Operation Contain Marduk
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER
A disillusioned Enlilites task Nergal to help neutralise his brother
Marduk, accompanied by his heir Nabu, returned to Babylon with the permission and encouragement of the Enlilite top brass in 2316 BC. He was not officially briefed as to what he should do but the signal from Enlil was that he should get Sargon to bite the dust as the surest way of taming Inanna-Ishtar.
Arriving in Babylon, Marduk did not rush to confront Sargon and Inanna. First, he heavily fortified the city by raising its dikes and walls so that when hostilities broke out, it was secure to a point of being impregnable. Second, Marduk, a civil engineer by training, erected a brand new infrastructure of canals, retinues, and waterworks, complete with underground dams to ensure that Babylon was adequately supplied with water for the foreseeable future. But in doing this, he diverted gargantuan volumes of water from the nearby cities with a view to punish Agade primarily and therefore demoralise its citizenry to a point of rebelling against Sargon and his goddess.
Marduk found that he did not need to wage war against Sargon: the hydrological measures he took were enough to trigger widespread insurrectionist activity in Agade. Without adequate water in a naturally arid land, people could not farm for years on end and starvation became the order of the day. The inevitable followed: the people of Agade turned against their own King. “On account of the sacrilege Sargon thus committed,” say the Sumerian records, “the great lord Marduk became enraged and destroyed his (Sargon’s) people by hunger. From the east to the west he alienated them from Sargon; and upon him he inflicted as punishment that he could not rest.” Even the very texts dedicated to the glorification of Sargon candidly state that, “in his old age, all the provinces revolted against him.”
The beleaguered Sargon spent sleepless nights trying to put off one rebellion after another. Beset by sustained internal dissent, he no longer could afford the expansionist wars of which he was so renowned. Unable to tame his relentlessly mutinous people, he died a very bitter and dejected man circa 2346 BC. In his waning days, he had such rancour against Inanna that he kept cursing her right to his very last breath for foisting on him her own, self-centred ambitions for world dominance.
Even more galling was that the she-Devil was nowhere near his death-bed to comfort him. He had given her great sex and brought her enormous prestige during the 54 years he ruled Sumer & Akkad but as a spent force now, his glory of yesteryears no longer mattered. It was vintage Inanna: she had used and discarded him like a condom.
MARDUK UNSETTLES ENLILITES
Where Marduk was a factor in any bone of contention, Inanna just never budged however hopeless her prospects for redress appeared. Marduk, her mortal enemy who robbed her of her beloved Dumuzi wittingly or unwittingly, was once again ensconced in the heart of Sumer. And not only that: he had deprived Inanna lands of a most vital commodity – water. Inanna vowed to fight him to the death: she would not rest until she got him on the back foot all the way to Egypt, his rightful domain.
Immediately after the death of Sargon, Inanna installed his firstborn son Rimush on the throne. Using him as her battering ram, she descended on Babylon like a howling dervish. “Inanna’s fury no boundaries knew,” say the Sumerian chronicles. “With her weapons on Marduk’s followers death she inflicted, raining flame over the land … attacking like an aggressive storm. The blood of people, as never before on Earth, like rivers flowed.”
But Marduk was not the one to cower and offer the other cheek: he gave as much as he took. In fact, for a number of years, Marduk’s armies had the upper hand, forcing Inanna to replace an underperforming Rimush with his younger brother Manishtusu as her vassal king. Once again, Marduk had the edge. The top brass Enlilites, who had given Marduk the green light to re-establish himself in Babylon, now were alarmed. If Marduk became too powerful, their hope of hobbling his ascendancy to the Enlilship at the dawn of the Age of Aries would be a very tall order indeed.
In order to rein him in, it was either they went to war with him or simply used moral suasion to get him to peacefully retreat from Sumer. The war option obviously was fraught with peril: the Enlilites were in no mood to spark another Enlilite-versus-Enkite war, which this time around might be apocalyptic. The better course of action, therefore, was to engage Marduk in persuasive, roundtable talks. And if that idea had to resonate with him, they would have to use a fellow Enkite, not an Enlilite, who he would readily dismiss as the paradigm of a saboteur.
But the Enkite had to be one who either had Enlilite blood in him or had a demonstrable affinity for the Enlilites. The only Enkite gods who bore such attributes were Nergal and Ningishzidda. Zidda’s mother was Ereshkigal, a granddaughter of Enlil. And Nergal was married to the same Ereshkigal. However, Zidda and Marduk never saw eye to eye: if you recall, Zidda had been forced to leave Egypt for Mesoamerica half a world away by Marduk circa 3113 BC. As such, the Enlilites’ only hope was Nergal, whose other bargaining chip was that he was Marduk’s immediate younger brother.
NERGAL UNDERTAKES TO REPATRIATE MARDUK
Nergal was the Enkites’ enfant terrible, their equivalent of the Enlilites’ Inanna-Ishtar. Nergal’s other name was Erra. Scholars have misconceived this name as suggesting he was a minion of Marduk, a kind of servant. But you know as much as I do that Nergal was far from a servant of his brother. As a matter of fact, he was a menace to his brother. What Erra simply means is “Junior to Marduk”, whose Egyptian royal title was “Ra”. This was apt in that Nergal was theoretically second in line to the symbolic throne of Enki: as an Enkite heir, Nergal was subordinate only to Marduk, hence his being “The Erra”.
The Enlilite Council to which Nergal was invited comprised of Enlil, Ninurta, Nannar-Sin, Ishkur-Adad, and Utu-Shamash. The only eminent Enlilite missing for obvious reasons was Inanna. In the meeting, chairman Enlil first expressed his dismay that Marduk wanted to dig in in Babylon because he thought the Age of Aries had already arrived. That, Enlil emphasised, was far from the case. Before Enlil could go any further, he was interrupted by Ninurta. “In Heaven, I am a wild bull,” Ninurta thundered. “On Earth, I am a lion. In the land, I am the lord, among the gods I am the fiercest.”
Now, what Ninurta was saying was not simply ordinary-speak. It was actually astrological language, invoking as he was the cult animals of the Enlilites. What he meant was that when one looked up at the evening sky, what they saw was the constellation of Taurus still, which was represented by a bull. As such, the Enlilites, whose second generation he Ninurta headed, were still the Lords of the Earthly realm.
The lion was the symbol of kingship, this arising from the fact that on their planet of origin in the Sirius start system, the Enlilites evolved from a Leonine-Wolfen-Reptilian creature whose dominant feature was that of the lion. That in fact is the reason why even today, the lion is known as the King of Beasts. It is an allegory of the fact that we Earthlings are still a colony of Sirius, that the Sirians will remain the Lords of the Earthly Realm for the foreseeable future though we naively fancy ourselves as a sovereign race.
But although Nergal had a propensity for Enlilites and he and Marduk were frequently at odds, he chose to be impartial and level-headed about the matter. This was his response: “Yes, all that is true. But on the mountaintop, in the bush thicket, see you not the Ram? Its emergence is unavoidable: in that grove, even the supermost time measurer, the bearer of the standards, the course cannot change … On the rim of the Sun's orbit, no matter what the struggle, see that Ram.”
Nergal had made the very same point Marduk kept harping about – that even if the celestial background still was that of Taurus, if one looked closely on the horizon, they would see the approaching Age of the Ram (the Anunnaki had very sophisticated viewing instruments). This was simply the march of nature: it was unstoppable.
The Enlilites were stupefied. They didn’t expect Nergal to speak so favourably and logically of his brother. Lost for words, they began to scratch their heads. It was Nergal himself who came to their aid. He told them that the only thing he could attempt to do on their behalf was to persuade Marduk to restore water supplies to other Sumerian states and to tactfully get him to leave Babylon and therefore bring an end to the on-going armed confrontation. “But that would simply be a postponement of the inevitable,” he regretted to the Enlilites.
The Enlilites gave the suggestion their nod. For with Marduk gone from Babylon, Inanna would certainly get to behave as her father Nannar-Sin and her mother Ningal were spending sleepless nights wondering how their incorrigible and intractable daughter could ever be contained. Marduk’s departure would not douse his ambition to ascend to Enlilship but it would bring about a refreshing lull in the storm and give the Enlilites ample time to weigh their options.
NERGAL ESCORTED BY AN ARMY OF FIRST JEWS
Before he departed for Babylon, Nergal sent word to Marduk that he was on his way and that he should prepare for him. He also informed his brother that he would not be heading straight for Babylon but would deviate to Uruk, Inanna’s cult city, to seek an oracle (divine guidance) at the Eanna, Inanna’s temple home which also doubled as Nibiru King Anu’s spiritual sanctuary. Accompanying Nergal on his trek was a legion of well-trained warriors known as the Gutians. Since he was going into a region wracked with warfare, it was imperative that Nergal be ready to defend himself in case he was wittingly or unwittingly set upon by the forces of either Marduk or Inanna.
Exactly who were the Gutians? In defining them, scholars have as with most aspects about the Sumerian saga got it wrong, erred, or simply desperately fudged the matter. They identify them as warriors all right, but fell to specify their nationality. Well, we will do it for them: the Gutians were the first Jews. Historians are reluctant to characterise them as such because in the Sumerian records, they have been described as dark-skinned, or Africans in short. But we now know that the original Jews were dark-skinned, like the people we today call Falashian Jews.
Historians expediently ignore the fact that the terms Gutians and Judeans mean the same thing. And everybody knows that Judeans were Jews. In point of fact, the Judeans were the true representatives of the Jewish people. It is from the House of Judah (same notion, different spelling) that Jesus emerged, the reason he’s sometimes referred to as the “Lion of Judah”, meaning “The King of the Jews”.
The Gutians were Judeans. They were also known as Kurtheans. The composite meaning of all these three terms is “Mighty Foreigners of the Mountains”. The Gutians were foreigners in Sumer because they came from the part of Africa where Nergal ruled. They were mountain people not that that was their habitat as such but because they were best-trained in mountain-based warfare.
Their base in Europe was the Zagros Mountain range in today’s south-eastern Turkey, which bordered the land of Sumer-Akkad. Whilst in Sumer, they would establish their base at Kutha, along the section of the Zagros Mountain that separated Iraq from Iran. Since they were not native to Sumer, they were dismissively described as a “nomadic people”. In future, the Gutians would constitute an elite crack force of General Ibirum, known in the Bible as Abraham. But that is another story we will come to later.
INANNA SEDUCES NERGAL
When Nergal arrived at the Eanna in Uruk, Inanna was eagerly awaiting him. And she made sure she looked so sexy and so stunning as to make Nergal salivate, which he indeed did: the moment he saw her, a huge sensation of lust pervaded him. Just from the way he eyed her, Inanna knew in her heart that she had thrust a spear through his own.
Inanna there and then whisked him to her lovemaking pad known as the Gigunnu. But she didn’t strip straightaway: she first had to present her manifesto. The basic essentials of the manifesto were that she wanted Nergal to ally with her in her contention with Marduk. The two should face-off with him and once he had been vanquished they would rule the world as god and goddess of the Age of the Ram.
“Look Nergal,” Inanna intoned as she turned on her sex appeal by deliberately flashing her shapely thighs, “even after the death of my hubby Dumuzi, I wanted you to marry me. I wanted your kids. I’m the more suitable person for your spouse and not the dim-witted and obscure Ereshkigal. So let’s conquer the world and rule it together Nergal! Let us make mince of Marduk.”
With so much loathing for Marduk naturally, Nergal did not need persuading: it was a deal without much ado. Nergal undertook that he would do Inanna’s bidding but would proceed about it in a tactical way. He would first cajole Marduk into departing Sumer and then do a demolition job on his instruments of self-assertion. Then Inanna and he would sit down to orchestrate the demise of Marduk. With Marduk gone to glory, Nergal as the second born would replace him as the new Enlil in the Age of the Ram. That was like music to Inanna’s eyes. She there and then stripped, threw herself onto the bed and lying spread-eagled said to Nergal: “Come and get it. Let’s seal our pact with a round of earthshaking intimacy!”
NERGAL SLAMS MARDUK
Like his father Enki, Marduk did not bear grudges. In terms of kindliness, it was Marduk of Enki’s five surviving sons who was very much like him. Nergal was the coldest and harshest Enkite. But Marduk received him very warmly in his Esagil temple-house, formally and cheerfully introducing him to his officials as his beloved immediate young brother.
Before they sat down for talks, Marduk took Nergal on a conducted tour of Babylon, showing him the great water infrastructure he had put in place. At least at face value, Nergal was wowed. He told his brother the waterworks and the uninterrupted power supply surely had made him “shine as a star in the heavens”. But, Nergal regretted in the same breath, it was all done with utter disregard for other cities. “Whilst you have lit it up your sacred prencincts and sophisticated your city, the Abode of Anu (Uruk) with darkness is covered. The other gods are seething. You cannot go against the will of Anu and other gods.”
Marduk’s response was that since there was havoc all around Sumer, it behoved him to rebuild his city to ready it for that day when it would be the capital of the world. “In the aftermath of the Deluge, the decrees of Heaven and Earth had gone astray. The cities of the gods upon the wide Earth were changed around; they were not brought back to their locations … As I survey them again, of the evil I am disgusted: without a return to their original places, mankind's existence is diminished. Rebuild I must my residence.”
NEXT WEEK: IRON LADY TAKES THE BULL BY ITS HORNS!
Columns
GONE FISHING
In recent years, using personal devices in working environments has become so commonplace it now has its own acronym, BOYD (Bring Your Own Device). But as employees skip between corporate tools and personal applications on their own devices, their actions introduce a number of possible risks that should be managed and mitigated with careful consideration. Consider these examples:
Si-lwli, a small family-run business in Wales, is arguably as niche a company as you could find, producing talking toys used to promote the Welsh language. Their potential market is small, with only some 300,000 Welsh language speakers in the world and in reality the business is really more of a hobby for the husband-and-wife team, who both still have day jobs. Yet, despite still managing to be successful in terms of sales, the business is now fighting for survival after recently falling prey to cybercriminals. Emails between Si-Iwli and their Chinese suppliers were intercepted by hackers who altered the banking details in the correspondence, causing Si-Iwli to hand over £18,000 (around P ¼ m) to the thieves. That might not sound much to a large enterprise, but to a small or medium business it can be devastating.
Another recent SMB hacking story which appeared in the Wall Street Journal concerned Innovative Higher Ed Consulting (IHED) Inc, a small New York start-up with a handful of employees. IHED didn’t even have a website, but fraudsters were able to run stolen credit card numbers through the company’s payment system and reverse the charges to the tune of $27,000, around the same loss faced by Si-Iwli. As the WSJ put it, the hackers completely destroyed the company, forcing its owners to fold.
And in May 2019, the city of Baltimore’s computer system was hit by a ransomware attack, with hackers using a variant called RobinHood. The hack, which has lasted more than a month, paralysed the computer system for city employees, with the hackers demanding a payment in Bitcoin to give access back to the city.
Of course, hackers target governments or business giants but small and medium businesses are certainly not immune. In fact, 67% of SMBs reported that they had experienced a cyber attack across a period of 12 months, according to a 2018 survey carried out by security research firm Ponemon Institute. Additionally, Verizon issued a report in May 2019 that small businesses accounted for 43% of its reported data breaches. Once seen as less vulnerable than PCs, smartphone attacks are on the rise, with movements like the Dark Caracal spyware campaign underlining the allure of mobile devices to hackers. Last year, the US Federal Trade Commission released a statement calling for greater education on mobile security, coming at a time when around 42% of all Android devices are believed to not carry the latest security updates.
This is an era when employees increasingly use their smartphones for work-related purposes so is your business doing enough to protect against data breaches on their employees’ phones? The SME Cyber Crime Survey 2018 carried out for risk management specialists AON showed that more than 80% of small businesses did not view this as a threat yet if as shown, 67% of SMBs were said to have been victims of hacking, either the stats are wrong or business owners are underestimating their vulnerability. A 2019 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggests the latter, stating that the majority of global businesses are unprepared for cyber attacks.
Consider that a workstation no longer means a desk in an office: It can be a phone in the back of a taxi or Uber; a laptop in a coffee shop, or a tablet in an airport lounge. Wherever the device is used, employees can potentially install applications that could be harmful to your business, even from something as seemingly insignificant as clicking on an accidental download or opening a link on a phishing email. Out of the physical workplace, your employees’ activities might not have the same protections as they would on a company-monitored PC.
Yet many businesses not only encourage their employees to work remotely, but assume working from coffee shops, bookstores, and airports can boost employees’ productivity. Unfortunately, many remote hot spots do not provide secure Wi-Fi so if your employee is accessing their work account on unsecured public Wi-Fi, sensitive business data could be at risk. Furthermore, even if your employee uses a company smartphone or has access to company data through a personal mobile device, there is always a chance data could be in jeopardy with a lost or stolen device, even information as basic as clients’ addresses and phone numbers.
BOYDs are also at risk from malware designed to harm and infect the host system, transmittable to smartphones when downloading malicious third-party apps. Then there is ransomware, a type of malware used by hackers to specifically take control of a system’s data, blocking access or threatening to release sensitive information unless a ransom is paid such as the one which affected Baltimore. Ransomware attacks are on the increase, predicted to occur every 14 seconds, potentially costing billions of dollars per year.
Lastly there is phishing – the cyber equivalent of the metaphorical fishing exercise – whereby cybercriminals attempt to obtain sensitive data –usernames, passwords, credit card details –usually through a phoney email designed to look legitimate which directs the user to a fraudulent website or requests the data be emailed back directly. Most of us like to think we could recognize a phishing email when we see it, but these emails have become more sophisticated and can come through other forms of communication such as messaging apps.
Bottom line is to be aware of the potential problems with BOYDs and if in doubt, consult your IT security consultants. You can’t put the own-device genie back in the bottle but you can make data protection one of your three wishes!
Columns
“I Propose to Diana Tonight”
About five days before Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed landed in Paris, General Atiku, a certain Edward Williams was taking a walk in a woods in the Welsh town of Mountain Ash. Williams, then 73, was a psychic of some renown. He had in the past foretold assassination attempts on US President Ronald Reagan, which occurred on March 30, 1981, and Pope John Paul II, which came to pass on May 13, 1981.
As he trudged the woods, Williams had a sudden premonition that pointed to Diana’s imminent fate as per Christopher Andersen’s book The Day Diana Died. “When the vision struck me, it was as if everything around me was obscured and replaced by shadowy figures,” Williams was later to reminisce. “In the middle was the face of Princess Diana. Her expression was sad and full of pathos. She was wearing what looked like a floral dress with a short dark cardigan. But it was vague. I went cold with fear and knew it was a sign that she was in danger.”
Williams hastily beat a retreat to his home, which he shared with his wife Mary, and related to her his presentiment, trembling like an aspen leaf as he did so. “I have never seen him so upset,” Mary recounted. “He felt he was given a sign and when he came back from his walk he was deeply shaken.”
The following day, Williams frantically sauntered into a police station to inform the police of his premonition. The officer who attended to him would have dismissed him as no more than a crackpot but he treated him seriously in view of the accuracy of his past predictions. He took a statement and immediately passed it on to the Special Branch Investigative Unit.
The report read as follows:
“On 27 August, at 14:12 hrs, a man by the name of Edward Williams came to Mountain Ash police station. He said he was a psychic and predicted that Princess Diana was going to die. In previous years, he has predicted that the Pope and Ronald Reagan were going to be the victims of assassination attempts. On both occasions he was proved to be correct. Mr Williams appeared to be quite normal.”
Williams, General, was spot-on as usual: four days later, the princess was no more.
Meanwhile, General, even as Dodi and Diana were making their way to the Fayed-owned Ritz Hotel in central Paris, British newspapers were awash with headlines that suggested Diana was kind of deranged. Writes Andrew Morton in Diana in Pursuit of Love: “In The Independent Diana was described as ‘a woman with fundamentally nothing to say about anything’. She was ‘suffering from a form of arrested development’. ‘Isn’t it time she started using her head?’ asked The Mail on Sunday. The Sunday Mirror printed a special supplement entitled ‘A Story of Love’; The News of the World claimed that William had demanded that Diana should split from Dodi: ‘William can’t help it, he just doesn’t like the man.’ William was reportedly ‘horrified’ and ‘doesn’t think Mr Fayed is good for his mother’ – or was that just the press projecting their own prejudices? The upmarket Sunday Times newspaper, which had first serialised my biography of the princess, now put her in the psychiatrist’s chair for daring to be wooed by a Muslim. The pop-psychologist Oliver James put Diana ‘On the Couch’, asking why she was so ‘depressed’ and desperate for love. Other tabloids piled in with dire prognostications – about Prince Philip’s hostility to the relationship, Diana’s prospect of exile, and the social ostracism she would face if she married Dodi.”
DIANA AND DODI AT THE RITZ
Before Diana and Dodi departed the Villa Windsor sometime after 16 hrs, General, one of Dodi’s bodyguards Trevor Rees-Jones furtively asked Diana as to what the programme for the evening was. This Trevor did out of sheer desperation as Dodi had ceased and desisted from telling members of his security detail, let alone anyone else for that matter, what his onward destination was for fear that that piece of information would be passed on to the paparazzi. Diana kindly obliged Trevor though her response was terse and scarcely revealing. “Well, eventually we will be going out to a restaurant”, that was all Diana said. Without advance knowledge of exactly what restaurant that was, Trevor and his colleagues’ hands were tied: they could not do a recce on it as was standard practice for the security team of a VIP principal. Dodi certainly, General, was being recklessly by throwing such caution to the winds.
At about 16:30, Diana and Dodi drew up at the Ritz Hotel, where they were received by acting hotel manager Claude Roulet. The front entrance of the hotel was already crawling with paparazzi, as a result of which the couple took the precaution of using the rear entrance, where hopefully they would make their entry unperturbed and unmolested. The first thing they did when they were ensconced in the now $10,000 a night Imperial Suite was to spend some time on their mobiles and set about touching base with friends, relations, and associates. Diana called at least two people, her clairvoyant friend Rita Rogers and her favourite journalist Richard Kay of The Daily Mail.
Rita, General, was alarmed that Diana had proceeded to venture to Paris notwithstanding the warning she had given Dodi and herself in relation to what she had seen of him in the crystal ball when the couple had consulted her. When quizzed as to what the hell she indeed was doing in Paris at that juncture, Diana replied that she and Dodi had simply come to do some shopping, which though partially true was not the material reason they were there. “But Diana, remember what I told Dodi,” Rita said somewhat reprovingly. Diana a bit apprehensively replied, “Yes I remember. I will be careful. I promise.” Well, she did not live up to her promise as we shall soon unpack General.
As for Richard Kay, Diana made known to him that, “I have decided I am going to radically change my life. I am going to complete my obligations to charities and to the anti-personnel land mines cause, but in November I want to completely withdraw from formal public life.”
Once she was done with her round of calls, Diana went down to the hair saloon by the hotel swimming pool to have her hair washed and blow-dried ahead of the scheduled evening dinner.
THE “TELL ME YES” RING IS DELIVERED
Since the main object of their Paris trip was to pick up the “Tell Me Yes” engagement ring Dodi had ordered in Monte Carlo a week earlier, Dodi decided to check on Repossi Jewellery, which was right within the Ritz prencincts, known as the Place Vendome. It could have taken less than a minute for Dodi to get to the store on foot but he decided to use a car to outsmart the paparazzi invasion. He was driven there by Trevor Rees-Jones, with Alexander Kez Wingfield and Claude Roulet following on foot, though he entered the shop alone.
The Repossi store had closed for the holiday season but Alberto Repossi, accompanied by his wife and brother-in-law, had decided to travel all the way from his home in Monaco and momentarily open it for the sake of the potentially highly lucrative Dodi transaction. Alberto, however, disappointed Dodi as the ring he had chosen was not the one he produced. The one he showed Dodi was pricier and perhaps more exquisite but Dodi was adamant that he wanted the exact one he had ordered as that was what Diana herself had picked. It was a ploy on the part of Repossi to make a real killing on the sale, his excuse to that effect being that Diana deserved a ring tha was well worthy of her social pedigree. With Dodi having expressed disaffection, Repossi rendered his apologies and assured Dodi he would make the right ring available shortly, whereupon Dodi repaired back to the hotel to await its delivery. But Dodi did insist nonetheless that the pricier ring be delivered too in case it appealed to Diana anyway.
Repossi delivered the two rings an hour later. They were collected by Roulet. On inspecting them, Dodi chose the very one he had seen in Monte Carlo, apparently at the insistence of Diana. There is a possibility that Diana, who was very much aware of her public image and was not comfortable with ostentatious displays of wealth, may have deliberately shown an interest in a less expensive engagement ring. It may have been a purely romantic as opposed to a prestigious choice for her.
The value of the ring, which was found on a wardrobe shelf in Dodi’s apartment after the crash, has been estimated to be between $20,000 and $250,000 as Repossi has always refused to be drawn into revealing how much Dodi paid for it. The sum, which enjoyed a 25 percent discount, was in truth paid for not by Dodi himself but by his father as was the usual practice.
Dodi was also shown Repossi’s sketches for a bracelet, a watch, and earrings which he proposed to create if Diana approved of them.
DIANA AND DODI GUSH OVER IMMINENT NUPTIALS
At about 7 pm, Dodi and Diana left the Ritz and headed for Dodi’s apartment at a place known as the Arc de Trompe. They went there to properly tog themselves out for the scheduled evening dinner. They spent two hours at the luxurious apartment. As usual, the ubiquitous paparazzi were patiently waiting for them there.
As they lingered in the apartment, Dodi beckoned over to his butler Rene Delorm and showed him the engagement ring. “Dodi came into my kitchen,” Delorm relates. “He looked into the hallway to check that Diana couldn’t hear and reached into his pocket and pulled out the box … He said, ‘Rene, I’m going to propose to the princess tonight. Make sure that we have champagne on ice when we come back from dinner’.” Rene described the ring as “a spectacular diamond encrusted ring, a massive emerald surrounded by a cluster of diamonds, set on a yellow and white gold band sitting in a small light-grey velvet box”.
Just before 9 pm, Dodi called the brother of his step-father, Hassan Yassen, who also was staying at the Ritz that night, and told him that he hoped to get married to Diana by the end of the year.
Later that same evening, both Dodi and Diana would talk to Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s dad, and make known to him their pre-nuptial intentions. “They called me and said we’re coming back (to London) on Sunday (August 31) and on Monday (September 1) they are
Columns
RAMADAN – The Blessed Month of Fasting
Ramadan is the fasting month for Muslims, where over one billion Muslims throughout the world fast from dawn to sunset, and pray additional prayers at night. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to Allah, and self-control. It is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. As you read this Muslims the world over have already begun fasting as the month of Ramadan has commenced (depending on the sighting of the new moon).
‘The month of Ramadan is that in which the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for people, in it are clear signs of guidance and Criterion, therefore whoever of you who witnesses this month, it is obligatory on him to fast it. But whoever is ill or traveling let him fast the same number of other days, God desires ease for you and not hardship, and He desires that you complete the ordained period and glorify God for His guidance to you, that you may be grateful”. Holy Qur’an (2 : 185)
Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars upon which the structure of Islam is built. The other four are: the declaration of one’s belief in Allah’s oneness and in the message of Muhammad (PBUH); regular attendance to prayer; payment of zakaat (obligatory charity); and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
As explained in an earlier article, fasting includes total abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking, refraining from obscenity, avoiding getting into arguments and including abstaining from marital relations, from sunrise to sunset. While fasting may appear to some as difficult Muslims see it as an opportunity to get closer to their Lord, a chance to develop spiritually and at the same time the act of fasting builds character, discipline and self-restraint.
Just as our cars require servicing at regular intervals, so do Muslims consider Ramadan as a month in which the body and spirit undergoes as it were a ‘full service’. This ‘service’ includes heightened spiritual awareness both the mental and physical aspects and also the body undergoing a process of detoxification and some of the organs get to ‘rest’ through fasting.
Because of the intensive devotional activity fasting, Ramadan has a particularly high importance, derived from its very personal nature as an act of worship but there is nothing to stop anyone from privately violating Allah’s commandment of fasting if one chooses to do so by claiming to be fasting yet eating on the sly. This means that although fasting is obligatory, its observance is purely voluntary. If a person claims to be a Muslim, he is expected to fast in Ramadan.
The reward Allah gives for proper fasting is very generous. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) quotes Allah as saying: “All actions done by a human being are his own except fasting, which belongs to Me and I will reward it accordingly.” We are also told by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that the reward for proper fasting is admittance into heaven.
Fasting earns great reward when it is done in a ‘proper’ manner. This is because every Muslim is required to make his worship perfect. For example perfection of fasting can be achieved through restraint of one’s feelings and emotions. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that when fasting, a person should not allow himself to be drawn into a quarrel or a slanging match. He teaches us: “On a day of fasting, let no one of you indulge in any obscenity, or enter into a slanging match. Should someone abuse or fight him, let him respond by saying: ‘I am fasting!’”
This high standard of self-restraint fits in well with fasting, which is considered as an act of self-discipline. Islam requires us to couple patience with voluntary abstention from indulgence in our physical desires. The purpose of fasting helps man to attain a high degree of sublimity, discipline and self-restraint. In other words, this standard CAN BE achieved by every Muslim who knows the purpose of fasting and strives to fulfill it.
Fasting has another special aspect. It makes all people share in the feelings of hunger and thirst. In normal circumstances, people with decent income may go from one year’s end to another without experiencing the pangs of hunger which a poor person may feel every day of his life. Such an experience helps to draw the rich one’s conscience nearer to needs of the poor. A Muslim is encouraged to be more charitable and learns to give generously for a good cause.
Fasting also has a universal or communal aspect to it. As Muslims throughout the world share in this blessed act of worship, their sense of unity is enhanced by the fact that every Muslim individual joins willingly in the fulfillment of this divine commandment. This is a unity of action and purpose, since they all fast in order to be better human beings. As a person restrains himself from the things he desires most, in the hope that he will earn Allah’s pleasure, self-discipline and sacrifice become part of his nature.
The month of Ramadan can aptly be described as a “season of worship.” Fasting is the main aspect of worship in this month, because people are more attentive to their prayers, read the Qur’an more frequently and also strive to improve on their inner and outer character. Thus, their devotion is more complete and they feel much happier in Ramadan because they feel themselves to be closer to their Creator.