Newly appointed chairman of the General Egyptian Book Organisation Ahmed Megahed talks to Nevine El-Aref about his plans to revive the great institution Sitting in the spacious chairman's office of the General Egyptian Book Organisation (GEBO) overlooking the Nile Corniche, Ahmed Megahed, a professor of Arabic at Ain Shams University in Cairo, seems the very man for the post. He is no newcomer to Egypt's cultural establishment. Following the tragedy that took place at the Beni Sweif Cultural Palace in late 2005, when the building was destroyed by fire, Megahed was made chairman of the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces (GOCP), a post he kept until a week ago when he took over as GEBO chairman. Earlier, Megahed worked on the GEBO literary journal Fusul, and in 1998 he was made editor of the "First Book" series put out by the Supreme Council of Culture. However, despite his successes at the GOCP, Megahed has not necessarily been welcomed by GEBO employees. Since he took office, protesters have been picketing the GEBO building calling for his departure and demanding that Saber Arab, the head of the country's national library, the Dar Al-Kotob, also be given responsibility for GEBO. Arab had served as caretaker chairman following the death of the last GEBO chairman, Nasser El-Ansari, two years ago. Protesters demanding that he continue in the post at the expense of Megahed surrounded the building, forcing Megahed himself to enter through a back door. Following meetings with minister of culture Emad Abu Ghazi, it seems, however, that Megahed will now be allowed to keep his new job. But why all the brouhaha about Megahed's appointment, given his good reputation and his experience in running a state cultural establishment? What do GEBO staff want from him? And what can he offer them? Sitting behind a typically bureaucratic wooden desk, Megahed receives us with a welcoming smile. "I really don't know why all that happened," he says. He explains that when the minister appointed him as GEBO chairman, he was surprised at the staff's hostile attitude, especially since Arab had told him that two days before the same people had been standing in front of the building calling for him to leave. Both he and Arab had held talks with the staff, together with Abu Ghazi, Megahed said. "I expressed my vision for the GEBO. They applauded, and everything went smoothly. Believe me, up till now I don't know why the later demonstrations took place, and I don't have any explanation, given that they did not ask for anything specific except my departure." However, Megahed had also been the object of previous protests at the GOCP demanding his departure. Could that have had something to do with it? "There was never any real protest at my continuing in the job at the GOCP," Megahed said. "The GOCP has 17,000 employees, and only 18 protested against me. Those people had their own reasons for making allegations against me, though there were also others who were not protesting against me in particular and were simply angry because they considered that certain corrupt people were still in their jobs at the GOCP." This group created a Facebook page entitled, "We want the departure of Ahmed Megahed." However, Megahed adds, "when they saw that I had got rid of corrupt elements and referred them for prosecution, they were able to see that I was a correct person. They changed the name of the account to, 'We want to keep Ahmed Megahed as GOCP chairman.'" "My relationship with the GOCP staff was always very good," Megahed says, "and if there were objections to what I was doing in the job these came from only a very few people and for reasons I determinedly stood against. While I was GOCP chairman I reported three undersecretaries of state for corruption and referred them to the prosecuting authorities." Now that he is in charge at the GEBO, Megahed has plans for the organisation's publication arm, what he describes as an "enormous file." These plans involve developing the organisation's list and making it the GEBO's top priority in future. The first thing to do, he says, is to improve the look of the GEBO's books and to improve the attractiveness of their design and covers. "It is a matter for regret that the GEBO produces the worst looking books on the market," Megahed said. A book's cover should attract readers, helping to sell it to potential customers. A good cover design will often attract casual readers, who will then want to discover what is inside. "If the book does not attract a customer's attention, then the process will fail," Megahed said. He intends to organise training in book design for GEBO employees and to enhance cooperation with well-known Egyptian artists to produce good quality covers. "In fact, we have already started," Megahed pointed out, adding that the seven volumes of Egyptian poet Salah Jahin's complete works are available in a GEBO edition, with covers by artist Helmi El-Tuni. "Before I took up the post, I was particularly alarmed by one thing," Megahed said. From 1986 to 1991, he had been in charge of laying out the literary journal Fusul, and at that time the well-known artist Saad Abdel-Wahab had been GEBO art supervisor, responsible for the cover of every book in print, vetting even those created by famous artists. This post is now vacant, Megahed said, allowing book designers greater freedom. Moreover, over recent years the number of titles published by the GEBO has been decreasing. In 2008, the organisation brought out 520 titles, while in 2009 there were 488 and in 2010 only 212. However, while the overall number has been declining, certain series have been doing better than others, with the number of titles published as part of the "Family Library" ( Maktabet Al-Osra ) series being double those published elsewhere in the GEBO. What the decline in published titles shows, however, according to Megahed, is that "the GEBO's publication policy is deteriorating, as is the quality of book design." He picks up a copy of a book with a dark purple cover bearing a tiny picture of the famous 19th-century poet Bairum El-Tunsi. "Here is a new edition of El-Tunsi's work with a cover that will make many readers ignore his work altogether," Megahed comments. "I am surprised at this decline in standards, since I have an older edition of this same publication at home that has a very beautiful cover." Although the GEBO has printing facilities that allow it to produce many print runs a day, in fact this equipment is rarely used to its full capacity, and even books that are meant to be published at the GEBO are sometimes outsourced to a private publisher. "I am very sad about all these difficulties," Megahed comments, adding that the absence of a real publication policy at the GEBO has made the organisation look like "a huge box that anyone can throw anything inside." What is needed now, he says, is a new policy that will determine the titles to be published and how these will slot into market requirements. In the past, the GEBO rarely made efforts to recruit new authors or titles, often simply publishing what was sent to it. This, too, will now have to change. "It is the end of the charade," Megahed said, adding that at the first meeting of the GEBO's administrative board a new publication policy will be approved. Of the many new projects he wants to institute at the organisation is the better use of the GEBO's underused resources. The printing presses will be relocated to a seven-feddan plot on Faisal Road, and the ground floor area of the GEBO's main building, currently used as a bookstore, will henceforth be used to host cultural seminars and book events. The book store will be transferred to the exhibition hall on the first floor. The three-storey building of the International Book Centre on 26th of July Street, now used as a storehouse, has also been neglected, and Megahed wants to see it converted into a pleasant bookstore, like the Diwan bookstore, where customers can enjoy reading and browsing through books. Contemporary art exhibitions could also be held there, he says. "We are working on two things: upgrading the product and providing better channels to distribute it. If this proves successful, it will be implemented in all underused or underexploited GEBO properties." Regarding the low-cost "Family Library" series, Megahed says that this is a very important project, but it is one that should be treated as a national project and not one that has to be paid for out of GEBO's resources. "A separate budget should be allocated to this project and not deducted from the GEBO budget," he suggests. There has been a rumour that the photograph of former first lady Suzanne Mubarak will now be removed from the covers of the "Family Library" books, Mrs Mubarak having previously been associated with the series. Is this true? Megahed answers that he is against removing Suzanne Mubarak's photograph, as she is a part of Egypt's contemporary history. "History cannot be edited in this way," he says. If people really object to Mrs Mubarak's photograph, perhaps remaining copies of the books could be sold in Cairo's Al-Azbakiya market and not sent to international or national book fairs, he suggests. The GEBO, he says, will also not take part in book fairs that it cannot make a profit from. It will also try to cut costs by participating in international fairs along with other publishers, whether public or private. However, the GEBO has an important role to play in Egyptian publishing as a whole, since "it represents the industry as a whole, and the health of the Egyptian book industry." To compensate Egyptian publishers for the cancellation of this year's Cairo International Book Fair, cancelled because of the January revolution, three smaller fairs will be organised by the GEBO over the coming six months in Aswan and Ismailia. LE50 million has also been set aside by the Ministry of Finance as a compensation fund. Finally, Megahed has his own vision of how the GEBO might now develop. It is, he says, a very important cultural establishment that could do a lot to guide publication policy in Egypt. It owns a lot of outlets, and it has a duty to ensure that these are adequately stocked and used: in Egypt alone, the GEBO has 26 book outlets, and it has others in other Arab countries. It also has modern printing facilities that can be used not only to print GEBO books, but also books from other publishers as well. Money raised from such assets could be used to develop the GEBO as a whole. "A further thought that came to my mind was to strengthen the GEBO's connections with writers and authors, the better to develop good quality books," Megahed said, adding that the GEBO must also explore e-publishing in order to reduce printing costs and reach new audiences. This organisation, Megahed said, in the past played a pioneering role in the country's cultural sphere, though it sometimes required a man of genius, such as writer Salah Abdel-Sabour, to fully realise its potential. "I would like to go some way towards restoring the spirit of Abdel-Sabour at the GEBO," Megahed concluded.
