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!
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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!
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“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.