The Egyptian perspective
Tarek Atia remembers a conversation with Hosny Guindy about the triumphs, tribulations and responsibilities of being a career journalist
Being the editor-in-chief of a newspaper like Al-Ahram Weekly is not an easy job, Hosny Guindy was often the first one to get to the office in the morning and the last to leave. As head of Egypt's most prominent English-language publication, he took his role extremely seriously.
Guindy called the newspaper "an intravenous needle", a concentrated dose of news and analysis with an Egyptian perspective that targets foreigners living in Egypt, the diplomatic community, Egypt's educated and cultured elite, policy-makers and international academics with an interest in the Middle East. It's an English-language newspaper that carries the name of the Arab world's biggest media organisation -- a 13-year-old child with a century's worth of history behind it. Contributors to Al- Ahram Weekly include prominent political writers such as Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Edward Said, and Noam Chomsky.
As its editor-in-chief, Guindy was the prototype of a working journalist. His mind was never at rest. "Journalism is an art," he had said to me, as we sat in his large, but simple, office on the ninth floor of the new Al- Ahram building in downtown Cairo. The city was pulsing beneath us, Galaa Street's non-stop traffic flow a muted symphony of car horns and near- accidents. I had sat here many times in the past, imbibing the knowledge Guindy had to offer, and with nearly four decades of experience at Al- Ahram, he certainly had a lot to teach.
Guindy joined Al-Ahram in 1964, straight after graduating from AUC with a BA in psychology. He wanted to be a reporter, an investigative journalist writing features that end up helping people. But what he did was work at the foreign desk, where his diligence and dedication were quickly noticed. "I didn't do what I wanted to do," he said, "but was good at what I did." Guindy smiled at the paradox that seemed to mirror his entire life.
Those who are familiar with his easy-going manner, his impeccable politeness and optimistic demeanour may never know of the overwhelming sadness Guindy carried inside him. His father died when he was just 10 years old. The Guindy family lived in Qena, Upper Egypt, back then, and Guindy Habib was a prominent lawyer renowned for his ethics and integrity. He died at the peak of his youth and career during a family vacation in Cairo, leaving his middle son, who was already miserably sick with an obscure ailment called Mediterranean Fever, with "a stamp of sadness" he's carried with him all through his life.
Guindy never forgot the sign "Guindy Habib, Lawyer" with the black stripe on it, one of the traditional symbols of Upper Egyptian mourning. The tragic sight of his young, widowed mother served to catapult Guindy into a state of maturity far beyond his years.
Day and night he would speak to God, his questions going unanswered. Those questions (about the unfairness of being so ill, of having your father die when you're still a child) coloured every breathing moment of Guindy's life. They may also have been the key to his success as a journalist -- his quest to provide answers to the public's questions about the mysterious happenings of the world.
Guindy's illness had already cut heavily into his childhood. Attacks of tight breathing and severe pain came out of the blue, and gave him a sense of being "different from others". Even going to the cinema was difficult. The fever was like a "shadow" that could suddenly plunge him into darkness. At the same time, it also may have had a role in determining his future profession and demeanour. For one thing, it forced him into reading, and by the time he entered high school, he already knew that literature was his one true love.
The world was a different place during Guindy's days at Al-Ahram's foreign desk. This was before the Internet and CNN, when the foreign desk was the primary source for Egyptians to find out what was going on in the world. Guindy and his colleagues, under the direction of then Editor-in-Chief Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, ran a tight ship. They shone during the Cold War era, Nixon's trip to China, the 1968 upheavals in Paris and Prague, and every other major international news event. "Al-Ahram Weekly is a 180 degree shift," Guindy said, "because so much of the news we cover is local."
In 1991, Guindy was recruited from his position as Al-Ahram's deputy editor-in-chief for foreign affairs to help build a new weekly English publication.
One day, he went up to Ibrahim Nafie, Al-Ahram's editor- in-chief and chairman of the board, to discuss a problem. "Nafie said, 'Solve it. You're in charge.' So I learned about it by accident," Guindy smiled modestly. Since then, Guindy founded and continued to run Egypt's most prominent English publication. The paper "quietly gives balance to the media bias of the West", providing what Guindy called the "Egyptian perspective". That phrase has become a mantra for my colleagues and me. It is so much a part of the place that Guindy sometimes joked about it with reporters before rejecting an article.
"I consider the Weekly a weekly test," explained Guindy. "In my professional life, I'm never satisfied. I see the bad points before the good -- what the Weekly lacks and what it achieves. I'm always critical of my own performance. I feel I could always be better. If the cropping of the picture was just two millimetres off, I get upset. I worry a lot. My obsession is with credibility and integrity. I'm neurotic about that."
That obsession -- crystalised in Guindy's hands-on approach and his gruelling sense of responsibility and ambition -- had affected his health over the long run, and had frequently put him in the hospital under very serious conditions. He also felt guilty towards his wife, Moushira, and his daughter, Yasmeen who had always been very understanding about the long hours that made up the nature of his work.
But in the end, Guindy never regretted any of the choices that he said had cost him dearly. "You have to be like a sponge in this job," he said. And if that meant soaking in all the sadness, all the pain and frustration, the hard work and responsibility, all those observations about life, then so be it.
