Strongman for Gilgamesh
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER
Enki fashions “creature” to tame wayward Uruk King
The Gilgamesh rebuff so rankled with Inanna-Ishtar that she straightaway set about plotting to either teach him a lesson or inveigle him into bed at long last. The great physical specimen he was, coupled with his mind-blowing endowment south of the navel, haunted her non-stop. It wasn’t long before she flexed muscles as the Goddess of Uruk and introduced a yearly ritual she called Little-Jeopardy Tantra Test of Seed-Withholding.
This was a sex ritual in which the King of Uruk faced off with Inanna. This is how it went according to one source: “Each year, in a ritual for which priests groomed and scented him, Gilgamesh penetrated Inanna 50 times as she, suspended on ropes, lowered her vagina onto his penis while he maintained his erection but did not ejaculate. If he petered out or ejaculated in this ritual, she’d kill him with her laser. But when he passed the test, she invited him to her bed for a night of more varied sex.”
Gilgamesh was not only expected to endure Inanna’s “sexual sweetness”; he was to refrain from jetting off his seminal fluids, which was equivalent to chomping on a tasty morsel of barbecue on a thoroughly empty stomach but forbidden to swallow. Furthermore, he was not expected to tire no matter how long she extended him. It was a miracle that from the day the ritual was instituted, Gilgamesh passed the test with flying colours. He was also arguably the only man who steeled himself against getting infatuated with the licentiously dogged Inanna. During the rest of the year, she pursued him non-stop but he remained as elusive as quicksilver.
Meanwhile, Gilgamesh had found a way of sexual snacking that nevertheless was frowned upon by all and sundry. Exactly how did it come to that? Gilgamesh, like his departed father Lugalbanda, loved himself and loved life. He was so dynamically hunky, fearfully and wonderfully built, and as a royal had been born into a life of privilege. Even more important, he was a demigod with much more to spare. Since his mother Ninsun was a Goddess and his father Lugalbanda had more Anunnaki than Earthling blood in him, Gilgamesh was said to be between two-thirds to three-quarters “divine”, making him more than a demigod.
So the question he began to ponder was this: if he was so genetically close to the Anunnaki, why shouldn’t he be immortal like them? Why should he be subject to death when he was way in excess of a 50-50 genetic god threshold? Why should he age instead of remaining a spring chicken in general as the Anunnaki were? His own grandmother Inanna was as old as the hills and yet she looked as though she was in her early forties! Why wouldn’t he be like her?
LIKE INANNA, LIKE GILGAMESH
In order to help unravel this dilemma, Gilgamesh turned to his uncle and godfather Utu-Shamash. This is the remonstration he enunciated forth before his uncle god: “In my city man dies: oppressed is my heart. Man perishes: heavy is my heart … Man, the tallest, cannot stretch to Heaven; Man, the widest, cannot cover the earth. Will I too 'peer over the wall'? Will I too be fated thus?”
Utu’s response was a candid one: Gilgamesh should stop building castles in the air as he too would go the way every other Earthling did – six feet under. The preponderance of Anunnaki genes in his blood did not at all exempt him. “The Life that you seek, you shall not find! When the gods created Mankind, Death for Mankind they allotted; Life they retained in their own keeping,” Utu said.
Shamash proceeded to advise his nephew that instead of fretting about death, an inevitability in his case, he should make the most of his sojourn in this world by living life to the full. “Let full be thy belly, Gilgamesh. Make thou merry by day and night! Of each day, make thou a feast of rejoicing. Day and night, dance thou and play! Let thy garments be sparkling fresh, thy head washed. Bathe thou in water. Pay heed to the little one that holds thy hand. Let thy spouse delight in thy bosom, for this is the fate of mankind.”
That was a straightforward enough statement, but Gilgamesh read something else into it. When Shamash said, “Make thou merry by day and night”, Gilgamesh interpreted that as code for bedding young women 24/7 if he was to stay young indefinitely. Before long, he had turned himself into a social despot, demanding sex with newlyweds before the groom did. He decreed that wherever there was a wedding in Uruk, he should be informed well in advance so that he scheduled a timeous showing and accordingly satiated himself. It seems like he had a torn a page from some book entitled Inanna’s Sexual Shenanigans, hadn’t he?
For just as Inanna sexually abused grooms, Gilgamesh was sexually abusing brides – both through blatant abuse of the seamless power at their disposal. In fact on some nights when he was really hard up, Gilgamesh would patrol the promenades and when he happened upon a gorgeous teenage girl, he would invite her into his chariot and sweet-talk her into doing it with him. Being at once King and gorgeous, he was irresistible. The people of Uruk were appalled at their King’s overnight transformation from a good man hitherto to a fiend of sorts. “Unbridled in his arrogance, he left not a maiden alone,” the Sumerian chronicles say. Soon they were staging protests and the city’s elders were filing petitions, but Gilgamesh had grown horns and just wasn’t budging. Soon he would want to grow wings too.
ENKI PROPOSES CREATURE TO TAME GILGAMESH
The outcry of the Uruk populace over Gilgamesh’s sexual perversion was such that his mother Ninsun was greatly troubled. Hopeless to rein in her beloved but now monster of a son, an anguished Ninsun went to see her mother Ninmah so she could advise on a viable way to tame him. Having wracked her brains and come up with nothing meaningful, Ninmah suggested that they see “Wise Enki” on the matter and soon the two ladies were on their way to Eridu, Enki’s base in Sumer.
The quick-thinking Enki didn’t flog his brains overmuch. What Gilgamesh needed, Enki said, was a physical equal, somebody either as powerful or more powerful than him to exert him in a concatenation of wrestling matches and inflict on him a series of defeats. That way, his energies would be constructively diverted from sexual fixation to a compulsive desire to confront his opponent and undo the stigma of loss. Considering that being a freak of nature Gilgamesh was invincible as a gladiator, that no single human alive would stand up to him, Enki suggested that a kind of Strong Man, a creature that could contain Gilgamesh, be fashioned artificially. Listening raptly, the two ladies endorsed the Enki alternative and soon Enki, with the assistance of Ninmah as usual, was at work in the Eridu laboratory.
How exactly did Enki bring about Strong Man? Reading the Sumerian records, one finds that the story is somewhat convoluted, with elements that sound very plausible and those that border on fantasy. Both Strong Man and Gilgamesh were men of extraordinary feats and naturally aspects of legend were certain to grow around their saga over time. However, to a discerning person, as I believe I am, it is easy to separate the wheat from the chaff and piece together a sensible and credible sequence of events.
Somewhere in the steppes of Uruk roamed Wild Man. Wild Man must have grown up amongst wild life, possibly abandoned amongst them when he was an infant. He co-habited with beasts and behaved like them. He was to all intents and purposes a throwback to the Adama, the primitive stage of the being that was later upgraded to Adam, the first viable human being.
The Sumerian tablets say, “When Mankind was created, they knew not the eating of bread, knew not the dressing in garments, ate plants with their mouth like sheep, drank water from a ditch”. That was the kind of life Wild Man led. Having lived through the rigours of a wild environment probably since he was an infant, Wild Man was a colossal figure and tremendously strong and powerful. His civilised like would be just the sort of being to pit the equally humongous Gilgamesh against.
ENKIDU COMES INTO EXISTENCE
Now, when Enki created Adam, he blended Anunnaki genes with those of Ape Man. In fashioning Strong Man, he combined the genes of Wild Man with those of an Anunnaki. We know this was the case because there is mention of “copper” coming into the mix, which some rather naive scholars have interpreted to mean Strong Man was a transhumanoid, that is, part-human, part machine. That was far from the case. The copper association arises from the fact that Strong Man was meant to be blue-blooded, like a demigod.
Demigods were blue-blooded, like the Anunnaki, in that they were at least 50 percent Anunnaki. The blue-bloodedness was the result of their blood being copper-based as opposed to iron-based, like we full humans are. When copper-based blood is exposed to oxygen, it turns bluish-green. Enki didn’t take long to evolve Strong Man, who was incubated in purely artificial conditions in a laboratory setting, into a fully-formed, adult-size human being: in just under two years, Strong Man was up and running.
We know this is possible from what we learnt in the Zeta Series – that the Ebens of planet Serpo in the Zeta Reticuli star system were able to create a cloned, full-grown being in an artificial incubator in a laboratory within 18 months. When fully grown, Enkidu was genetically programmed to be slightly shorter than Gilgamesh so as to give the latter a psychological advantage in the event that they faced off. He stood at about 6-foot-6, or 2 metres, against Gilgamesh’s 8-foot-2, or 2 1/2 metres. He was below the average Anunnaki size but compared to fellow humans he was a mountain of a man.
Enki called Strong Man Enkidu, meaning “By Enki Created”. However, since Enkidu was so speedily fast-tracked, his mental development lagged his physical development by far. He had the capacity for speech all right, but he was uncomfortable being in the company of fellow humans and therefore spent all-day-long amongst animals in Enki’s zoological garden. At this stage at least, the genes of Wild Man were more expressive than Anunnaki genes. He conducted himself like an animal and even copulated with them.
This is the way he’s described: “Shaggy with hair is his whole body. He is endowed with head-hair like a woman … He knows neither people nor land: garbed he is like one of the green fields. With gazelles he feeds on grass; with the wild beasts he jostles at the watering place. With the teeming creatures in the water his heart delights.” On Sumerian cylinder seals, where he’s often shown in the company of animals, Enkidu is depicted naked, bearded, and with lush but unkempt locks of hair.
ENKI COMMISSIONS ENKIDU
A time came when Enki decided Enkidu must be civilised and be put to the use for which he was created. This was to be a step-by-step process. First, a woman was to be staked out around him with a view to re-orientate him away from bestiality to human heterosexuality. Enki hired a tantric priestess known as Shamhat to help accomplish this end. Not only was Shamhat well-paid for this role but she relished it greatly as Enkidu was at once a hulk of a man and a hunk of a man.
Shamhat approached Enkidu as he was frolicking with some antelopes and straightaway began to make erotic moves on him – sweet-talking him, caressing him, lap-dancing on him, romancing him, playing with his great prick. Noting that he was getting aroused, she led him to a cabin in the zoological garden that was originally meant for him but which he had shunned in favour of sleeping in the open air with animals. There, she cocooned herself with him for up to seven straight days. Over the course of these seven days, she had him make love to her as often as either of the two desired. This was in addition to dressing him up, bathing him properly, and preparing cooked food for him.
At long last, she gave him a chance to go mix with the animals just to gauge how he was shaping up in the rehabilitation drills. This time around, animals did not cosy up to him. In fact, they avoided him and even ran away when he attempted to be intimate with them. It seemed he had lost animalistic vibes and he now energetically repulsed them. The Shamhat trick had worked: Enkidu had been won back to the human fold.
The next stage was to train him in wrestling, not with fellow humans, who were too small for him, but with apes and bears. He acquitted himself very well, tossing them about like a rag doll in every bout. Finally, he was put in a classroom situation to refine his speech and communication skills, which had waned owing to spending too much time among animals. Now he was ready for his intended deployment. The following was Enki’s brief to him:
“Enkidu, you are to settle in Uruk. Your target is Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk. You are to ensure you stand in his way when he primes to sexually abuse a bride anywhere. He will of course confront you and challenge you to a fight as he’s in the habit of doing. You are expected to defeat and therefore shame him. He’ll be so chagrined as to never approach a woman again in that you will have made a laughing stock of his virility and taken the shine off the psychological charm he casts on women. Once you have vanquished him, you are to befriend him. You are to be his bosom friend. That way, you’ll be the round-the-clock check on whatever excesses he contemplates. Do you hear me Enkidu?”
“I’m at your service Lord Enki,” Enkidu replied. “I undertake to deliver on the assignment you have given me. I will not disappoint you Great God.” Enki also told Enkidu that some tips on forthcoming events would be relayed to Gilgamesh by way of dreams. The Anunnaki were capable of projecting dreams in the human subconscious folks though exactly how they did this is a mystery.
GILGAMESH INVITED TO “HEAVEN”?
And it came to pass … As Enkidu was being primed for the ultimate encounter with Gilgamesh, the latter had two successive, same-night dreams whose meanings were obscure. Although he himself had an idea as to what the first dream for one evinced, he decided to pick the brain of his mother, “Beloved and wise Ninsun who is versed in all knowledge”. This is how he recounted the first dream:
“During the night I felt joyful and I walked about among my nobles. Something from the heavens kept coming at me. The handiwork of Anu descended towards me! It became embedded in the ground as it fell from the skies. I sought to lift it; it was too heavy for me. I sought to shake it; I could neither move nor raise it. I pressed strongly its upper part; I could neither remove its covering, nor raise its Ascender … With a destroying fire its top I (then) broke off, and moved into its depths.
Its movable part, That Which Pulls Forward, I lifted, and brought it to thee. The populace jostled toward it, the nobles thronged about. The whole of Uruk land was gathered around it. My companions were kissing its feet. The heroes (Anunnaki) grabbed its lower part. I pulled it up by its forepart. I was drawn to it as to a woman. I placed it at your feet; you made it vie with me.”
As for the second dream, it was simple enough: all that happened was that Gilgamesh found an axe “on the ramparts of Uruk” and decided to bring it to his mother to unravel its mystery. Thus it was the first dream that was the more complex. Exactly what was the “Handiwork of Anu?” Of course that was not the name of the object: it was the name by which Gilgamesh called it for to his mind it represented an invitation by King Anu to travel to “Heaven”, or Nibiru. The object itself was a spent rocket booster. This is the part of a space-bound rocket that is made to drop back to Earth when the rocket is in low orbit with a view to make the rocket lighter as it proceeds in flight. It is meant to boost the rocket’s take-off thrust and then detach when the fuel is expended.
Ninsun parried Gilgamesh’s own interpretation of the dream. Instead, she explained that both dreams had the same underlying message. “That which was coming toward you from Heaven foretells the arrival of a stout comrade who rescues,” she said. “A friend is to come to thee. He is the mightiest in the land … He will wrestle you with his might, but he will never forsake you. This is the meaning of thy vision. The copper axe that you saw is a man, one equal to you in strength. A strong partner will come to you, one who can save the life of a comrade. He was created on the steppe, and he will soon arrive in Uruk.”
Clearly, Ninsun’s take was premeditated. The dream was contrived by Enki and its interpretation was therefore specifically tailored to sensitise Gilgamesh to the imminent arrival in town of Enkidu. But Gilgamesh was not in the least bit stirred by Enkidu. It was his own interpretation of the dreams with which his mind would be preoccupied for some time to come.
NEXT WEEK: CLASH OF THE TITANS!
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.