A time to remember
Fifteen years ago, on 28 February 1991, Al-Ahram Weekly hit the newsstands for the first time. The Weekly 's stated aim was to act as a "bridge to understanding" --the title of the editorial of our first issue -- between the Arabic- speaking world and the West. The editorial, drafted by the Weekly 's founding editor, the late Hosny Guindy, and signed by the then chairman of the board, Ibrahim Nafie, explained that those producing the new publication were "aware of the problematic relationship between the Middle East and the West, which has been due in part to the inaccurate perceptions we have of each other."
Arabic, the editorial further explained, was "the basic component of Arab culture, interacting with Arab reasoning and psychology, which non-Arabs find hard to understand within its proper context". With this in view, it continued, the Weekly would seek "to reflect and to interpret events -- through the medium of English -- from an Egyptian perspective," adding that the success of the venture "will greatly depend on the feedback from the newspaper's readership. Only through this interaction can a real bridge between the two worlds be established -- a bridge joining the English-speaking world to a world whose language often obscures or prevents others from understanding it fully."
These words, written 15 years ago, represent current reality and needs as much as they reflected those in place a decade and a half ago -- certainly during the hectic few months before the paper first appeared. Then the clouds of war were gathering over the region: in August 1990 Iraq had invaded Kuwait, following which events began to unfold rapidly. The UN Security Council set a deadline of 15 January for Iraq to leave Kuwait and during the first two weeks of 1991 international parties were engaged in last-ditch attempts to avert an international crisis the ramifications of which have continued to the present day, and will continue well beyond.
The first zero issue of Al-Ahram Weekly appeared on 17 January in an atmosphere fraught with tension. The core team in charge of conceptualising and overseeing its production comprised some 20 Egyptian and English native tongue speakers -- journalists, sub-editors and translators recruited from outside Al-Ahram and working under the leadership of Hosny Guindy and three other senior Ahram staff members: Hassan Fouad, the Weekly 's first deputy editor, Mohamed Salmawy, its first managing editor and Samir Sobhi, lay-out editor for 14 years and now editorial consultant.
On Tuesday, 15 January -- the deadline given to Iraq would expire at midnight -- the Weekly 's staff were racing to finish the paper before sending it to press the following day. They, like much of the rest of the world, were holding their breath, hoping against hope that war could be averted. Late on Wednesday evening, in Al-Ahram's cutting room where we were helping the staff in charge of hand-pasting the linotype columns and whose knowledge of English was limited, to paste in the right order, Hassan Fouad walked into the hall and announced that Operation Desert Storm had begun. That earth shattering news was dealt with in the following zero issues, and its consequences in every single one of the 784 issues of the Weekly produced since that day.
The Weekly 's first zero issue carried a front- page photo of an anti-war rally in Washington DC at which demonstrators held banners reading "remember Vietnam, don't make the same mistake twice". Their pleas fell on deaf ears, as did the warnings of the Middle East's leading political analyst Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, who was quoted in the inside pages saying "if war breaks out the scene would be reminiscent of the world after Noah's flood."
By the time the first issue of the Weekly was on the newsstands Iraqis had suffered almost six weeks of relentless air bombardment which had finally given way to a no less brutal land and sea offensive. The first issue contained a comment by the late Philip Gallab, who was quoted as saying "Bush's concession to anything Arab is destruction and subjugation for a hundred years to come." Reading those words while leafing through old issues of the Weekly, I was taken aback for a second, before recognising that Gallab was talking of Bush senior and that G W Bush had not yet then emerged into the public arena.
Regarding the staff behind the making of the Weekly in those early days, there is, perhaps, a degree of irony in the fact that the present writer who turned up at Al-Ahram as a 'transit passenger' a few months before the launching of the paper, seeking what she thought was a brief experience before returning to a British university to resume her research in the field of cross-cultural studies, is now the paper's deputy editor and the only Egyptian full-time Al-Ahram employee remaining from the initial core team.
Some members of that team are still contributing to the paper, even if they are no longer resident, with others having since moved on to other jobs. And then sadly there are those who are no longer with us: in marking the paper's 15th anniversary it is only right to pay tribute to departed colleagues who gave generously of their time and expertise in order that the project could see the light of day.
No amount of praise will do justice to the efforts of the late Hosny Guindy, the Weekly 's founding editor, whose vision of the paper as a bridge to understanding has inspired almost everything of value that we have presented to readers over the last 15 years. Without him the qualities our readers have come to associate with the Weekly would not have existed, for the dream that lay behind the paper was Hosny's dream, and it was Hosny who recruited the staff he thought best able to help in realising that dream. Against all odds he sought the help of the outside contributors whom he believed would enhance the credibility of the paper.
Of such outside contributors no one supported the paper and helped in raising its international profile more than Edward Said, who turned to the Weekly to publish his denunciation of the Oslo deal before it was concluded and was impressed by Hosny's acceptance of an opinion piece that starkly opposed Egypt's official stance, which he believed an Ahram publication would not do. Said rewarded the Weekly by making it the vantage point from which he addressed world opinion until the last month of his life, or, rather, the last month of Hosny's life in August 2003. In September 2003 Said himself passed away, having been too ill to write that month. Of all the cruel blows dealt to the newspaper, the loss of these two men in the course of little over a month was by far the cruelest.
Another eminent contributor to the Weekly, who died on 18 February, is the distinguished political analyst Mohamed Sid-Ahmed. His wide range of interests and knowledge of international affairs was remarkable, informing the columns that appeared on this page in every issue of the Weekly. Sid-Ahmed's last column appeared in issue 782 of 16 February, two days before he died. His columns will be sorely missed, as will the unstinting support he offered the paper in all its stages.
Second to Sid-Ahmed in the number of columns contributed to the paper comes David Blake, the Weekly 's music critic, who started writing in the zero issues and continued to provide his devoted readers with a uniquely quirky record of the Cairo music scene until a few weeks before his death in February 2002, at the age of 84. That this septuagenarian Anglo- Australian found his way to the Weekly and was made welcome stands as testimony to Hosny Guindy's originality and humanity. That Mr Blake -- as the Weekly staff fondly called him -- continued to write even as he was battling with the cancer that dogged the last three years of his life, reflects his commitment and dedication to music, his most abiding passion, as well as to the Weekly 's readership.
Of those who worked behind the scenes, their names rarely appearing in by-lines, special mention must be made of Wadie Kirolos and Hassan Fouad. Ustaz Wadie was the paper's assistant editor and home editor from the very beginning and until his death in December 2001. The Weekly 's home reporters are his students: they, and many others, owe him an immense debt. Ustaz Hassan who passed away two weeks ago was the paper's deputy editor between 1991 and 1993. Even after moving to edit the international edition of the Arabic daily he visited us frequently, attended editorial meetings and always made himself available for advice. To these departed colleagues and to others -- Steve Nimr, Mohamed Shebl and Hamdi Saad El-Din, who joined shortly after the inception of the paper -- our thoughts turn at this time of celebration.
No marking of the paper's anniversary would be complete without mentioning Hani Shukrallah, the Weekly 's managing editor between 1993 and 2003 and its acting editor-in-chief following Hosny's death and until the present editor, Assem El-Kersh, assumed his post in July 2005. Hani, who interrupted his research in political theory at Essex University, conducted under the supervision of one of the world's leading political theorists, the late Harold Wolpe, sacrificed a great deal in coming to the paper. He became Hosny Guindy's right-hand man in managing and formulating the policy of the newspaper for over a decade and when Hosny died it was Hani who presided over the paper during a difficult period of transition. He has now moved within the establishment to a senior post at Al-Ahram's Centre of Political and Strategic Studies and is currently a visiting lecturer at Berkeley's School of Journalism in San Francisco. To Hani, who will probably never forgive me for introducing him to Hosny -- who succeeded with his charm in luring us both away from academia -- I wish the best of luck.
Now that the paper has successfully completed the first 15 years of its existence, we can look forward to many more to come under the editorship of Assem El-Kersh, who is overseeing celebrations marking this important milestone. It only remains to wish him every success in taking the paper on to meet new challenges.
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