Cairo's Double Threat

As publishers of the largest and best string of newspapers and magazines in the Middle East, big (238 Ib.) Mustafa Amin and his identical (238 Ib.) twin brother Ali have rightly earned a reputation for being vigorous democrats and courageous reformers. Their weekly Akhbar el Yom (News of the Day--circ. 150,000) and five other publications hammer at government corruption. Yet just before dawn one day last week, eight Egyptian army officers armed with Tommy guns and acting in the name of reform swooped down on the brothers' Cairo home and arrested them. Readers of their papers were astounded, since the Amin twins had been in the forefront of the very cleanup drive that kicked King Farouk out.

Hastily the army released them. It was all a mistake resulting from a phony tip that the Amins had tried to get the British to block General Naguib's coup. General Naguib ordered his personal apology broadcast all day long over the Cairo radio. Naguib made it up in another way; he gave the twins a two-hour exclusive interview supplying a firsthand account of the revolt he led against Farouk. Said Mustafa happily as he left the general: "May you commit 10,000 more errors as harmless as this if it will help bring the real culprits to bay."

Corruption & Bombs. The baldpated, 38-year-old brothers are united by more than their zeal for reform. They are not only lookalikes, but they smoke the same cigarettes, are married and each has one daughter, drive the same make & model car, and write and think alike so much that one can start a story which the other can finish without ever missing a phrase. "If we don't check with each other-beforehand," says Mustafa, "we find ourselves writing two editorials on the same event with only minor differences in wording."

The Amins have long believed that before democracy can come to the Middle East corruption must be rooted out. When they started Akhbar el Yom in 1944, they went after the violently nationalist Wafdist Party, provided chapter & verse to prove that it had been stealing wholesale for years. During the paper's first year, the government confiscated it 21 times. Their modern, $3,000,000 Cairo plant has been bombed and attacked by Wafdist hoodlums at least eight times and the twins themselves have twice been jailed. Last year when the Wafdist government proudly announced a plan to distribute land to impoverished peasants, Akhbar el Yom dug up the fact that much of the land was going not to peasants but to the relatives of Premier Nahas & wife.

Entourage of Rulers. Even after King Farouk banned mention of his escapades in the press, the Amins slyly kept their readers informed. They wrote about a vague group called the "Entourage of Rulers," as if the members lived on another planet, thus ticked off every bit of corruption of Farouk and his cronies. Said one article: "The Entourage of Rulers is not to blame for everything . . . An entourage is but a mirror. If there are thieves around a leader, he must appear to the people as the biggest thief of all." The next issue was promptly confiscated.

In hundreds of Egyptian villages, such stories from Akhbar el Yom are read by one literate person to dozens of illiterates who gather around in regularly formed groups called "reading rings." The papers are understandable to even the simplest fellah because the Amins and their staff have developed a clear, simple Arabic style that is already being imitated all over the Middle East. They live up to their boast that "Akhbar el Yom helps you" by supplying free legal help to readers, and pay their staff the highest newspaper wages in the Middle East.

Parties & Politics. The twins, members of a famed Egyptian family of patriots (father was onetime Minister to the U.S.), began newspapering by contributing anti-British articles to their school paper. At 14 they tried to get work as apprentices on dailies in Cairo, were turned down because they were too young. They found an unemployed clerk, armed him with samples of their work and got him hired on a paper. For months they worked as his ghost. Because they worried about being so much alike, they split up and went to different colleges; Mustafa to Georgetown to study international relations, Ali to Sheffield in England to take mechanical engineering.

When they returned to Egypt they got jobs on the same newspaper. When the publisher refused to print their stories about government corruption, they quit and the paper's entire staff of eight went with them. Ironically, the $2,700 they borrowed to start their own paper came from the palace circle they later attacked.

Within weeks the paper's circulation leaped up to 100,000 and the brothers started other publications, including a TIME-like weekly. Unlike most Middle Eastern periodicals, which are merely organs for political parties, the Amins' staff of 800 is rigorously uncommitted to anything but fighting corruption and working for Middle Eastern democracy. "Other papers are for parties and politicians," explained Mustafa. "We're for the people. The opportunity for reform was never better in Egypt than right now." Adds Ali: "We'll see that it isn't missed."

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