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
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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
THE KEY TO HAPPINESS
Speaking at a mental health breakfast seminar last week I emphasised to the HR managerial audience that you cannot yoga your way out of a toxic work culture. What I meant by that was that as HR practitioners we must avoid tending to look at the soft options to address mental health issues, distractions such as yoga and meditation. That’s like looking for your lost bunch of keys, then opening the front door with the spare under the mat. You’ve solved the immediate problem, but all the other keys are still missing. Don’t get me wrong; mindfulness practices, yoga exercise and taking time to smell the roses all have their place in mental wellness but it’s a bit like hacking away at the blight-ridden leaves of the tree instead of getting to the root cause of the problem.
Another point I stressed was that mental health at work shouldn’t be looked at from the individual lens – yet that’s what we do. We have counselling of employees, wellness webinars or talks but if you really want to sort out the mental health crisis that we face in our organisations you HAVE to view this more systemically and that means looking at the system and that starts with the leaders and managers.
Now. shining a light on management may not be welcomed by many. But leaders control the flow of work and set the goals and expectations that others need to live up to. Unrealistic expectations, excessive workloads and tight deadlines increase stress and force people to work longer hours … some of the things which contribute to poor mental health. Actually, we know from research exactly what contributes to a poor working environment – discrimination and inequality, excessive workloads, low job control and job insecurity – all of which pose a risk to mental health. The list goes on and is pretty exhaustive but here are the major ones: under-use of skills or being under-skilled for work; excessive workloads or work pace, understaffing; long, unsocial or inflexible hours; lack of control over job design or workload; organizational culture that enables negative behaviours; limited support from colleagues or authoritarian supervision; discrimination and exclusion; unclear job role; under- or over-promotion; job insecurity.
And to my point no amount of yoga is going to change that.
We can use the word ‘toxic’ to describe dysfunctional work environments and if our workplaces are toxic we have to look at the people who set the tone. Harder et al. (2014) define a toxic work environment as an environment that negatively impacts the viability of an organization. They specify: “It is reasonable to conclude that an organization can be considered toxic if it is ineffective as well as destructive to its employees”.
Micromanagement and/or failure to reward or recognize performance are the most obvious signs of toxic managers. These managers can be controlling, inflexible, rigid, close-minded, and lacking in self-awareness. And let’s face it managers like those I have just described are plentiful. Generally, however there is often a failure by higher management to address toxic leaders when they are considered to be high performing. This kind of situation can be one of the leading causes of unhappiness in teams. I have coached countless employees who talk about managers with bullying ways which everyone knows about, yet action is never taken. It’s problematic when we overlook unhealthy dynamics and behaviours because of high productivity or talent as it sends a clear message that the behaviour is acceptable and that others on the team will not be supported by leadership.
And how is the HR Manager viewed when they raise the unacceptable behaviour with the CEO – they are accused of not being a team player, looking for problems or failing to understand business dynamics and the need to get things done. Toxic management is a systemic problem caused when companies create cultures around high-performance and metrics vs. long-term, sustainable, healthy growth. In such instances the day-to-day dysfunction is often ignored for the sake of speed and output. While short-term gains are rewarded, executives fail to see the long-term impact of protecting a toxic, but high-performing, team or employee. Beyond this, managers promote unhealthy workplace behaviour when they recognize and reward high performers for going above and beyond, even when that means rewarding the road to burnout by praising a lack of professional boundaries (like working during their vacation and after hours).
The challenge for HR Managers is getting managers to be honest with themselves and their teams about the current work environment. Honesty is difficult, I’m afraid, especially with leaders who are overly sensitive, emotional, or cannot set healthy boundaries. But here’s the rub – no growth or change can occur if denial and defensiveness are used to protect egos. Being honest about these issues helps garner trust among employees, who already know the truth about what day-to-day dynamics are like at work. They will likely be grateful that cultural issues will finally be addressed. Conversely, if they aren’t addressed, retention failure is the cost of protecting egos of those in management.
Toxic workplace culture comes at a huge price: even before the Great Resignation, turnover related to toxic workplaces cost US employers almost $50 billion yearly! I wonder what it’s costing us here.
QUOTE
We can use the word ‘toxic’ to describe dysfunctional work environments and if our workplaces are toxic we have to look at the people who set the tone. Harder et al. (2014) define a toxic work environment as an environment that negatively impacts the viability of an organization. They specify: “It is reasonable to conclude that an organization can be considered toxic if it is ineffective as well as destructive to its employees”.
Columns
Heartache for Kelly Fisher
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o date, Princess Diana, General Atiku, had destroyed one marriage, come close to ruining another one in the offing, and now was poised to wreck yet another marriage that was already in the making. This was between Dodi Fayed and the American model Kelly Fisher.
If there was one common denominator about Diana and Dodi besides their having been born with a silver spoon in their mouths, General, it was that both were divorcees. Dodi’s matrimonial saga, however, was less problematic and acrimonious and lasted an infinitesimal 8 months. This was with yet another American model and film actress going by the name Susanne Gregard.
Dodi met Susanne in 1986, when she was only 26 years old. Like most glamourous women, she proved not to be that easy a catch and to readily incline her towards positively and expeditiously responding to his rather gallant advances, Dodi booked her as a model for the Fayed’s London mega store Harrods, where he had her travel every weekend by Concorde. They married at a rather private ceremony at Dodi’s Colorado residence in 1987 on New Year’s Day, without the blessings, bizarrely, of his all-powerful father. By September the same year, the marriage was, for reasons that were not publicised but likely due to the fact that his father had not sanctioned it, kaput.
It would take ten more years for Dodi to propose marriage to another woman, who happened to be Kelly Fisher this time around.
DODI HITCHES KELLY FISHER
Kelly and Dodi, General, met in Paris in July 1996, when Kelly was only 29 years old. In a sort of whirlwind romance, the duo fell in love, becoming a concretised item in December and formally getting engaged in February 1997.
Of course the relationship was not only about mutual love: the material element was a significant, if not vital, factor. Kelly was to give up her modelling job just so she could spend a lot more time with the new man in her life and for that she was to be handed out a compensatory reward amounting to $500,000. The engagement ring for one, which was a diamond and sapphire affair, set back Dodi in the order of $230,000. Once they had wedded, on August 9 that very year as per plan, they were to live in a $7 million 5-acre Malibu Beach mansion in California, which Dodi’s father had bought him for that and an entrepreneurial purpose. They were already even talking about embarking on making a family from the get-go: according to Kelly, Dodi wanted two boys at the very least.
Kelly naturally had the unambiguous blessings of her father-in-law as there was utterly nothing Dodi could do without the green light from the old man. When Mohamed Al Fayed was contemplating buying the Jonikal, the luxurious yacht, he invited Dodi and Kelly to inspect it too and hear their take on it.
If there was a tell-tale red flag about Dodi ab initio, General, it had to do with a $200,000 cheque he issued to Kelly as part payment of the pledged $500,000 and which was dishonoured by the bank. Throughout their 13-month-long romance, Dodi made good on only $60,000 of the promised sum. But love, as they say, General, is blind and Kelly did not care a jot about her beau’s financial indiscretions. It was enough that he was potentially a very wealthy man anyway being heir to his father’s humongous fortune.
KELLY CONSIGNED TO “BOAT CAGE”
In that summer of the year 1997, General, Dodi and Kelly were to while away quality time on the French Rivierra as well as the Jonikal after Paris. Then Dodi’s dad weighed in and put a damper on this prospect in a telephone call to Dodi on July 14. “Dodi said he was going to London and he’d be back and then we were going to San Tropez,” Kelly told the interviewer in a later TV programme. “That evening he didn’t call me and I finally got him on his portable phone. I said, ‘Dodi where are you?’ and he said he was in London. I said, ‘Ok, I’ll call you right back at your apartment’. He said, ‘No, no, don’t call me back’. So I said, ‘Dodi where are you?’ and he admitted he was in the south of France. His father had asked him to come down and not bring me, I know now.”
Since Dodi could no longer hide from Kelly and she on her part just could not desist from badgering him, he had no option but to dispatch a private Fayed jet to pick her up so that she join him forthwith in St. Tropez. This was on July 16.
Arriving in St. Tropez, Kelly, General, did not lodge at the Fayed’s seaside villa as was her expectation but was somewhat stashed in the Fayed’s maritime fleet, first in the Sakara, and later in the Cujo, which was moored only yards from the Fayed villa. It was in the Cujo Kelly spent the next two nights with Dodi. “She (Kelly) felt there was something strange going on as Dodi spent large parts of the day at the family’s villa, Castel St. Helene, but asked her to stay on the boat,” writes Martyn Gregory in The Diana Conspiracy Exposed. “Dodi was sleeping with Kelly at night and was courting Diana by day. His deception was assisted by Kelly Fisher’s modelling assignment on 18-20 July in Nice. The Fayed’s were happy to lend her the Cujo and its crew for three days to take her there.”
Dodi’s behaviour clearly was curious, General. “Dodi would say, ‘I’m going to the house and I’ll be back in half an hour’,” Kelly told Gregory. “And he’d come back three or four hours later. I was furious. I’m sitting on the boat, stuck. And he was having lunch with everyone. So he had me in my little boat cage, and I now know he was seducing Diana. So he had me, and then he would go and try and seduce her, and then he’d come back the next day and it would happen again. I was livid by this point, and I just didn’t understand what was going on. When he was with me, he was so wonderful. He said he loved me, and we talked to my mother, and we were talking about moving into the house in California.”
But as is typical of the rather romantically gullible tenderer sex, General, Kelly rationalised her man’s stratagems. “I just thought they maybe didn’t want a commoner around the Princess … Dodi kept leaving me behind with the excuse that the Princess didn’t like to meet new people.” During one of those nights, General, Dodi even had unprotected sexual relations with Kelly whilst cooing in her ear that, “I love you so much and I want you to have my baby.”
KELLY USHERED ONTO THE JONIKAL AT LONG LAST
On July 20, General, Diana returned to England and it was only then that Dodi allowed Kelly to come aboard the Jonikal. According to Debbie Gribble, who was the Jonikal’s chief stewardess, Kelly was kind of grumpy. “I had no idea at the time who she was, but I felt she acted very spoiled,” she says in Trevor Rees-Jones’ The Bodyguard’s Story. “I remember vividly that she snapped, ‘I want to eat right now. I don’t want a drink, I just want to eat now’. It was quite obvious that she was upset, angry or annoyed about something.”
Kelly’s irascible manner of course was understandable, General, given the games Dodi had been playing with her since she pitched up in St. Tropez. Granted, what happened to Kelly was very much antithetical to Dodi’s typically well-mannered nature, but the fact of the matter was that she simply was peripheral to the larger agenda, of which Dodi’s father was the one calling the shots.
On July 23, Dodi and Kelly flew to Paris, where they parted as Kelly had some engagements lined up in Los Angeles. Dodi promised to join her there on August 4 to celebrate with her her parents’ marriage anniversary. Dodi, however, General, did not make good on his promise: though he did candidly own up to the fact that he was at that point in time again with Diana, he also fibbed that he was not alone with her but was partying with her along with Elton John and George Michael. But in a August 6 phone call, he did undertake to Kelly that he would be joining her in LA in a few days’ time. In the event, anyway, General, Kelly continued to ready herself for her big day, which was slated for August 9 – until she saw “The Kiss”.
THE KISS THAT NEVER WAS
“The Kiss”, General, first featured in London’s Sunday Mirror on August 10 under that very headline. In truth, General, it was not a definitive, point-blank kiss: it was a fuzzy image of Diana and Dodi embracing on the Jonikal. A friend of Kelly faxed her the newspaper pictures in the middle of the night and Kelly was at once stunned and convulsed with rage.
But although Kelly was shocked, General, she was not exactly surprised as two or three days prior, British tabloids had already begun rhapsodising on a brewing love affair between Dodi and Diana. That day, Kelly had picked up a phone to demand an immediate explanation from her fiancé. “I started calling him in London because at this time I was expecting his arrival in a day. I called his private line, but there was no answer. So then I called the secretary and asked to speak to him she wouldn’t put me on. So Mohamed got on and in so many horrible words told me to never call back again. I said, ‘He’s my fiancé, what are you talking about?’ He hung up on me and I called back and the secretary said don’t ever call here again, your calls are no longer to be put through. It was so horrible.”
Kelly did at long last manage to reach Dodi but he was quick to protest that, “I can’t talk to you on the phone. I will talk to you in LA.” Perhaps Dodi, General, just at that stage was unable to muster sufficient Dutch courage to thrash out the matter with Kelly but a more credible reason he would not talk had to do with his father’s obsessive bugging of every communication device Dodi used and every inch of every property he owned. The following is what David Icke has to say on the subject in his iconic book The Biggest Secret:
“Ironically, Diana used to have Kensington Palace swept for listening devices and now she was in the clutches of a man for whom bugging was an obsession. The Al Fayed villa in San Tropez was bugged, as were all Fayed properties. Everything Diana said could be heard. Bob Loftus, the former Head of Security at Harrods, said that the bugging there was ‘a very extensive operation’ and was also always under the direction of Al Fayed. Henry Porter, the London Editor of the magazine Vanity Fair, had spent two years investigating Al Fayed and he said they came across his almost obsessive use of eavesdropping devices to tape telephone calls, bug rooms, and film people.”
Through mutual friends, General, Porter warned Diana about Al Fayed’s background and activities ‘because we thought this was quite dangerous for her for obvious reasons’ but Diana apparently felt she could handle it and although she knew Al Fayed could ‘sometimes be a rogue’, he was no threat to her, she thought. “He is rather more than a rogue and rather more often than ‘sometimes,” she apparently told friends. “I know he’s naughty, but that’s all.” The TV programme Dispatches said they had written evidence that Al Fayed bugged the Ritz Hotel and given his background and the deals that are hatched at the Ritz, it would be uncharacteristic if he did not. Kelly Fisher said that the whole time she was on Fayed property, she just assumed everything was bugged. It was known, she said, and Dodi had told her the bugging was so pervasive.
KELLY SUES, ALBEIT VAINLY SO
To his credit, General, Dodi was sufficiently concerned about what had transpired in St. Tropez to fly to LA and do his utmost to appease Kelly but Kelly simply was not interested as to her it was obvious enough that Diana was the new woman in his life.
On August 14, Kelly held a press conference in LA, where she announced that she was taking legal action against Dodi for breach of matrimonial contract. Her asking compensation price was £340,000. Of course the suit, General, lapsed automatically with the demise of Dodi in that Paris underpass on August 31, 1997.
Although Kelly did produce evidence of her engagement to Dodi in the form of a pricey and spectacular engagement ring, General, Mohamed Al Fayed was adamant that she never was engaged to his son and that she was no more than a gold digger.
But it is all water under the bridge now, General: Kelly is happily married to a pilot and the couple has a daughter. Her hubby may not be half as rich as Dodi potentially was but she is fully fulfilled anyway. Happiness, General, comes in all shades and does not necessarily stem from a colossal bank balance or other such trappings of affluence.
Pic Cap
THE SHORT-LIVED TRIANGLE: For about a month or so, Dodi Al Fayed juggled Princess Diana and American model Kelly Fisher, who sported Dodi’s engagement ring. Of course one of the two had to give and naturally it could not be Diana, who entered the lists in the eleventh hour but was the more precious by virtue of her royal pedigree and surpassing international stature.
NEXT WEEK: FURTHER BONDING BETWEEN DIANA AND DODI
Columns
EXTRAVAGANCE One of The Scourges in Society.
Extravagance in recent times has moved from being the practice of some rich and wealthy people of society in general and has regrettably, filtered to all levels of the society. Some of those who have the means are reckless and flaunt their wealth, and consequently, those of us who do not, borrow money to squander it in order to meet their families’ wants of luxuries and unnecessary items. Unfortunately this is a characteristic of human nature.
Adding to those feelings of inadequacy we have countless commercials to whet the consumer’s appetite/desire to buy whatever is advertised, and make him believe that if he does not have those products he will be unhappy, ineffective, worthless and out of tune with the fashion and trend of the times. This practice has reached a stage where many a bread winner resorts to taking loans (from cash loans or banks) with high rates of interest, putting himself in unnecessary debt to buy among other things, furniture, means of transport, dress, food and fancy accommodation, – just to win peoples’ admiration.
Islam and most religions discourage their followers towards wanton consumption. They encourage them to live a life of moderation and to dispense with luxury items so they will not be enslaved by them. Many people today blindly and irresponsibly abandon themselves to excesses and the squandering of wealth in order to ‘keep up with the Joneses’.
The Qur’aan makes it clear that allowing free rein to extravagance and exceeding the limits of moderation is an inherent characteristic in man. Allah says, “If Allah were to enlarge the provision for his servants, they would indeed transgress beyond all bounds.” [Holy Qur’aan 42: 27]
Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said, “Observe the middle course whereby you will attain your objective (that is paradise).” – Moderation is the opposite of extravagance.
Every individual is meant to earn in a dignified manner and then spend in a very wise and careful manner. One should never try to impress upon others by living beyond one’s means. Extravagance is forbidden in Islam, Allah says, “Do not be extravagant; surely He does not love those who are extravagant!” [Holy Qur’aan 7: 31]
The Qur’aan regards wasteful buying of food, extravagant eating that sometimes leads to throwing away of leftovers as absolutely forbidden. Allah says, “Eat of the fruits in their season, but render the dues that are proper on the day that the harvest is gathered. And waste not by excess, for Allah loves not the wasters.” [Holy Qur’aan 6: 141]
Demonstrating wastefulness in dress, means of transport, furniture and any other thing is also forbidden. Allah says, “O children of Adam! Wear your apparel of adornment at every time and place of worship, and eat and drink but do not be extravagant; surely He does not love those who are extravagant!” [Holy Qur’aan 7: 31]
Yet extravagance and the squandering of wealth continue to grow in society, while there are many helpless and deprived peoples who have no food or shelter. Just look around you here in Botswana.
Have you noticed how people squander their wealth on ‘must have’ things like designer label clothes, fancy brand whiskey, fancy top of the range cars, fancy society parties or even costly weddings, just to make a statement? How can we prevent the squandering of such wealth?
How can one go on spending in a reckless manner possibly even on things that have been made forbidden while witnessing the suffering of fellow humans whereby thousands of people starve to death each year. Islam has not forbidden a person to acquire wealth, make it grow and make use of it. In fact Islam encourages one to do so. It is resorting to forbidden ways to acquiring and of squandering that wealth that Islam has clearly declared forbidden. On the Day of Judgment every individual will be asked about his wealth, where he obtained it and how he spent it.
In fact, those who do not have any conscience about their wasteful habits may one day be subjected to Allah’s punishment that may deprive them of such wealth overnight and impoverish them. Many a family has been brought to the brink of poverty after leading a life of affluence. Similarly, many nations have lived a life of extravagance and their people indulged in such excesses only to be later inflicted by trials and tribulations to such a point that they wished they would only have a little of what they used to possess!
With the festive season and the new year holidays having passed us, for many of us meant ‘one’ thing – spend, spend, spend. With the festivities and the celebrations over only then will the reality set in for many of us that we have overspent, deep in debt with nothing to show for it and that the following months are going to be challenging ones.
Therefore, we should not exceed the bounds when Almighty bestows His bounties upon us. Rather we should show gratefulness to Him by using His bestowments and favours in ways that prove our total obedience to Him and by observing moderation in spending. For this will be better for us in this life and the hereafter.