"Do you want to work for a newspaper?" asked a friend. "No," I replied, bewildered. I knew nothing at all about newspapers and my checkered professional career had certainly not prepared me for such an endeavour. "You know English don't you? Can you spell? That is all that is required. They pay well. More than what you're getting now anyway," she argued. That was a reason I understood. More cash at that particular time would be more than welcome. I knew nothing about journalism? So what! I would learn. That very day I called Mr Hosny Guindy, editor in chief of Al-Ahram Weekly. He did not sound particularly welcoming, but need was considerably reducing my natural sensitivities. A little later I was ushered into the Weekly editor-in-chief's rather drab office in the Al-Ahram building on Galaa Street. The room was of mean proportions, furnished with two small desks and a few shelves bending under the weight of dusty files. Two chairs, one in front of each desk, indicated that the occupants received their visitors in these inauspicious surroundings. At 7 o'clock in the evening it appeared that the other resident had already left. Hosny Guindy was engrossed in reading some handwritten papers scattered on his desk. The ashtray in front of him was full, and a cigarette was consuming itself, poised precariously on the mountain of butts. He rose, blinking, his eyes obviously hurting from the smoke and the effort of concentrating on indecipherable letters, and motioned me to the chair. I found myself facing a slight, impeccably dressed, bespectacled man, whose white hair contrasted sharply with the youth of a boyish silhouette. He asked me a few basic questions, none of the difficult stuff I had prepared myself for in order to fake the knowledge I did not have. I tried to sound experienced and totally capable of tackling whatever task he would care to entrust me with. I noticed, nevertheless, that he was far from impressed by my babble. After a few minutes of what could only be described as polite chitchat he seemed perplexed, and I felt that he was preparing to wind up the interview negatively, to my great chagrin. Then the door to the office flew open and Mohamed Salmawy, managing editor of the yet unborn Al-Ahram Weekly sauntered in. (Much later, when we developed a better relationship, Hosny told me that he had found me overdressed and arrogant. He was about to dismiss me when Salmawy's intervention saved the day.) Hosny introduced me. "Oh, I know her family, Hosny. We should hire her," said Salmawy lightly, without commenting further. "Bless you," I wanted to say. I could have kissed him but he had already disappeared. "When can you start?" asked Hosny, looking wary but relieved at the same time. He was such a nice man that being unkind even to a stranger made him cringe. I did not utter a victorious hip, hip hurrah, nor jump up and down in glee but let him know nonchalantly that the decision was his. "Tomorrow?" he asked. "Sure," I said. On my way to the metro station I did a little war dance. The following morning I sat at "the Desk" covertly observing my new colleagues. I had been handed a large file of pieces in pencil that I was told to study in order to acquaint myself with the spirit of the paper. I sat next to a handsome woman who looked quite competent marking papers with a flourish of her red pen. She introduced herself briefly as Ulfat El-Tuhamy then went back to her task. On the other side of the octagonal desk sat a number of foreign-looking young men who often whispered among themselves and chuckled, pointing to something on the pages they were examining. In the following days I began to identify David Tresilian, Nigel Ryan and Alan Nichol. They were British and the copy editors. In the four corners of the room older men at single desks wrote furiously and complained loudly about not getting telephone lines. Wadie Kirolos, in charge of the home page, Fouad El-Gohary, heading features, and Bahgat Badie, the foreign editor, were obviously in a superior category of their own. A man with a booming voice whom I was told was called Mamdouh El-Dakhakhni seemed to be ruling over the desk. I understood that he was to be feared, although when we met later in the noisy overcrowded room that acted as a cafeteria to the whole floor he was quite civil, even pleasant. I was told that I would be given the living page, which had previously been the province of Raja Nashaat, an anchor on Egyptian television who was going back full time to her old job and leaving the Weekly. In the file I had been given I found all the articles she had written for the zero issues plus other tidbits by Sylvia El-Nakkady, Sahar El-Bahr and a few others. I vaguely wondered at the pertinence of these pieces. Who would want to read them? But then I had not been asked for my opinion, and I simply went through them as advised. There were people coming and going into the desk room constantly, and on that first day I noticed an energetic young woman, Mona Anis, who never seemed to want to sit down, just saying a few words to the foreign boys and dashing back out again. There was also Gillian Potter, quiet and presumably efficient, who, however, disappeared soon after my arrival, Mursi Saad El-Din, undoubtedly occupying a position of authority, Jill Kamel, the archeology expert, who stayed in an office on the seventh floor, and many others who all appeared to know what they were there for. The least I can say is that to me the scene was very confusing, and I was trying to learn as much as I could, but at the end of the day I was hopelessly lost. It took me a long time to realise that there were reporters coming and going and bringing in stories and to understand that the zero issues were not meant to be published. At the first editorial meeting I was mum, and Salmawy was prompt to make fun of my silence, but I did not mind at this point, being totally engrossed in the effort of finding out what it was all about. However, I had my day on the first Tuesday after I had been hired when we all went to the lay-out room on the third floor. The place was dismal, more like a basement, humid and humming with the sound of machines. It reeked of oil, ink and exhaustion. There, the layout people were hard at work producing the pages of all Al-Ahram publications. Most of them did not know English and had no idea what the letters they were painstakingly assembling for the Weekly meant. Long sheets of bright white paper were displayed on easels and narrow tables. A large group of youngsters sat at metal desks aligned along the wall. There was an older Russian woman, whom I had never met but who was called Tatiana by all and sundry, and she handed out bits of the brilliant paper over which everybody immediately began to pour. These were the proofreaders -- Indians, British, Americans -- whose job was to detect spelling mistakes and mark them with a special pen. The correct words would then be reassembled by an elaborate system of cutting and pasting on the large sheets representing the different pages of the final paper. The proofreaders' task was definitely up my alley, and, having been handed my own bits of glossy paper which I gathered were called "bromides," I soon became quite adept at picking up errors. So much so, in fact, that Hosny, inspecting the results of my handiwork, asked me if I knew other people who could also help. I reflected that the current helpers seemed more than enough, but knew better than to show what, after all, was only ignorance. Later, as the faces kept changing, I realised that proof- reading was not high on the ladder of skills, and the position was only used as a stepping-stone to better things, whether at the Weekly or elsewhere. Consequently, and especially during those first days, the turnover was very high. I told Hosny that I would talk to my daughter who was a first-class speller. He hired her, and I had the surprise of finding out that she was no stranger to the differences between English and American spelling and was not as bewildered as I was that the Weekly should adopt the former. I think it was Salmawy's decision, that, since, he seemed to have thought, we were going to be a high-brow publication, we ought to distinguish ourselves by adopting the style of the British newspaper The Times. I remember a surreal discussion that broke out one Tuesday night about the difference between "a lease on life" (American) and a "lease of life" (English). I imagined -- but did not say -- that few readers, if any, would be privy to such subtleties, and that, surely, any confusion between the two represented a very minor fault. Hosny and Salmawy, however, considered it a capital crime against our style. How could I have fathomed then that this nit-picking would become my daily fare for years to come? A month passed, and I was learning all sorts of new things. We produced several zero issues, each less disastrous than the previous one. Meanwhile, the Gulf War was looming large on the horizon, and the political scene overshadowed all else. We had delayed the launch of the paper for this reason, but suddenly a decision was made by the powers that be, and we were told that we should be ready to publish our first issue at the end of February 1991. Unbelievably, by then I had forgotten that this was the ultimate goal of all our efforts. It was a big day, or rather a big night for all of us, as we hastened to input last-minute corrections with an eye on the clock. Midnight was approaching ineluctably. The faster we tried to work, the more mistakes we missed and the more often we had to start again. It was a mad few hours, with people running in and out, consulting pocket dictionaries, staring at the displayed pages and pointing out yet another oversight. Finally, it was time, and with trembling hands we gave up our last corrections. The following morning Al-Ahram Weekly was on the news vendors' stalls for all to see. The editorial meeting following issue no. one was not a happy event. It made us realise that the road ahead was long and rocky. From then on, and until computers were introduced, it became my habit with one of the lay-out editors, Ayman George, to input the corrections once or twice a week after the departure of the proof-readers as an extra precaution to capture the correct -- British -- spelling, which meant that we went home on those days as the sun was rising. But these were my best days of the week. Finally, I had found a way of relating to Al-Ahram Weekly and feeling like a real cog in its production. Fayza Hassan joined the Weekly's core team in 1990 working as full-time living editor and head proof-reader until 2002 when she retired. She is presently a free-lance writer, contributing to the Weekly's books supplement among other English and French language publications appearing from Cairo.
