On Thursday, 28 February 1991, the first issue of Al-Ahram Weekly hit the newsstands as a liberal English-language national newspaper published every week by Al-Ahram. It was a coincidence that the launch of the Weekly took place on the same day the Gulf War ended. It was also a coincidence that the Weekly appeared nearly a month after the board of Al-Ahram had ordered the publication of the evening paper Al-Ahram Al-Masaai. The first issue of the latter was published on 17 January 1991 with Morsi Attallah as its founder and editor-in-chief. The launch of Al-Ahram Al-Masaai dates back to the time of the Gulf War. In order to cover the heated political events, Al-Ahram had to publish several daily editions, and for a time a fifth edition of the daily paper was distributed in the evening. The idea was raised of an evening paper that would replace the final edition of the daily. The former chairman of Al-Ahram, Ibrahim Nafei, agreed with Attallah, an editor on the newspaper's central desk, that Al-Ahram Al-Masaai should be published as an evening paper. It was decided that it should contain different material from the Al-Ahram daily and that it should particularly cover the Gulf War waged between Iraq and Kuwait. The launch of the Weekly started with five zero issues after a meeting held in January 1990 on the 12th floor of the old Al-Ahram building to discuss the idea of publishing a weekly newspaper in English. The meeting was chaired by Nafei and attended by a group of prominent Al-Ahram writers including Ahmed Nafei, Salama Ahmed Salama, Hosny Guindy, Hassan Fouad, Mohamed Salmawi, Mohamed Eissa Al-Sharqawi, Atef Al-Ghamri, Sameh Abdallah, Mushira Moussa, Hisham Mamdouh Taha and this writer. In addition to these figures from Al-Ahram, the meeting was also attended by journalists Luis Greiss and Bahgat Badie. The details of the new publication were thoroughly discussed, including its concept, day of publication, number of pages, size of circulation, and price (PT50 at that time). Nafei was especially keen on choosing the paper's layout editor himself even before naming its editor-in-chief as the late Hosny Guindy, the Weekly's founder whose characteristic smile will be long remembered. Preparation of the new newspaper started with weekly meetings in a small room partitioned off from Al-Ahram's main editorial hall that we called “the pearl”. The founding team included Olfat Al-Tohami, Rajia Nashaat, Jill Kamel, Mona Anis, Morsi Saadeddin, Wadie Kirollos, Mamdouh Al-Dakhakhni and Bahgat Badie. A group of Al-Ahram journalists also joined the Weekly team, including Mahmoud Murad, Ezzat Al-Saadani, Ismail Al-Baqari, Mohamed Basha, Abdel-Rahman Akl, Hedayat Abdel-Nabi and Mustafa Al-Naggar. The work was quite a challenge, as creating an English-language newspaper that would be 100 per cent Egyptian turned out to be a difficult job. At that time, most Egyptian newspapers were nearly identical in layout, and there is an instinctive feeling that directs most papers towards imitating what already exists. The elements used are mostly the same, and designs tend to be similar owing to the use of the same machines brought in from abroad. In the case of the Weekly, it took us some 13 months to produce the first zero issue that turned out to be different from what we had had in mind. Many meetings were held and negotiations conducted, and there was a lot of discussion on using English-language typewriters, even electronic ones, as most people were used to Arabic. Then there was the issue of proofreading and the need to ensure that the new newspaper would be free of errors. We defined our plans for the new paper, the fonts to be used in printing it, and its editorial policies in these meetings. A style book for the new newspaper was prepared, and we agreed to use British English for the newspaper and not American. A horizontal layout was selected for the paper, and photographers working for the Weekly were invited to give prominence to stylish photographs. A group of distinguished photojournalists, among them Antoine Albert and Randa Shaath, joined the staff. On the day the Weekly was launched the Arabic daily led with the front-page headline “End of the Gulf War. Ceasefire announced at 7am today”. In the paper's fifth edition, the lead story read that “Egyptian troops accomplished their combat mission in liberating Kuwait,” and at the bottom of the same page there was an advertisement announcing the birth of the Weekly. “Al-Ahram Weekly launched today”, it read. Twenty-eight years later, Al-Ahram is still producing this weekly publication that presents a true image of Egypt to the rest of the world. Many happy returns.
