. And he was never content with the success he achieved but rather saw it as an incentive to perform. Hosny Guindy was a rare breeze in the middle of much stifling heat, a breeze of which illness has cruelly deprived all those fortunate enough to have known him.
Mahmoud Murad
Deputy editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram.
Death, be not proud
The pen struggles, the hand shakes, the tears gather in the eyes from every part of the body that weeps, mere droplets from an ocean so deep of an unspeakable grief that he is gone. Every beat of the heart cries "No. Say it is not so". Wild despair, sorrow and anguish, anger and rage finally give way to interminable grief over the loss of one who possessed such virtues. Death has robbed life of one of its perfect creations and "the suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, and has the nature of infinity." But Death, be not proud. Though you bring sorrow and misery in your wake you shall not take away the memory of one endowed by the gods with more kindness and gentleness, patience and compassion, honour and honesty than any other human. And yet he walked amongst us with such humility and grace, unaware of the spiritual force which inspired all around him. No one who came in contact with him was left untouched. If angels look after God's creatures and protect them, so did he. His tenderness was a comfort and shield to those who had the great fortune of knowing him. He embraced everyone regardless of rank or title with the same serenity and sincerity, leaving no one untouched by his grace and manner. You walked on air when walking by his side for he was always up there higher than the rest, and he pulled you up with him. It was his soul not his body that possessed such force. He will always live in our hearts as long as pure hearts ring true. The heavens are smiling that so many flowers have bloomed everywhere he trod.
So,
Death, be not proud......
.......though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou
art not so;
It matters little when or how or where we met. I know I have known him all my life, the better part of my life, because of a constant search for beauty, an endless striving for perfection.
Biographical details of profession and achievements I will leave to others more knowledgeable, and there are many. It is the essence of a human being so unique that stirs the heart with deep sorrow at his parting. What a lamentable waste you have brought upon the land.
In this dark solitude only his virtues shine like bright stars on a long and stormy night. Visions come back to me through my tears of my visit to his hotel suite in Houston, Texas where he was undergoing medical treatment. His dear wife Moushira and his lovely daughter Yasmeen greeted me like a long lost member of the family recovered at last. Their sincerity and affection were so penetrating it warms my heart now as it did then and as it always will. And then I saw him. The physical description is insignificant. He was frail and fragile yet to me he seemed a giant. His supreme strength stemmed from his intensity, his total focus on you, and his high sense of morality that filled the air around, reminding one with every breath that we were in the presence of an extraordinary being. He made you feel you mattered; you were of the utmost importance to him. He made everyone feel this way. By the end of my visit I felt somehow that I had been blessed. I prayed for his safe journey home. I prayed for his health. I prayed for his family.
Some years later on my return to the homeland he and his family welcomed me back with lilies and roses and the warmest of greetings from the warmest hearts -- no,
Death, be not proud........
For those whom thou think'st
thou dost verthrow Die not,
poor death;
nor yet can'st thou kill me.
It was his gentle persuasion that finally convinced me to pick pen and paper and compose these lines each week. The last task this pen wished to assume was to eulogise such a dear friend.
No, Death, be not proud, you have taken the best this world could boast about, and the world is all the poorer for it. You have diminished our universe, you have taken away a perfect son, a loving husband, a tender brother, a proud father, and above all the best friend anyone could ever hope for.
I have never known him when he was not ridden with disease, yet I never knew him to be a sick man. He was strong, robust in mind and spirit, vigorous and energetic in words and thoughts, the busiest, most dedicated journalist in the business. He seldom picked up his pen to put his thoughts on the pages, preferring to encourage and promote others, disinterested in personal gain and glory. But when he did he poured out such wealth of prose, such elegance of style, such profoundness of feeling and meaning, and showed the rest of us what true expression in words was all about.
He was not only the highest calibre of journalists, he was also a poet, a philosopher, a man of culture and of fine taste. He had an eye and a feel for the visual page of his beloved Weekly. For Al-Ahram Weekly was truly his beloved. The Weekly was the son he never had and he tended it with the utmost of care. He attended its birth, nursed, fed and reared it and watched it grow to become the most important paper in the land. He beamed with pride when they complemented his "son". He treated it with the reverence you afford your priest or religious leader, with the authority of a Sophocles to his pupils. He came to work every day with the enthusiasm of a boy on his first day at school -- with a smile on his lips and a song in his heart and the determination to overcome every obstacle, cross every river, climb every mountain. He taught his "son" dignity, honesty and the high morals and asense of fairness that few papers can boast of this day. Earnest and ethical a journalist, he was ever mindful of the finest virtues of his profession. He never felt compelled to supply the public with what it wants but with what it should have, thus raising their standard of thought by holding his trade to the highest ethical standard. How fortunate for Al-Ahram Weekly to have had such a loving father!
Incapable of injustice towards his fellow man, he was only guilty of injustice towards himself, his talent, his health. He robbed himself of days and nights of rest, working long hours despite the pain and weariness his body suffered. No, Death, be not proud....
......from thee much more must flow
And soonest our best men with
thee go -- Rest of their bones
and souls' delivery!
He was never anything but himself, perfectly and absolutely himself, one who had realised the perfection of the soul within him. He admired many but imitated none. He never knew violence and violence never knew him. Mixing the imaginative with the intellectual he produced the perfect form, his army of dedicated assistants happy to follow his lead so confident were they that he was always serving the highest form of professionalism and integrity. He had no desire to exercise authority, neither did he need to. His powers of intellect and reason, his calm demeanour and his gentle spirit had us all eating out of his hand. His leadership and authority were bred by gentleness for gentleness is mightier than the sword.
To have known Hosny Guindy was an honour and privilege and we are all the better for it.
No
Death be not proud......
Why swellous thou then
One short sleeve passed, we
wait eternally,
And Death shall be
no more....
Death, thou shalt die.
-- John Donne
Lubna Abdel-Aziz
Actress and columnist with Al-Ahram Weekly.
Man for all seasons
My grief surpasses any form of elegy: the world has lost a man who went far in his humanity, a liberal and a democrat who daily exerted himself for the sake of justice and equality in matters personal and public.
I have never known a man who could so effortlessly turn hours of pain into a gracious, welcoming smile, or absorb the rage of others as expertly as a priest, or one whose drive led him to prefer the rough-and-tumble of work to the authority of a high-ranking position.
He moved around the offices of the Weekly, to which he became addicted, like a drone in a beehive in pursuit of professional excellence. It was his smile that neutralised my apprehension when I went to the foreign desk of Al-Ahram for the first time, more than a quarter of a century ago. He gave me the first cup of tea I had in the institution, simplifying what appeared to be intractably complicated. From that day onwards we were linked by a mentor-disciple, even a brother-sister relationship. He taught me how to come up with a headline, how to compose a lead, how to write an objective article. Sometimes we would sit around for more than an hour discussing a single headline or a complex idea.
Often I would barge into his room, furious, enraged at some injustice to which I thought him party. Yet no sooner did he realise what had happened than he would promptly rectify the situation. Once I went into his room in tears, explaining that my mother was very ill and required expensive treatment -- only to find him running around here and there trying to sort out the papers necessary for Al- Ahram to cover the expence while I sat comfortably in his armchair; it was a valuable lesson in the relation between a boss and his employee.
I was witness to his nurturing an entire generation of journalists on the foreign desk, journalists who continue to display his meticulous attention to detail and devotion to work. I also observed the labour pains as he brought Al-Ahram Weekly into being. As a leader he is largely responsible for the Weekly's status as a respected and enlightened publication that addresses a Western readership in a language it easily understands. I would visit him within the Weekly at least once a week because I could not bear to forgo what he had to teach me. And as a member of the Weekly team I discovered the meaning of the family spirit, collective thinking and the unbureaucratic approach. He was deeply opposed to bureaucracy and his ambition knew no limits. He may not have been a well-known writer but he used his knowledge of psychology to compose a wonderful symphony of team work in every position he occupied. And he made generations of journalists who continue to feel immense gratitude for his help.
None of his achievements were easy. They required long hours of exertion. But when his illness became too overwhelming what upset him most was that he was unable to spend as much time as he wanted at work. His crisis was the discrepancy between his desire to work harder and his inability to do so due to health problems -- much like the discrepancy between his ambition and the inability of others to keep up with him. He really was a man for all seasons.
Sajini Dularamani
Deputy managing editor of Al- Ahram.
A rare ordinariness
I knew only two things about him for sure, though they comprise the most prominent aspects of his person and his legacy -- his honourable journalistic record and his rare, refined morals.
At the professional level, as a journalist and editor-in-chief, Hosny Guindy was ordinary to the point of rarity. At the personal level he was even more ordinary -- surprisingly ordinary. To be able to be professionally and personally ordinary at a time when finding an ordinary person, in either the professional or personal spheres, is increasingly difficult, that was the miracle he achieved.
I had no ongoing direct relations with him, so I cannot claim I knew him closely. Nor did we belong to the same generation, so that I cannot claim to have had all that much in common with him either. We seldom spent time together, most of our encounters being casual and brief -- at the entrance of Al-Ahram, in the elevator, in his office. I knew almost nothing of his private life beyond what he once told me in passing, that he was born in my own small town in Upper Egypt, that he lived there until he graduated from secondary school and that, like me, he did not live in Cairo until he enrolled at university. It was here that his long and fertile career began and ended.
Yet his constant, modest, charming smile and his genuine shyness always gave me a sense of profound familiarity, as if he was one of those schoolboy friends I had left behind. I felt very close to him when I saw his timidity on being greeted as an editor-in-chief at the entrance of Al- Ahram. He seemed to me like the shy, intelligent upper Egyptian who never stopped feeling a little out of place in the city in spite of all the experience he accumulated as an English speaker and the founder of the first major English- language newspaper in the region. I would always glimpse on his face the melancholy only upper Egyptians who have left behind the towns, villages and accents of their childhood can understand.
At a time when a high-ranking post in the trouble-seeking profession has become, for the vast majority of those who occupy it, a bridge on the way to even higher-ranking positions or else to material gain, whether or not in the same profession, Guindy continued to see his position as a vocation. He sought no gain in the task though struggled to perform it with all his ability, investing in it all his knowledge and good breeding. Such an understanding was at one time the norm. It would not have attracted attention. Yet in our times, the age during which Hosny Guindy lived and died, it was remarkable for anyone to go so against the grain of the commonplace, the familiar.
Hosny Guindy's name seldom appeared anywhere in the newspaper he headed except in tiny type in the masthead even though his huge, ongoing effort was evident throughout its pages. He followed an ordinary managerial procedure in as much as the only criteria for publication, appointment or promotion he applied were firmly based in good, old-fashioned journalistic ethics, something that also constituted a fight against the prevailing current.
Unlike the men who hog the headlines in our extraordinary times Hosny Guindy struggled to remain an ordinary human being, a journalist who did not attract attention because he did not presume that he was news. The result was that he attracted a great deal more attention than most. Those who seek to leave a legacy of goodness should look to his example. It is one of simplicity and toil: they, he revealed, are the secret behind maintaining such ordinariness in such extraordinary times.
Diaa Rashwan
Managing editor of the annual The State of Religion in Egypt Report, issued by Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
A saint's endurance
I discovered he had suffered illness since childhood. The doctors, he told me, had informed his family that on reaching puberty he would be cured. He wasn't. Then they said that when he married he would be cured. In due course he was fortunate enough to have a kind and devoted wife, but again he wasn't cured. Before I met him I was told he was undergoing treatment in Reading, England, and that he would soon return. He did, but the illness didn't go away.
We were always neighbours, living in Heliopolis most of our lives. We were colleagues at the foreign desk of Al-Ahram and again in London when he participated in founding Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper in 1978. We returned from London at the same time, and worked together again when he founded the Weekly, where I was deputy editor-in- chief. We never stopped meeting. Every time I encountered an obstacle or went through a crisis I found him there, providing all the help and advice he could, willingly, enthusiastically. Though he was younger than me I never hesitated to ask his advice. And he was invariably supportive and genuinely sympathetic. He never adopted an attitude for effect.
He was natural and sincere in every feeling he expressed. He never said anything untoward about anyone. And he avoided gossip like the plague. Many said of his behaviour and his smile, especially in times of crisis, that they belonged more to the angels than to man. For my part I feel that, in his illness, he displayed the kind of endurance that one most readily associates with the saints.
Hassan Fouad
Advisor to Al-Ahram's editor-in- chief and former deputy editor-in- chief of Al-Ahram Weekly.
