The climate of freedom that emerged following Egypt's youth revolution has begun to bear fruit. I will suffice myself in this regard with what I am well versed on, i.e. the media aspect of this climate, specifically across the printed press. After a quick visit to Cairo, I noticed that the national newspapers have made big strides, while certain partisan and private newspapers have regressed. I link the improved performance of newspapers like Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar and Al-Jumhuriya to the fact that oversight by the security services has been lifted, by parties such as the State Security services, and their daily interference in these papers' work, and also to the collapse of the Supreme Press Council, which was headed by Safwar Sharif and who appointed the editors in chief. This is while I attribute the decline of other papers to the same climate of freedom. These newspapers have found that they can now say any ‘old nonsense' without anyone holding them accountable. Further, these papers' editors perhaps believe that sensationalism is a shortcut to increasing sales, and subsequently to ads. However, this reminds me of the tabloid papers in London, and thus all what some of Cairo's papers need are photos of naked tramps on the third page like the ones we see in the newspapers of London, where I live. The professional competition between newspapers such as Al-Ahram and Al-Akhbar on the one hand, and Al-Masri Al-Yawm and Al-Shourouq on the other, is good, and will surely benefit all their readers combined. However, I content myself today with what I know, i.e. with Al-Ahram, which I have been reading ever since I became aware of reading. I receive this newspaper in London, and keep its editions along with those of Al-Hayat. This is while I only read the other newspapers when I visit Cairo, or if there was a million-strong march or a counter-revolution, in which case I would order them online. I was very pleased to read the recent series of interviews with the great writer Mohamed Hassanein Heikal. He has returned to his lair after decades, and his disclosures reminded me of a lot of what I had forgotten. In truth, I read Al-Ahram in the sixties because it was Gamal Abdel-Nasser's mouthpiece, as its chief editor was close to him and was his spokesman. Then after the President passed away and the master [Heikal] left the paper, I starting reading Al-Ahram to learn the government's news and views on this and that issue. Today, Al-Ahram is in the trust of the chairman of the board Labib Sibai and chief editor Abdel-Azim Hammad, and all the colleagues working there, and I hope to one day see young people in the major posts at Al-Ahram. Today, Al-Ahram enjoys a high level of credibility, with obvious courage in tackling the issues of sectarian tensions, and the economic crisis which is indeed present, even as some deny it. Meanwhile, in other papers, I read most intricate details about the wealth of Hosni Mubarak and Mrs. Suzanne and their two sons, specifying each state where money has been put away, where all the treasures of the presidential palaces have gone, and when they shall be returned, down to the day and the hour. I even read treatises on why Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak wept, and the conversation between Heidi and Khadija and what one said to the other, as though the writer is being detained with them. It seems that, in addition to all the real and imaginary mistakes of Ahmed Nazif, he also committed the sin of imitating the president. He also has a wife and two sons, and all their accounts have been frozen pending the investigation, on par with the former president's family. As for the wealth of Rachid Mohamed Rachid, it turns out it is worth more than one billion dollars in Egypt alone, and some ‘loose change'. I do not think that the senior defendants are being tortured. However, I rarely see news about a common criminal or thief without reading in the same news that the criminal confessed and reenacted the crime. This means that the criminal was probably tortured, and I read reports in the newspapers about the ongoing torture of the defendants, a practice that must be stopped immediately. The Cairo newspapers probably run a few hundred stories each day, and the reader may get lost amongst all these. However, if the reader has some patience, he will most definitely stumble on some information of use. For instance, I read an article by my friend and colleague Wahid Abdel Mageed about the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis and whether they will adhere to their programs, and another by poet Ahmad Abdalmattiy Hijazi, who wrote that the Muslim Brotherhood are dealing with politics as though it were a masquerade. But Wahid and Ahmed do not need me to attest to them, so I choose two articles that impressed me greatly. I start with what Fayrouz Karawya wrote under the title “What are the elites if we were not part of it, Mr. Howeidi?” Her discourse was focused and her logic clear. But it struck me in the beginning that the writer described herself as a researcher and singer. And I can prove to her that I read her whole article, as the last paragraph said: “So perhaps fabrication in the media was present in part in Al-Jazeera Live, Al-Arabiya and the London-based Al-Hayat […]”. I ask her here to give me an example of this ‘fabrication' in my newspaper, and then warn her that her revolution was not for the sake of the freedom of her opinion alone, but also for the freedom of all of our opinions, and thus not everything that runs contrary to her views is fabrication. Isaad Yunus, meanwhile, wrote an article entitled “All the woes” about a presidential candidate who was hosted by our friend Amr Adib and whom she destroyed completely throughout her article. She was very funny, and if her beauty was half as good as her sense of humor, she would have no doubt been Miss Egypt by now. What more do I want? I want a million-man march against traffic jams. In the meantime, I watched on Egypt's Channel One the old film ‘Amber', starring Anwar Wagdy, Leila Mourad, and Ismail Yassin, and Shokoko and Bishara Wakim in a Lebanese sketch. The film was all good and it reminded me of what the revolutions of rage almost made me forget. I no longer now ask: Where we were and where we are now? I now ask: Where are we going? [email protected]
