Changing the world -- gently
By
Hani Shukrallah
On Friday 1 August over 30,000 visitors accessed Al-Ahram Weekly's Web site – an all time high for single day visitors. Al-Ahram's first-ever English-language newspaper had come a long way since it was established 13 years ago. There was no celebration; we have been taking the exponential leaps in our Web site figures in our stride for some time now, well aware that these imply greater responsibility and harder work and, even more importantly, fall short of our hope of becoming the foremost Arab civic platform addressing and interacting with the non-Arab world.
Something crucial was missing, however, as we tried to assess the significance and implications of this latest electronically generated bit of data. Hosny Guindy, Al-Ahram Weekly's founder and editor-in-chief, was not among us to take satisfaction in the news, to scribble his inevitable little reminder notes and discuss ways to refine and develop our work. He was fighting for breath; a stroke in his leg had sent invasive blood clots to his already fragile lungs (in medical-speak: deep venous thrombosis leading to pulmonary embolism.) It was not the first time Hosny had been seriously ill.
A fungal infection a few years ago had led to the surgical removal of part of one lung. Yet Hosny always bounced back. There would be pain, too much pain, but always, Hosny would be back in the office, his kindly smile never wavering, doing 12 to 14-hour days, presiding over editorial meetings, chatting with members of staff, reading copy, supervising design and layout, and constantly moving, his small frame, more often than not garbed in sports shirt and blue jeans, practically every where. You have a point you want to raise with the editor-in-chief? Look for him. It's not very likely that you'll find him sitting comfortably in his spacious office.
This time round Hosny did not come back. On Sunday, sometime in the afternoon, aged 63, but still looking in his 40s despite his many struggles with serious illness, he slept peacefully in his hospital bed never to wake up again.
It is not easy to elegize our editor-in-chief; it might seem an exercise in self-praise for virtually every aspect of Al-Ahram Weekly carries the imprint of his character.
Thirteen years ago Al-Ahram Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Nafie decided that the time had come for the Arab world's oldest existing news establishment to issue an English-language newspaper. He picked the then foreign desk chief of the daily Al-Ahram to make it happen. Intensive meetings were held, guidelines were elaborated and refined, several veterans of both Al-Ahram and the English-language press in Egypt were on hand to assist in the birth but ultimately it was left to the 49 year-old Hosny Guindy, a graduate of the American University in Cairo who joined Al-Ahram in 1963, to deal with the nuts and bolts of setting up and running a wholly new creation with a wholly new staff.
In later years Hosny would look at these first issues of the Weekly and chuckle deprecatingly, describing them as "embarrassingly crude". Many would argue that they were never that, but with hindsight it is truly amazing to note how swiftly the Weekly continued to transform, reinventing itself without seeming to. No upheavals, no revolutions, just persistent, relentless change, all the more remarkable in its being so subtle that it becomes perceptible only over time, even for those of us who were busy bringing it out.
This paradox is wholly Hosny Guindy. An infinitely gentle man, intensely shy with strangers, sweet-natured and low-voiced, a man of such integrity and modesty as to be almost self-effacing. He appeared, at times, as the archetype of the Christian saint or martyr, possessed of an iron determination that was visible only in its effects.
And it was with determination that he embarked upon the job of creating and recreating the Weekly, personally recruiting and building his editorial team from among those he had never known before, and who conspicuously lacked "connections" of any kind.
We are often asked by baffled foreign journalists and diplomats about what they felt were exceptional levels of freedom enjoyed by the Weekly. Why did we publish this or that article, or refrain from giving this or that event the kind of prominence it received in other Egyptian media?
They may or may not believe us when we explain that there was no overall design behind any of it, that no one asked the Weekly to publish this or refrain from giving prominence to that bit of news; that it just so happens that the Weekly's editor-in-chief has no agenda other than producing the best, most professional and truthful newspaper he possibly can; that he remained wholly disinterested in ingratiating himself to the powers that be or using the newspaper as a stepping stone towards some greater "calling". He selected his editorial team from among people who shared the same commitment, and worked ceaselessly to imbue his staff with the same. He proved that it works.
Hosny used to describe himself as a liberal. Perhaps a more apt designation would be that he was, in most profound way, a true humanist. The AUC graduate, Copt and Upper Egyptian from Qena did not posses an intolerant bone in his body. A person's religious faith, gender, political and ideological persuasion, nationality and cultural attitudes disappeared before Hosny's eyes which always search for and interacted with the fundamental in all of us.
He forged and presided over a unique family, made largely of Egyptians but including several non-Egyptians; a family made up of Muslims, Christians and Jews; a great many women and a few men; many of its members deeply devout and quite a few militantly secularist; veiled women and women without veils and all mostly young people who started their careers in the Weekly in their early 20s and are now in their early 30s.
Journalism is never a 9-5 job, and the Weekly takes a great deal of doing, so Hosny spent the best part of the past 13 years with this group of people, as they with him and one another. Throughout he gave of his love, friendship, consideration and are boundlessly, to those of us with whom he shared many things in common no less than to those of us who were, at least on the surface, very different from him.
This week, the members of Hosny's two families came together to bid him farewell. With Moushira, whose boundless energy, love and forbearance were the anchor of Hosny's hectic and often pain-filled life, and with Yasmeen, whom we have witnessed flower into a beautiful young woman, holding a job and engaged to be married., with Hosny's mother, brother and sister and with the many people who loved him, we share a most profound sorrow and sense of loss.
Our only solace is that Hosny's legacy cannot and should not die with him. When self-interest, greed and intolerance seem to rule the day, Hosny Guindy's legacy is worth preserving now as never before.
