Tributes
Gone too soon
Nadia Younes: the name immediately evokes a vivacious, witty and dynamic woman, robust in mind and spirit as well as energetic in words and thoughts. I have known Nadia for the past 30 years. While she was still in Egypt, we sat on the same courses at AUC. Since then, I followed with immense admiration and pride her superlative career with the United Nations. Our paths crossed several times in international fora, the last one being in Johannesburg last year for the World Summit for Sustainable Development where she was the real dynamo, like a drone in a beehive, behind the activities of a gathering where the whole world was represented.
What was refreshing about her was that she found humour in almost any stressful situation, whether it was Kosovo or Baghdad, shining like a bright star over long and stormy nights. "My Egyptian princess" as she was called by Bernard Kouchner, whom she assisted as political advisor in Kosovo.
How ironical and cruelly sad that just a week before the vicious bombing against the UN headquarters in Baghdad, I was conversing with Mr Iqbal Reza, Kofi Anan's chief of staff, who happened to be attending the Assila Conference with me in Morocco, when he announced that Nadia had just been promoted to become assistant secretary-general of the United Nations. It was a dream she had always nurtured; how cruel that it was in Baghdad that her career peaked and her life ended.
In Baghdad she and Sergio di Mello exerted tremendous effort to obtain from the American coalition more prerogatives for the Iraqi Interim Governing Council; this is what we were told by Mehdi Al- Hafez, the newly appointed Iraqi minister of planning.
Their whole aim was to try and create conditions to bring peace and justice to this war torn country. She will be long remembered for her accomplishments, and we urge Dr Farkhonda Hassan, the secretary- general of the National Council for Women, to preserve a special place for Nadia Younes, who managed to convey, more than anything else, an enlightened image of an exceptional Egyptian woman.
To her devastated brother and sister, to her cousins, family and friends, I offer my most sincere condolences for an irreparable loss.
Mona Makram Ebeid
Professor of political science at the American University in Cairo and former member of parliament
The salt of the earth
It was 10 August, my birthday, and I was sitting with my friend Adam Henien in his studio in Haraneya, at sunset. Suddenly I was overtaken by an extraordinary sadness. When he noticed my depression Adam suggested that we go out to celebrate, but I was too melancholy, too exhausted to do anything but go home and sleep.
As I looked through the papers the next morning I was struck by the news of my friend Hosni Guindi's death, his picture on the front page. It was as if my sadness had preceded its cause. I tried, and failed, to contact Hani Shukralla. So I went to Al-Ahram -- only to find the entire staff of Al-Ahram Weekly gathered before the building waiting for the bus that would convey them to the site of the funeral.
Afterwards I tried to draw a portrait of Hosni Guindi, or to write a piece with which to contribute to the extensive obituary pages in which all those who knew him truthfully expressed the depth of their grief. Part of the difficulty tha finally prevented me from doing so was that I hadn't realised quite how many people loved the deceased: the obituaries that had been written expressed everything I could have thought of. It took a long while for me to feel confident enough about writing.
My link with Hosni Guindi started with issue zero of the Weekly, when a mutual friend informed me that, having liked my drawings, he wanted us to meet. We met in the old Al-Ahram building, where he took some drawings that were eventually published in the first few issues, alongside a variety of material. But it was no routine working relationship. The period during which I undertook art journalism for the Weekly was unlike anything comparable I had done since the 1960s. Hosni Guindi was the incentive. An artist himself, he understood ad respected the creative process, giving the Egyptian press back a invaluable principle that it had all but lost: the editor should pay as much attention to the visual as to the verbal aspect of the publication he runs.
I had the honour of working with Hosni Guindi, that rare maestro expertly leading an orchestra of promising young writers and photographers and artists of equally rare refinement, making an unprecedented contribution to journalism. Every time I did a drawing for the Weekly, Hosni Guindi's inimitable qualities indirectly influenced me: his genuine warmth, his noble moral code, his modesty. Such qualities were integrated seamlessly with his professional efficiency: he was not only a rare editor but a rare person as well.
In the end all I can say is that Hosni Guindi had plenty of the kind of humanity that is harder and harder to come by these days. My consolation is that his spirit will live on, his legacy leading others to provide the earth with salt. For if the salt is ruined so are we.
Gamil Shafik
Artist
