Land of Firsts
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER
Sumer, the world’s best-known civilisation of old, blossoms as knowledge is lowered from “Heaven”
The 17th day of Anu’s visit to Earth was his departure day. On the morning of that day, Anu attended a prayer and thanksgiving service in the Unug-ki chapel, where blessings were requested of him. “Anu is leaving,” the priests chanted. “Anu King of Heaven and Earth, we ask for your blessings.” The Anunnaki then one by one ascended to the pulpit for Anu to lay hands on them and pronounce blessings.
The very last, by deliberate design, was Inanna. Inanna was in for the treat of her life. Anu not only made her his official mistress on Earth for as long as she was single but presented her his personal plane and gave her the keys to Unug-ki. “Anu to his great-granddaughter Inanna took a liking,” the Sumerian records say. “He drew her closely, he hugged and kissed her. ‘Let all my words heed!’ to the congregated he announced. ‘This place, after we leave, to Inanna as a dowry is given. Let the skyship in which we the Earth surveyed to Inanna my present be!’”
Inanna was over the moon. “To dance and sing began, her praises of Anu as hymns in times to come were chanted.” It was at this stage that she was renamed Inanna, “Beloved of Anu”: prior to that, she had been known as Irnini. The farewell service having been concluded, Anu was escorted down the “Street of the Gods” to the “Place of the Barque of Anu”. There, in another chapel called “Build Life on Earth”, the Anunnaki chanted blessings for him. The King was then flown to the spaceport at Tilmun. On the steps of his rocket, he had one final appeal to Enlil and Enki. “Whatever Destiny for the Earth and the Earthlings intended, let it be so,” he underlined. “If Man, not Anunnaki to Earth inherit is destined, let us destiny help.” The King then hugged, embraced, and kissed his two sons, got aboard the spaceship, and was off to “Heaven” as Nibiru was then known.
A SUDDEN, REVIVALIST BURST OF KNOWLEDGE
GENESIS 10:10: And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar … GENESIS 11:2: And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there …
Shinar (Sinar in Hebrew) is the Old Testament term for Sumer. Sumer is the English corruption of “Shumer”. Shumer is an Akkadian term, Akkadian being the parent language of Hebrew, the language of the Jewish people. Shumer (from Shem-Ur) means “Land of the Bright Ones”; “Land of the Shining Ones”; “Land of the Guardians”; “Land of the Watchers”; or “Land of the Rocket People”. In other words, Sumer was the land of the Anunnaki – the “Lords of Brightness” – who travelled in “celestial chariots” (rockets) and who watched and lorded over mankind, the species they had created by way of genetic engineering about 300,000 years ago.
However, the Sumerians did not call their land Shumer. They called it Kiengir, which means “Land of the Lords of the Blazing Rockets” – the name King Anu had conferred. The Sumerians referred to themselves as Ugsaggigga, meaning "The Black-Headed People". That way, they distinguished themselves from people they called the Dingir, or the “Righteous Ones Of The Rockets” – the Anunnaki. The Dingir were multi-racial but the majority as well as the ruling class were very light-skinned, almost albino-like; blue-eyed in the main; and predominantly blonde-haired.
Sumer was the first place the Anunnaki settled in when they came to Earth about 450,000 years ago. At the time, they called it Edin, the biblical Eden. The Edin was destroyed in the Deluge of Noah’s day and was reconstructed 6000 Years ago, when it became known as Sumer/Kiengir. Sumer was designated as the crucible for mankind’s civilisation at the suggestion of Enki and at the decree of Nibiru King Anu, “Our Father Who Art In Heaven” when he visited Earth in 3800 BC. It is the world’s best-documented civilisation of antiquity, which arose in southern Mesopotamia in ancient Iraq astride the iconic rivers Euphrates and Tigris.
The Sumerian civilisation was not gradual but abrupt: in terms of the normal, gradualistic pace of history, it took place in the twinkling of an eye. Historians and scholars have called it “astonishing”; “extraordinary”; “a flame which blazed up so suddenly”. Leo Oppenheimer, author of Ancient Mesopotamia, stressed “the astonishing short period within which this civilisation arose”.
Joseph Campbell, in his book The Masks of God, summed it up thus: “With stunning abruptness … there appears in this little Sumerian mud garden … the whole cultural syndrome that has since constituted the germinal unit of all the high civilisation of the world.” Well, the sudden dawn of the Sumerian civilisation was such because it was effected expeditiously by a people who were capable of doing so – the already surpassingly civilised Anunnaki. They handed civilisation to mankind as an already complete package: we didn’t have to evolve with this knowledge over millions of years as per the normal evolutionary process.
THE INFRASTRUCTURE TAKES SHAPE
Sumer was built by mankind with the supervision of either the Anunnaki themselves, who did the schematic and architectural planning, or the so-called demigods – Earthlings who had between half to two-thirds of royal Anunnaki blood in them. The demigods, from whom Earthling kings were chosen (that’s how bogosi began – with people who had substantial Anunnaki blood [the so-called Bluebloods] coursing in their veins, were the first to receive enlightenment. They in turn passed on this knowledge to the wider mass of Earthlings through the academic and vocational training system, initially using Sumerian and subsequently Akkadian, the forerunner to the Hebrew language, as the lingua franca.
The entire infrastructural erection – palaces, temples, houses, stables, warehouses, walls, gates, columns, decorations, statues, artworks, towers, ramparts, terraces, gardens – was done in the space of only five years. All the streets and promenades were paved. For instance, Uruk, Ninurta’s cult city, was paved with “limestone blocks brought from mountains fifty miles to the East.” All the bricks were made of clay, which was also the fundamental raw material in the manufacture of utensils for daily use and things we today make using steel – containers for storage and transportation of goods.
Sumerian Earthling cities are said to have been splendidly organised. They had a central government, a municipal bureaucracy, and a social stratification, sadly, akin to what we have today – the haves and the have-nots, the nobility and the commoners, the bourgeois and the proletariat, the blue collar and white collar. But the cities were much smaller than modern ones: each was populated by between 10,000 to 50,000 people. The bulk of mankind, who now were mistrusting of the Anunnaki in light of what transpired during the Deluge, preferred to live in rural settings far removed from the metropolises and where they would be masters of their own destiny.
The principal occupation of the Sumerians was agriculture. Sumer, also known as Mesopotamia – the Land Between The Two Rivers (Tigris and Euphrates) – was the global food basket of the day. Most of the Sumerians worked in the agricultural field: only few were in business or the professions. Others served the Anunnaki in their temple-houses. Not only did they cook, clean, launder and maintain surroundings for the Anunnaki royalty but they also worshipped them as gods. Observes one chronicler: “The Anunnaki turned Earthlings’ palace-servant duties into religious rituals that persist to this day. Serving meats on the Anunnaki table became burnt offerings. The table became an altar. The transportation of the local Anunnaki ruler on a dais became a procession of statues. The Anunnaki palaces became temples.”
Sumer was also known for the transportation, ship-building, and the metals trade, the latter of which gave rise to banking and the world’s first currency –the silver shekel. The shipping industry was in full bloom, with special-purpose ships for passengers, cargo, or goods which required exclusive transportation. As regards overland transport, the newly invented wheel facilitated the emergence of carts and chariots which used the so-called ox-power or horse power for locomotion.
But one of Sumer’s earliest outstanding feat was the development of the textile and clothing industry. Long before James Hargreaves invented the "spinning jenny”, a device which allowed one person to spin many threads at once, to kick-start the Industrial Revolution in 1764, Sumer was famed for its woolen fabrics and its apparel. The basic garment was known as the Tugtushe, meaning “garment which is worn wrapped around”, like a toga. The garments of Sumer were so highly prized that once during the Israelites storming of the city of Jericho, a soldier risked a death penalty when he appropriated to himself “one good coat of Shinar” as per the book of JOSHUA 7:21.
LEARNING AND RECORD KEEPING
What were some of the Sumerian “firsts”? They include the wheel and wheeled transportation; the brick and high-rise buildings; the furnaces and kilns essential to industries from baking to metallurgy; astronomy, astrology, and mathematics; medicine; cities and urban societies; kingship and systems of law; the bicameral parliament; temples and priesthoods; timekeeping; the calendar; music and music instruments; the first money in the form of the silver shekel; and above all writing and record keeping.
Much of the saga of the Anunnaki we have been writing about in this column series was first recorded 6,000 years ago by the scribes of Sumer. They used monuments, artifacts, foundation stones, bricks, utensils, etc, as inviting slates on which to write down and record events. Above all, they used clay tablets and cylinder seals. The clay tablets number in tens of thousands (over 30,000 were unearthed at the site of the ancient city of Nippur alone) and have been found in ancient centres of commerce or of administration, temple palaces, and libraries dug up by archaeologists over the years.
It was the Sumerians who were the first to record and describe events and tell the tales of the “gods” – the Anunnaki. We are only just beginning to know about the planet Nibiru, and we began to get acquainted with the geophysical and geographical features of other planets of the Solar System only in the last third of the 20th century, but the Sumerians knew precious much about all of this, including how the Earth came to be – a subject about which astrophycists are still scratching their “terrifically” learned heads.
“The true treasures of these (Sumerian) kingdoms were their written records,” writes Zechariah Sitchin. “ (There were) thousands upon thousands of inscriptions in the cuneiform script, including cosmologic tales, epic poems, histories of kings, temple records, commercial contracts, marriage and divorce records, astronomical tables, astrological forecasts, mathematical formulas, geographic lists, grammar and vocabulary school texts, and, not least of all, texts dealing with the names, genealogies, epithets, deeds, powers, and duties of the gods.”
The school curriculum was thorough and meticulous. It taught “not only language and writing but also the sciences of the day – botany, zoology, geography, mathematics, and theology. Literary works of the past were studied and copied, and new ones were composed. Discipline was scrupulously and rigorously enforced. There is a record of one school alumnus who was severely flogged for “missing school, for insufficient neatness, for loitering, for not keeping silent, for misbehaving, and even for not having neat handwriting”.
Modern day mathematics is based on the decimal system, the ratio 10:1, also called Base 10. The Base 10 cue was provided by the number of our bodily digits – 10 toes, 10 fingers. On the other hand, Sumerian mathematics was based on the number 60 and so was called the sexagesimal system. Why and how? According to Sumerian knowledge passed to us, mathematics on the planet Nibiru was based on the number 6 because the Nibiruians were born with 6 toes and fingers on each hand and foot respectively (Nibiruian males were also born with a penis that did not have a foreskin – already circumcised by nature! Now we can understand why Enlil – the Bible’s Jehovah – wanted his chosen people, the Hebrews, to be circumcised, that is, to be like their god!)
To reconcile Nibiruian mathematics with Earthly mathematics, the Anunnaki came up with a ratio of 3,600, which was the number of years it took for their planet to revolve around the Sun, and 2,160, which was the number of years it took for people on Earth to experience one age of a uniform star pattern in the night skies, also called a zodiac (Leo, Taurus, Pisces, etc). Thus, 3600:2160 came down to 10:6, or simply Base 60. The 360 degree cycle, the foot and its twelve inches, and the dozen are all aspects of mathematics that hark back to Sumerian sexagesimal mathematics, which was instituted by the phenomenally advanced Anunnaki. There was also a time when a year was 360 days long as opposed to today’s 365 days.
“We were taught all that we know by the Anunnaki,” the Sumerians keep reminding us in their cuneiform clay tablets.
SUMERIAN MEDICINE
If Sumer wasn’t that endowed with mineral ores, it had fuels galore. It was the ancient world’s primary source of petroleum products, a status it maintained all the way to the Roman era (1st to 5th century AD). The oil simply oozed out of the ground naturally, as in today’s Kuwait, which incidentally was part of Sumer. Petroleum products were an integral part of Sumerian medicine too, as was water, plants and vegetables (herbal products), and mineral compounds. Intriguingly, Sumerian medicine was not simply about therapy and surgery: it also involved simple vocalisation – healing by the utterance of commands (probably similar to what the “prophets” of our day do?) and incantations. Unfortunately, the latter method is not used at all in modern hospitals when it is astonishingly effective when practiced as an art form, particularly in ailments that are inflicted “supernaturally” by dark forces.
Some medicinal powders were taken orally not only with water but in mixtures with honey, wine, and even beer. In our day, doctors who prescribe medication that includes alcohol are non-existent but in Sumerian times, they were the norm rather than the exception (I’m sure my friend Mashele Ishos would love such a doctor!). And medicine was not administered only through the mouth: there was also rectal medicine, which was poured through the rectum in the form of plant or vegetable oils. Again this is unheard of in these times of ours which are dominated by Western medicine but in African medicine it is still in vogue: as kids, my own late maternal grandmother Malia used to administer rectal oils to us when we were afflicted with chronic diarrhea and with speedy results.
In the Sumerian records, we read of “water physicians (doctors who specialised in healing with water only, an echo of the “Holy Water” that is so fashionable today in evangelical circles)”, “oil physicians (doctors who specialised in healing with oils only [anointed oil as in evangelical churches?])”, “veterinarians”, etc. All sorts of surgeries were performed, including brain surgery. One medical text talks of a surgery involving the “removal of a shadow covering somebody’s eye,” which sounds like a cataract operation. There are numerous depictions of patients lying on what appear to be a surgical table with a team of masked Anunnaki and human doctors all around. On one cylinder seal is a drawing of a pair of surgical tongs against a backdrop of a serpent coiled around a tree, suggesting that the serpent has been the symbol of medicine since days immemorial.
JUSTICE AND THE LEGISLATURE
The first system of laws and the first parliament arose in Sumer. The laws were remarkably just and equitable and profoundly pro-poor. There were laws, for instance, that put a cap on the prices of essential commodities and on the rental of wagons and boats so that the poor were not unduly exploited. There were laws that formed the framework of master-servant relationships. All forms of oppression, exploitation, and extortion were spelt out as “evil” in the statutes.
The laws aimed at stopping and punishing "the grabbers-of the citizens' oxen, sheep, and donkeys" so that "the orphan shall not fall prey to the wealthy, the widow shall not fall prey to the powerful, the man of one shekel shall not fall prey to a man of 60 shekels." Early law codes included sections dealing with fees payable to surgeons for successful operations, and Shariah-like penalties to be imposed on them in case of botched operations. For instance, a surgeon using a lancet to open a patient's temple was to lose his hand if he accidentally destroyed the patient's eye!
The courts were presided over by a professional judge from the royal establishment; three lay judges; and thirty-three members of a jury. The Sumerian parliament was two-tier, like that of Britain and the US, where you have the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and the Senate and the House of Representatives respectively. A story is told of how Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, wished to go to war with Kish. As powerful as he was, he needed parliament to sanction the war. He first brought up the matter before the Assembly of the Elders, who voted against war. But when he tabled the same matter in the Assembly of the Fighting Men, it was a foregone conclusion: they overwhelmingly voted for war.
NEXT WEEK: MARDUK FOUNDS BABYLON
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
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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.