Sahar El-Bahr leafs through the celebrity gossip in Marina Rayeh... Gai, while pondering the phenomenon of Marina, one of Egypt's most-exclusive resorts Marina Rayeh... Gai, "Marina Coming... and Going" (MCG), is Egypt's first summer newspaper. Written in colloquial Arabic, and only distributed to visitors to the Marina resort near Alexandria, the paper first appeared five years ago. Since then, its publisher, Art Lab, an advertising company, has been publishing 10 issues of the paper each summer. Appearing from mid-June through to the end of August every year, MCG has a print run of some 10,000 copies, and almost half the newspaper's 20 pages are taken up by advertising. The idea of producing MCG first came to Tamer Abul-Enein, owner of Art Lab and MCG, when he bought a property at the Marina resort. "I lived in Sidi Kreir at the time, but when I moved to Marina I realised that the inhabitants of the resort, or more precisely of the 'town,' deserved a special newspaper of their own to reflect their society. The newspaper is free, and is distributed only inside Marina," Abul-Enein says. Marina today consists of almost 24km of land, embracing 9,000 villas. According to Abul-Enein, "the superiority of Marina over the rest of the North Coast villages lies in its size and the artificial lake inside it, which is the longest in the Middle East, enabling residents to do water sports and related activities. Marina is also a comprehensive compound where there are various entertainment services, including restaurants, supermarkets, cinemas, parks, spas and malls. Another reason for the popularity of Marina is the successful marketing policies adopted by the ex-minister of housing, who promoted Marina." Prices of villas inside Marina vary from LE3 to 20 million, depending on location, size and decoration. Renting a villa at Marina costs from LE3,000 to 8,000 per night. Abul-Enein says MCG is the only newspaper in Marina because his company is the only one that managed to get a licence from the Marina Authority to distribute a paper and take photographs and shoot films in the resort. MCG is an unsystematic and non-traditional newspaper, he says. "There is no editorial policy and no definite vision. I believe that MCG is an amateur newspaper, something similar to experimental theatre. However, amid the huge number of national newspapers and talk shows, we are trying to offer something different. Though MCG appears to be a light newspaper, in fact we are trying to strike a balance between serious and light stories. We are trying to produce a light, summer newspaper to amuse people sitting in the gardens of their villas, or under umbrellas on the beaches, but this does not mean that we do not deal with serious issues, such as the recent killing of Marwa El-Sherbini." "In my opinion, the killing of El-Sherbini had nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with the evil that exists today everywhere in the world. Our dilemma in publishing MCG is whether we should cover such stories. If we do not, readers will accuse us of being indifferent. But if we do cover such issues, we will not be the kind of summer newspaper we aim to be," he says. MCG does not include fixed sections, except for a page entitled "Marina Street", which consists of a question directed to passers-by in Marina. Examples have included: what would you do if you encountered a dog that threatened to bite you, and the sea was behind you and you could not swim? Or what would you do if you knew your best friend's fiancée was unfaithful? Or if you could only buy one CD, would it be Amr Diab or Tamer Hosni? According to Sherif Shaker, executive manager of MCG, the newspaper has been steadily developing over its years of operation. "Only one year after first publication, we produced a programme based on the paper on Melody Hits, an Egyptian music and entertainment channel. Now we produce six programmes every summer," he says. In 2007, Art Lab organised a play-station competition for the Marinawya, in other words, for those living in Marina. In 2008, Art Lab opened a café in Marina called also MCG. Shaker adds that this year another newspaper called Summer Book, in Arabic Saif Book, has come onto the market, the title being derived from the famous English-language social-networking site "Facebook." Summer Book is distributed all along the North Coast and Agamy, whereas MCG is only available in Marina. "We think of Summer Book as being a 'desert newspaper,' because it is distributed to drivers coming and going between Alexandria and Cairo. Art Lab has also recently put out a supplement to MCG for such traffic," he says. For Abul-Enein, in the final analysis MCG is a business that must make a profit. And, being the only newspaper to appear in Marina, the newspaper may be well placed to do so, since this summer resort, long known as a symbol of wealth, has become more and more commented on as a place where intrigues and deals take place behind high walls. "Marina is the place where the richest classes in society can be found," Shaker says. "The newspaper targets an 'A' demographic, and advertisers are very keen for their messages to get through to the resort's inhabitants." As an observer of Marina society, Abul-Enein believes that many changes have taken place at the resort over the past five years. "Marina today is no longer the most luxurious summer resort on the North Coast," he says, "and it is losing its reputation in favour of other more luxurious resorts, such as Hasyanda, Ghazala and Marasi, where the well-known and well-connected live. These new resorts are all gated communities, and they all have strict security measures." The number of villas inside these new resorts varies from 200 to 300, these being characterised by the ultimate in luxury, together with marvellous views out across the surrounding landscape and sea. "The original Marinawya, the owners of villas in Marina, now tend to let these out and live themselves in the new resorts. However, they still visit Marina regularly, if only because the new villages do not have entertainment," Abul-Enein says. Marina is accessible to visitors, though according to Authority rules visitors are only allowed at certain times, and they have to pay an entrance fee of LE20 per person. Residents have to show their passes at the gates to security, Abul- Enein complaining that the security system is deteriorating due to the reluctance of residents to show their passes. "The security men are losing control because of the flow of visitors. The original inhabitants are annoyed at the misbehaviour of these visitors and new renters, who do not necessarily comply with the rules. We receive many calls from people complaining and asking us to address the issue," he says. Shaker added that a government official had called him and asked him to talk to young people who do not follow the rules of the community. Despite these problems, however, both men agree that Marina will remain an attractive investment for residents and visitors. "There are millions of pounds invested in Marina, and investors will not let Marina fall. Whatever the visitors do, it is in their interest that the numbers of visitors increase." Finally, in 2008 the novelist Ahmed Khaled Tawfik wrote a novel called Utopia, one of the bestsellers of the year, in which he tried to imagine what Egypt would be like in the year 2023. In the novel, Tawfik came up with a dystopia in which the country is divided into two classes -- the nouveaux riches, who monopolise the business environment, and the rest of the population. In his novel, Tawfik imagines the nouveaux riches as having withdrawn to their luxurious compounds on Egypt's Northern Coast, surrounded by high walls and guarded by US marines, because they are afraid of the "others", as they call the rest of the population. These others live in slums without either sanitary living conditions or education, transport and healthcare. Some of them work as virtual slaves for the rich living in the North Coast settlements. In this imaginary world there is also a newspaper for the North Coast settlement. Could it resemble today's Marina Rayeh...Gai? Certainly, reading this paper makes you feel that Marina is another country inside Egypt. The inhabitants of this other country seem to live in a separate society, which they call Marina.
