Al Mukhtar

On the Rashid Shari in Bagdad, a barefoot urchin cries his wares: Al Mukhtar Min Reader's Digest. Sales are brisk. He will be sold out the second day. His success is another sensation of the sensationally successful U.S. Reader's Digest (domestic circ. 8,000,000): a skyrocketing demand for its Arabic edition.

Only five months after its start, Al Mukhtar Min (Selections From) has reached its wartime circulation ceiling--125,000 copies. With adequate paper supplies, printing equipment and transport facilities, Reader's Digest men think it might have reached to 200,000 in a few more months. In Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Saudi Arabia the natives swamp their dealers for this newest Digest foreign venture.*

Back to Front. In Cairo, Al Mukhtar sells for three piasters (12 1/2 cents). To help cover costs, the Digest reverses its U.S. policy, takes advertising. Among the advertisers: Glenn L. Martin and Vega Airplane, Higgins Industries, Parker Pen. At three piasters the Arabic edition is still a luxury item for most Mid-Easterners; at the Digest's, U.S. price, 25-c-, there would probably be little circulation.

Also reversed in Al Mukhtar is makeup. Arabic is read from back to front, and from right to left (but from top to bottom of pages).

Fuad Sarruf, journalism professor at the American University in Cairo, and a staff of 15 do the translating from the Digest into Al Mukhtar. The magazine is finally edited and laid out in the Digest's Pleasantville (N.Y.) offices, returned to Cairo for printing.

Its format is the same as the U.S. edition's but with only about 75% of its editorial content. At Pleasantville--to counsel on what would be of Arab interest and what might collide with Moslem taboos--is a group of five Arabic advisers, topped by Dr. Philip K. Hitti, acting chairman of Princeton University's department of Oriental languages.

Al Mukhtar's warm reception has encouraged the Digest to make postwar plans that will cover the Moslem world, from Morocco eastward to Iran. One stirring sign already noted: many a Moslem reader puts away his copy of Al Mukhtar against the day when his sons learn to read.

*Others: editions in Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and one for Great Britain.

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