The Anunnaki Womenfolk
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER
Oddly, they were dominated by a diminutive oddball with despicably loose morals
Of the Anunnaki womenfolk, the most pre-eminent was of course the Orion Queen, who later became a spouse of Anu, the King of Sirius, when the two empires conjoined following the matrimonial union of two of the most powerful cosmic sovereigns. Until the merger, the Orion Queen went by several titles, examples of which are EKE, MA, and ENE. After the merger, she assumed the title Anu’s principal wife (that is, Enlil’s mother, who she relegated to a junior wife) bore, ANTU.
Initially, the term Antu simply meant “Goddess of Heaven”, heaven being the Sirian-Orion Empire (the suffixes/prefixes ntu, nto, tho, ta, da, etc, all mean deity or divine. Botho/ubuntu is literally “ways of the [innately good] gods”). In Africa, the continent that was ruled by Enki, Antu’s son, Antu was promoted at the expense of Anu. This bias is understandable as Anu was not Enki’s biological father. As we have repeated now and again, Enki as an Aryan (the SSS beings of Orion) was born asexually – without the involvement of a male. In the event, Africans came to be known as BANTU, meaning “Antu’s People”. Cultural historians actually attest to the fact that ancient Africans revered a goddess more than they did a god. Even where they directly worshipped a male deity such as Enki, they still venerated the female energy that overshadowed that deity. In other words, they worshipped the goddess through a god.
Whereas the Enkites put the Sirian-Orion Queen on a pedestal, the Enlilites exalted Anu. This was because Enlil was a full-blooded Sirian and therefore was a champion of the malecentric Sirian paradigm. This proclivity explains why the Old Testament, an Enlilite document, is oriented toward male gods. It also explains why both Sumerian records and the Old Testament say almost nothing about Antu. Every time Antu is alluded to in the Sumerian/Babylonian records, it’s only in the context of Anu. Yet she was Anu’s equal and not the also-ran she’s presented as in the Sumerian and biblical annals. Antu’s numerical ranking was 55, the highest a female Anunnaki would attain.
NINMAH OUR GREAT MUMMY
On planet Earth, Ninmah was the most revered of the Anunnaki womenfolk. Her name means “Her Royal Highness” as indeed she was the foremost Anunnaki princess. Ironically though, her numerical ranking was 5, the lowest an Anunnaki member of the Pantheon of 12 was conferred. Why so?
Well, as we related in an earlier piece, Anu had wanted Ninmah, his eldest daughter, to marry her step-brother Enki in a bid to further cement Sirian-Orion relations after the merger. Ninmah was attracted to the breathtakingly good-looking and super-intelligent Enki alright, but he didn’t have much to offer in terms of regal potential. Enki was not in the line of the Sirian-Orion succession whereas Enlil, her half-brother (they were both biological kids of Anu but had different mothers) was.
Naturally, Ninmah gravitated towards Enlil and in the process had a son with him, Ninurta, on planet Nibiru. This development irked Anu, who placed a curse on her: she was never ever going to marry. What that entailed was that rankwise, she would never rise beyond 5 as a female’s rank derived from that of her spouse. For example, if she had married Enki as per Anu’s wish, she would have occupied rank 35 since Enki’s was 40.
A leading medical doctor, Ninmah was detailed to travel to Earth by Anu to set up formal medical facilities for the Anunnaki as their numbers on the planet increased. These she established at Shurrupak in the Edin, which became her cult centre. Temperamentwise, Ninmah was sweet, much like Enki and very much unlike the austere Enlil. When Enki was commissioned by Anu to undertake Project Adama – the creation of mankind – he worked with Ninmah and his genius son Ningishzidda.
Adam, the first viable Homo sapiens created by Enki, was gestated by Ninmah after he was implanted into her womb as a tiny zygote. Upon giving birth to Adam, Ninmah earned herself another name – NINTI, meaning “Lady Life”. She effectively became our Great Mammi and accordingly adopted the umbilical cutter as her emblem.
As a member of the Anunnaki Pantheon of 12, Ninmah like Enki was a dove and consistently pro-mankind. She either voted against Enlil’s extremist motions or abstained altogether. On the commonplace occasions when conflict erupted between the Enkites and Enlilites, she was often counted upon to mediate because of her natural impartiality. At one stage, when Earth was divided into four regions – Africa, Mesopotamia, Canaan, and the Indus Valley, the so-called Four Corners of Earth – Ninmah was allotted an area in Canaan which was designated as a neutral zone. This was TILMUN, the land of missiles, in the Sinai Peninsula. That was when she became known as NINHARSAG, meaning “Mistress of the Mountainhead”.
After Marduk was forever banished to Earth by Anu for marrying an Earthling, Enki determined to have a son with Ninmah to replace Marduk as heir to the Sirian-Orion throne after Enlil. Sadly, a boy was not forthcoming: all the six kids Enki had with Ninmah were girls. In fact, Ninmah had to stop Enki from wearing her down with repeated pregnancies when she put a curse on him. The most prominent of the six daughters were Geshtinanna, a mistress of Ningishzidda who was gifted at poetry and interpreting dreams; Nanshe (also called Nina), arguably Enki’s most brilliant and considerate daughter; and Nindaba (also known as Sesheta), reputed as the goddess of writing.
Enki’s son by a married Earthling woman, Ziusudra, was tutored by Ninmah at Shurrupak. Ziusudra was also known as Utnapishtim and Atra-Hasis. In the Bible, he’s best-known as Noah, the hero of the flood.
INANNA THE GOD OF EROTICA
Yet the most chronicled Anunnaki female is Inanna-Ishtar (Esther in English). Also known as Anat amid a clutch of other names, the Greeks called her Artemis and the Romans referred to her as Venus, her celestial counterpart. Inanna was one of fraternal twins born to Nanna-Sin – Enlil-Jehovah’s second-born son and the Allah of Islam – and his official spouse Ningal. Her twin-brother was the famous Utu-Shamash.
In terms of physical build, Inanna was rather atypical of an Anunnaki. She was just under 5 foot 5 when ordinarily Anunnaki’s were at least 7 feet tall. By Anunnaki standards therefore, she was a dwarf, albeit a dazzlingly beautiful one. Inanna was renowned in fundamentally three respects.
First, she was the god of love and sexuality. She was a nymphomaniac who bedded anybody she fancied. Despite her Lilliputian stature, she was a size queen who craved penetration by monster pricks. Her sexual conquests included her own great grandfather Anu; her uncle Enki; her twin brother Shamash; Enki’s youngest son Dumuzi; and demigods – members of the human nobility who were half-Anunnaki. One such demigod, Shulgi, she gushed about as “the man for the vulva of Inanna” when she caught sight of his bulbous manhood as she overflew his yard in a chopper.
On the rare occasions Anu came to Earth, Inanna was the only Earth-based Anunnaki who sexually entertained him and this was officially sanctioned by Queen Antu. Anu had built her her own temple-residence known as the E-ANNA, meaning “House of Anu”, which was more of a love nest than a temple. But the greatest love of her life was Dumuzi, who was killed whilst being pursued by Marduk’s men. She never completely recovered from his death: every time she was mounted some dude, she imagined it was Dumuzi doing the thrusting. The death of Dumuzi also somewhat unhinged her as almost every demigod she had a sustained sexual relationship with died mysteriously. Because of her overt sexuality, Inanna was often depicted stark naked in paintings and sculptures.
Second, she was a formidable and ferocious warrior, hence her other epithet as the god of war. She was known to fire “an intense brilliance” from her helmet to blind enemies and “rained flames upon Arabia” in one war. Most of the wars she fought were opportunistic ones. For example, because Dumuzi died at his hands, she regarded Marduk as her enemy No 1 but she did ally with him for a while when he was campaigning for the Enlilship in Babylon. When Marduk holed up in the Giza Pyramid during the Second Pyramid War which arose in relation to the death of Dumuzi, it was Inanna who took the lead in ferreting him out. Again it was Inanna who of the Enlilites spearheaded the assault on Marduk’s Babylon spaceport, the so-called Tower of Babel.
In order to pacify her over the death of Dumuzi, she was given rulership of the Indus Valley but she was not content: she wanted a whole region to herself. At one time, she conquered Egypt and even set her sights on Tilmun, a foolhardy move which got her into serious trouble with Enlil.
Third, she was an avid and exceptionally skilled pilot. In some ancient Sumerian wall sculptures, she’s depicted fully togged in pilot gear, with tight-fitting earphones, helmet, and flight goggles. Her cult city was Uruk (Erech in the Old Testament), where she had a “house for night-time pleasure”.
Whilst she never had children with fellow Anunnaki, she had several with demigods. They included Lulal, Shara, and Aeneas. Rhea, the mother of Romulus and Remus whom Julius Caesar claimed as an ancestor, was a descendant of Inanna.
Inanna’s numerical rank was 15. She secured the ranking by sleight of hand, when she strategically married her twin brother Shamash, whose rank was 20. Of course the marriage didn’t last. She would have several abortive marriages with demigods over time. As one of twins, Inanna was associated with the astrological sign of Gemini.
ISIS THE DIVINE MOTHER
Isis is the most famous queen/goddess of ancient Egypt. Isis’s relationship with Enki is somewhat convoluted. Enki begot Marduk (Ra) and Marduk begot Shu. Shu in turn begot Geb. Then Geb and his half-sister wife Nut begot four children, one of whom was Isis. This would have made Isis a great great granddaughter of Enki. But what actually happened was that Nut had Isis not with her husband Geb but with Marduk’s half-brother Ningishzidda. Genealogically, that made Isis a granddaughter of Enki primarily.
Isis was the name by which the Greeks called her. It was actually an abbreviation of SSS-SSS, a title of the Orion Queen, who was Enki’s sole parent. The name Enki gave Isis was AST-AST, after yet another title of the Orion Queen, which was abbreviated as AST. Ancient Egyptians called her Ast, not Isis.
The name Nut, Isis’s mother, also resounds with Orion antecedents. The daughters of the Queen of Orion who were borne her by the Queen Mother through the surrogacy arrangement were known as N-TT-TT, abbreviated N-TT or simply NUT. In Egypt, Nut was known as the goddess of the sky because as we explained at one stage, on the SSS World (the throne planet of the Orion Queen), “N” stood for Heaven, meaning the Orion star system.
Isis was the mother of the famous Egyptian god Horus, who ruled Egypt for 300 years from 8970 to 8670 BC.
OTHER PROMINENT ANUNNAKI GODDESSES
The highest ranking Anunnaki female on Earth was Ninli, Enlil-Jehovah’s wife. She bore the number 45. A self-effacing woman, Ninli kept a very low Earthly profile. Enlil married Ninli, originally known as Sud, here on Earth under very controversial circumstances we shall dwell upon at length in due course.
The second highest ranking female on Earth was Ninki. This was Damkina, Enki’s official wife. Her number was 35. It was Damkina who bore Eve, Adam’s wife, through uterine implantation after in-vitro fertilisation.
Next was Ningal, Nanna-Sin’s wife. Ningal was the daughter of Enki and his mistress known as Ningikuga. Ningal was also known as Asherah, amongst other names, and was one of the most popular Canaanite goddesses. Her numerical rank was 25.
Sarpanit, Marduk’s wife, was not recognised by Anu and Enlil. As hinted above, this was because she was an Earthling and Anunnaki men were forbidden from marrying “inferior” Earthlings. Sarpanit was a daughter of Enkime, Enoch in the Bible. Marduk’s marriage to Sarpanit had serious reprisals. First, he forfeited his eligibility to the Sirian-Orion throne, to which he had been second in line after Enlil. Second, he was banned from ever returning to either Nibiru or the throne planet of Sirius/Orion. It was for this reason that Marduk fought tooth and nail to be Earth’s King as that was the only worthwhile prize available to him.
Bau, also known as Gula, was Ninurta’s wife. She was Anu’s youngest daughter and so was Ninurta’s aunt. Of the Enlilites, she was the most pro-Earthling. She ran a medical facility for humans in Ninurta’s city, Lagash. When Ishkur-Adad and Nergal blitzed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah with nuclear bombs in 2024 BC, Bau opted to die with her beloved human subjects from the ravages of the “nuclear wind” (that is, the nuclear radiation) that wafted all the way to the Edin city states, making her one of the few Anunnaki royals who died whilst on Earth.
Geshtinanna was born to Enki and Ninmah here on Earth and later became the consort of her half-brother Ningishzidda. Geshtinanna had an indirect hand in the death of Dumuzi. Marduk contrived her with her to set up Dumuzi for a trumped-up rape case. She obliged and Dumuzi was accordingly accused of raping her. But Dumuzi defiantly refused to hand himself over to Marduk, who was ruling Egypt at the time, insisting he was framed. He was pursued by Marduk’s law enforcement agents and in the process fell over a lakeside precipice and drowned. It was Dumuzi’s death that led to the Second Pyramid War and in turn to Marduk’s eventual exile to Babylon.
Ereshkigal, the wife of Nergal, was the daughter of Nanna-Sin and his principal wife Ningal. She was also at once a granddaughter of Enki since Enki was Ningal’s father. Enki, like the randy Casanova he was, had Ningishzidda with Ereshkigal before she married Nergal. Ereshkigal was something of a tigress. At one stage, she had her elder sister Inanna killed when Inanna tried to have a levirate child with Nergal after the death of Dumuzi in a famous incident known as Inanna’s descent to the underworld. It was Enki who acted quickly and restored Inanna to life. The Rwandan capital Kigali is named after Ereshkigal.
We will relate all the eventful happenings associated with these Anunnaki females in detail in due course in chronological order as here they have been condensed to provide only a sneak preview.
NEXT WEEK: ENKI STUDIES THE CELESTIAL ARC
![""]("/local/common_up/weekend-post/images/SAILI-Pic-48.jpg")
GODDESS OF WHOREDOM: Although she did not rank that highly among the Anunnaki pantheon, Inanna-Ishtar, the daughter of Nanna-Sin (the Allah of Islam) and a grand-daughter of Enlil-Jehovah, is the most chronicled of the Anunnaki womenfolk in the Sumerian records. Inanna was a most eccentric woman with a seamless libido and who flaunted her nakedness with the craze of a porn star, the reason she was dubbed the god of sexuality. When Anu, “Our Father Who Art In Heaven” came down to Earth, it was Inanna who was on hand to service him sexually. She slept with just about anybody who she deemed capable of satisfying her, Anunnaki and Earthlings alike. They included the infinitely horny Enki, her own twin brother Shamash, and a half-Earthling, half-Anunnaki known as Shulgi, who she serenaded as “the man for the vulva of Inanna” when she saw his humongous penis.
Columns
GONE FISHING
In recent years, using personal devices in working environments has become so commonplace it now has its own acronym, BOYD (Bring Your Own Device). But as employees skip between corporate tools and personal applications on their own devices, their actions introduce a number of possible risks that should be managed and mitigated with careful consideration. Consider these examples:
Si-lwli, a small family-run business in Wales, is arguably as niche a company as you could find, producing talking toys used to promote the Welsh language. Their potential market is small, with only some 300,000 Welsh language speakers in the world and in reality the business is really more of a hobby for the husband-and-wife team, who both still have day jobs. Yet, despite still managing to be successful in terms of sales, the business is now fighting for survival after recently falling prey to cybercriminals. Emails between Si-Iwli and their Chinese suppliers were intercepted by hackers who altered the banking details in the correspondence, causing Si-Iwli to hand over £18,000 (around P ¼ m) to the thieves. That might not sound much to a large enterprise, but to a small or medium business it can be devastating.
Another recent SMB hacking story which appeared in the Wall Street Journal concerned Innovative Higher Ed Consulting (IHED) Inc, a small New York start-up with a handful of employees. IHED didn’t even have a website, but fraudsters were able to run stolen credit card numbers through the company’s payment system and reverse the charges to the tune of $27,000, around the same loss faced by Si-Iwli. As the WSJ put it, the hackers completely destroyed the company, forcing its owners to fold.
And in May 2019, the city of Baltimore’s computer system was hit by a ransomware attack, with hackers using a variant called RobinHood. The hack, which has lasted more than a month, paralysed the computer system for city employees, with the hackers demanding a payment in Bitcoin to give access back to the city.
Of course, hackers target governments or business giants but small and medium businesses are certainly not immune. In fact, 67% of SMBs reported that they had experienced a cyber attack across a period of 12 months, according to a 2018 survey carried out by security research firm Ponemon Institute. Additionally, Verizon issued a report in May 2019 that small businesses accounted for 43% of its reported data breaches. Once seen as less vulnerable than PCs, smartphone attacks are on the rise, with movements like the Dark Caracal spyware campaign underlining the allure of mobile devices to hackers. Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission released a statement calling for greater education on mobile security, coming at a time when around 42% of all Android devices are believed to not carry the latest security updates.
This is an era when employees increasingly use their smartphones for work-related purposes so is your business doing enough to protect against data breaches on their employees’ phones? The SME Cyber Crime Survey 2018 carried out for risk management specialists AON showed that more than 80% of small businesses did not view this as a threat yet if as shown, 67% of SMBs were said to have been victims of hacking, either the stats are wrong or business owners are underestimating their vulnerability. A 2019 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests the latter, stating that the majority of global businesses are unprepared for cyber attacks.
Consider that a workstation no longer means a desk in an office: It can be a phone in the back of a taxi or Uber; a laptop in a coffee shop, or a tablet in an airport lounge. Wherever the device is used, employees can potentially install applications that could be harmful to your business, even from something as seemingly insignificant as clicking on an accidental download or opening a link on a phishing email. Out of the physical workplace, your employees’ activities might not have the same protections as they would on a company-monitored PC.
Yet many businesses not only encourage their employees to work remotely, but assume working from coffee shops, bookstores, and airports can boost employees’ productivity. Unfortunately, many remote hot spots do not provide secure Wi-Fi so if your employee is accessing their work account on unsecured public Wi-Fi, sensitive business data could be at risk. Furthermore, even if your employee uses a company smartphone or has access to company data through a personal mobile device, there is always a chance data could be in jeopardy with a lost or stolen device, even information as basic as clients’ addresses and phone numbers.
BOYDs are also at risk from malware designed to harm and infect the host system, transmittable to smartphones when downloading malicious third-party apps. Then there is ransomware, a type of malware used by hackers to specifically take control of a system’s data, blocking access or threatening to release sensitive information unless a ransom is paid such as the one which affected Baltimore. Ransomware attacks are on the increase, predicted to occur every 14 seconds, potentially costing billions of dollars per year.
Lastly there is phishing – the cyber equivalent of the metaphorical fishing exercise – whereby cybercriminals attempt to obtain sensitive data –usernames, passwords, credit card details –usually through a phoney email designed to look legitimate which directs the user to a fraudulent website or requests the data be emailed back directly. Most of us like to think we could recognize a phishing email when we see it, but these emails have become more sophisticated and can come through other forms of communication such as messaging apps.
Bottom line is to be aware of the potential problems with BOYDs and if in doubt, consult your IT security consultants. You can’t put the own-device genie back in the bottle but you can make data protection one of your three wishes!
Columns
“I Propose to Diana Tonight”
About five days before Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed landed in Paris, General Atiku, a certain Edward Williams was taking a walk in a woods in the Welsh town of Mountain Ash. Williams, then 73, was a psychic of some renown. He had in the past foretold assassination attempts on US President Ronald Reagan, which occurred on March 30, 1981, and Pope John Paul II, which came to pass on May 13, 1981.
As he trudged the woods, Williams had a sudden premonition that pointed to Diana’s imminent fate as per Christopher Andersen’s book The Day Diana Died. “When the vision struck me, it was as if everything around me was obscured and replaced by shadowy figures,” Williams was later to reminisce. “In the middle was the face of Princess Diana. Her expression was sad and full of pathos. She was wearing what looked like a floral dress with a short dark cardigan. But it was vague. I went cold with fear and knew it was a sign that she was in danger.”
Williams hastily beat a retreat to his home, which he shared with his wife Mary, and related to her his presentiment, trembling like an aspen leaf as he did so. “I have never seen him so upset,” Mary recounted. “He felt he was given a sign and when he came back from his walk he was deeply shaken.”
The following day, Williams frantically sauntered into a police station to inform the police of his premonition. The officer who attended to him would have dismissed him as no more than a crackpot but he treated him seriously in view of the accuracy of his past predictions. He took a statement and immediately passed it on to the Special Branch Investigative Unit.
The report read as follows:
“On 27 August, at 14:12 hrs, a man by the name of Edward Williams came to Mountain Ash police station. He said he was a psychic and predicted that Princess Diana was going to die. In previous years, he has predicted that the Pope and Ronald Reagan were going to be the victims of assassination attempts. On both occasions he was proved to be correct. Mr Williams appeared to be quite normal.”
Williams, General, was spot-on as usual: four days later, the princess was no more.
Meanwhile, General, even as Dodi and Diana were making their way to the Fayed-owned Ritz Hotel in central Paris, British newspapers were awash with headlines that suggested Diana was kind of deranged. Writes Andrew Morton in Diana in Pursuit of Love: “In The Independent Diana was described as ‘a woman with fundamentally nothing to say about anything’. She was ‘suffering from a form of arrested development’. ‘Isn’t it time she started using her head?’ asked The Mail on Sunday. The Sunday Mirror printed a special supplement entitled ‘A Story of Love’; The News of the World claimed that William had demanded that Diana should split from Dodi: ‘William can’t help it, he just doesn’t like the man.’ William was reportedly ‘horrified’ and ‘doesn’t think Mr Fayed is good for his mother’ – or was that just the press projecting their own prejudices? The upmarket Sunday Times newspaper, which had first serialised my biography of the princess, now put her in the psychiatrist’s chair for daring to be wooed by a Muslim. The pop-psychologist Oliver James put Diana ‘On the Couch’, asking why she was so ‘depressed’ and desperate for love. Other tabloids piled in with dire prognostications – about Prince Philip’s hostility to the relationship, Diana’s prospect of exile, and the social ostracism she would face if she married Dodi.”
DIANA AND DODI AT THE RITZ
Before Diana and Dodi departed the Villa Windsor sometime after 16 hrs, General, one of Dodi’s bodyguards Trevor Rees-Jones furtively asked Diana as to what the programme for the evening was. This Trevor did out of sheer desperation as Dodi had ceased and desisted from telling members of his security detail, let alone anyone else for that matter, what his onward destination was for fear that that piece of information would be passed on to the paparazzi. Diana kindly obliged Trevor though her response was terse and scarcely revealing. “Well, eventually we will be going out to a restaurant”, that was all Diana said. Without advance knowledge of exactly what restaurant that was, Trevor and his colleagues’ hands were tied: they could not do a recce on it as was standard practice for the security team of a VIP principal. Dodi certainly, General, was being recklessly by throwing such caution to the winds.
At about 16:30, Diana and Dodi drew up at the Ritz Hotel, where they were received by acting hotel manager Claude Roulet. The front entrance of the hotel was already crawling with paparazzi, as a result of which the couple took the precaution of using the rear entrance, where hopefully they would make their entry unperturbed and unmolested. The first thing they did when they were ensconced in the now $10,000 a night Imperial Suite was to spend some time on their mobiles and set about touching base with friends, relations, and associates. Diana called at least two people, her clairvoyant friend Rita Rogers and her favourite journalist Richard Kay of The Daily Mail.
Rita, General, was alarmed that Diana had proceeded to venture to Paris notwithstanding the warning she had given Dodi and herself in relation to what she had seen of him in the crystal ball when the couple had consulted her. When quizzed as to what the hell she indeed was doing in Paris at that juncture, Diana replied that she and Dodi had simply come to do some shopping, which though partially true was not the material reason they were there. “But Diana, remember what I told Dodi,” Rita said somewhat reprovingly. Diana a bit apprehensively replied, “Yes I remember. I will be careful. I promise.” Well, she did not live up to her promise as we shall soon unpack General.
As for Richard Kay, Diana made known to him that, “I have decided I am going to radically change my life. I am going to complete my obligations to charities and to the anti-personnel land mines cause, but in November I want to completely withdraw from formal public life.”
Once she was done with her round of calls, Diana went down to the hair saloon by the hotel swimming pool to have her hair washed and blow-dried ahead of the scheduled evening dinner.
THE “TELL ME YES” RING IS DELIVERED
Since the main object of their Paris trip was to pick up the “Tell Me Yes” engagement ring Dodi had ordered in Monte Carlo a week earlier, Dodi decided to check on Repossi Jewellery, which was right within the Ritz prencincts, known as the Place Vendome. It could have taken less than a minute for Dodi to get to the store on foot but he decided to use a car to outsmart the paparazzi invasion. He was driven there by Trevor Rees-Jones, with Alexander Kez Wingfield and Claude Roulet following on foot, though he entered the shop alone.
The Repossi store had closed for the holiday season but Alberto Repossi, accompanied by his wife and brother-in-law, had decided to travel all the way from his home in Monaco and momentarily open it for the sake of the potentially highly lucrative Dodi transaction. Alberto, however, disappointed Dodi as the ring he had chosen was not the one he produced. The one he showed Dodi was pricier and perhaps more exquisite but Dodi was adamant that he wanted the exact one he had ordered as that was what Diana herself had picked. It was a ploy on the part of Repossi to make a real killing on the sale, his excuse to that effect being that Diana deserved a ring tha was well worthy of her social pedigree. With Dodi having expressed disaffection, Repossi rendered his apologies and assured Dodi he would make the right ring available shortly, whereupon Dodi repaired back to the hotel to await its delivery. But Dodi did insist nonetheless that the pricier ring be delivered too in case it appealed to Diana anyway.
Repossi delivered the two rings an hour later. They were collected by Roulet. On inspecting them, Dodi chose the very one he had seen in Monte Carlo, apparently at the insistence of Diana. There is a possibility that Diana, who was very much aware of her public image and was not comfortable with ostentatious displays of wealth, may have deliberately shown an interest in a less expensive engagement ring. It may have been a purely romantic as opposed to a prestigious choice for her.
The value of the ring, which was found on a wardrobe shelf in Dodi’s apartment after the crash, has been estimated to be between $20,000 and $250,000 as Repossi has always refused to be drawn into revealing how much Dodi paid for it. The sum, which enjoyed a 25 percent discount, was in truth paid for not by Dodi himself but by his father as was the usual practice.
Dodi was also shown Repossi’s sketches for a bracelet, a watch, and earrings which he proposed to create if Diana approved of them.
DIANA AND DODI GUSH OVER IMMINENT NUPTIALS
At about 7 pm, Dodi and Diana left the Ritz and headed for Dodi’s apartment at a place known as the Arc de Trompe. They went there to properly tog themselves out for the scheduled evening dinner. They spent two hours at the luxurious apartment. As usual, the ubiquitous paparazzi were patiently waiting for them there.
As they lingered in the apartment, Dodi beckoned over to his butler Rene Delorm and showed him the engagement ring. “Dodi came into my kitchen,” Delorm relates. “He looked into the hallway to check that Diana couldn’t hear and reached into his pocket and pulled out the box … He said, ‘Rene, I’m going to propose to the princess tonight. Make sure that we have champagne on ice when we come back from dinner’.” Rene described the ring as “a spectacular diamond encrusted ring, a massive emerald surrounded by a cluster of diamonds, set on a yellow and white gold band sitting in a small light-grey velvet box”.
Just before 9 pm, Dodi called the brother of his step-father, Hassan Yassen, who also was staying at the Ritz that night, and told him that he hoped to get married to Diana by the end of the year.
Later that same evening, both Dodi and Diana would talk to Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s dad, and make known to him their pre-nuptial intentions. “They called me and said we’re coming back (to London) on Sunday (August 31) and on Monday (September 1) they are
Columns
RAMADAN – The Blessed Month of Fasting
Ramadan is the fasting month for Muslims, where over one billion Muslims throughout the world fast from dawn to sunset, and pray additional prayers at night. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to Allah, and self-control. It is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. As you read this Muslims the world over have already begun fasting as the month of Ramadan has commenced (depending on the sighting of the new moon).
‘The month of Ramadan is that in which the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for people, in it are clear signs of guidance and Criterion, therefore whoever of you who witnesses this month, it is obligatory on him to fast it. But whoever is ill or traveling let him fast the same number of other days, God desires ease for you and not hardship, and He desires that you complete the ordained period and glorify God for His guidance to you, that you may be grateful”. Holy Qur’an (2 : 185)
Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars upon which the structure of Islam is built. The other four are: the declaration of one’s belief in Allah’s oneness and in the message of Muhammad (PBUH); regular attendance to prayer; payment of zakaat (obligatory charity); and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
As explained in an earlier article, fasting includes total abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking, refraining from obscenity, avoiding getting into arguments and including abstaining from marital relations, from sunrise to sunset. While fasting may appear to some as difficult Muslims see it as an opportunity to get closer to their Lord, a chance to develop spiritually and at the same time the act of fasting builds character, discipline and self-restraint.
Just as our cars require servicing at regular intervals, so do Muslims consider Ramadan as a month in which the body and spirit undergoes as it were a ‘full service’. This ‘service’ includes heightened spiritual awareness both the mental and physical aspects and also the body undergoing a process of detoxification and some of the organs get to ‘rest’ through fasting.
Because of the intensive devotional activity fasting, Ramadan has a particularly high importance, derived from its very personal nature as an act of worship but there is nothing to stop anyone from privately violating Allah’s commandment of fasting if one chooses to do so by claiming to be fasting yet eating on the sly. This means that although fasting is obligatory, its observance is purely voluntary. If a person claims to be a Muslim, he is expected to fast in Ramadan.
The reward Allah gives for proper fasting is very generous. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) quotes Allah as saying: “All actions done by a human being are his own except fasting, which belongs to Me and I will reward it accordingly.” We are also told by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that the reward for proper fasting is admittance into heaven.
Fasting earns great reward when it is done in a ‘proper’ manner. This is because every Muslim is required to make his worship perfect. For example perfection of fasting can be achieved through restraint of one’s feelings and emotions. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that when fasting, a person should not allow himself to be drawn into a quarrel or a slanging match. He teaches us: “On a day of fasting, let no one of you indulge in any obscenity, or enter into a slanging match. Should someone abuse or fight him, let him respond by saying: ‘I am fasting!’”
This high standard of self-restraint fits in well with fasting, which is considered as an act of self-discipline. Islam requires us to couple patience with voluntary abstention from indulgence in our physical desires. The purpose of fasting helps man to attain a high degree of sublimity, discipline and self-restraint. In other words, this standard CAN BE achieved by every Muslim who knows the purpose of fasting and strives to fulfill it.
Fasting has another special aspect. It makes all people share in the feelings of hunger and thirst. In normal circumstances, people with decent income may go from one year’s end to another without experiencing the pangs of hunger which a poor person may feel every day of his life. Such an experience helps to draw the rich one’s conscience nearer to needs of the poor. A Muslim is encouraged to be more charitable and learns to give generously for a good cause.
Fasting also has a universal or communal aspect to it. As Muslims throughout the world share in this blessed act of worship, their sense of unity is enhanced by the fact that every Muslim individual joins willingly in the fulfillment of this divine commandment. This is a unity of action and purpose, since they all fast in order to be better human beings. As a person restrains himself from the things he desires most, in the hope that he will earn Allah’s pleasure, self-discipline and sacrifice become part of his nature.
The month of Ramadan can aptly be described as a “season of worship.” Fasting is the main aspect of worship in this month, because people are more attentive to their prayers, read the Qur’an more frequently and also strive to improve on their inner and outer character. Thus, their devotion is more complete and they feel much happier in Ramadan because they feel themselves to be closer to their Creator.