The Truth About Jacob and Esau
Columns
Benson C Saili
THIS EARTH, MY BROTHER
They were not twins but siblings with different mothers
Not long after the birth of Ishmael and long before Isaac was born, Jehovah-Enlil, now strictly the principal god of the Jews, issued a decree to Abraham to the effect that he should institute the rite of circumcision. The following is what Enlil said as per GENESIS 17:10-14:
“This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.
Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
Circumcision, so said Enlil, was to be the mark of a covenant between he and the Jewish people. It would be the fundamental sign that the Jews were Enlil’s chosen people. Any Jew who was not circumcised was automatically excluded from the fold of “God’s People”. The fact that Enlil chose to covenant in this manner meant circumcision was a novelty: it was the very first time mankind would be subjected to this form of genital mutilation and that made it special.
In due course, other nations, such as the Egyptians, would practice circumcision too but in their case it would be optional rather than mandatory and for hygienic purposes only, conducted at puberty and not during infancy as is typically the practice among some Bantu cultures today. Why did Enlil choose circumcision as the basis of his apotheotic compact with the Jews? And why did he demand that it be administered at the time when one was literally fresh from their mother’s womb?
RAISON DE TRE FOR THE INSTITUTION OF CIRCUMCISION
First, we know by now that the Anunnaki, the Old Testament gods, who were Aliens to this planet, differed from us in several respects. One of these was that unlike us, they were born with a penis without a foreskin – already circumcised by nature! The Anunnaki “created” us by blending their own genes with that of Homo Erectus, our hominid (ape-like) ancestor everybody who has been to high school is familiar with. It is from Homo Erectus we inherited a sheath that “clothes” the whole penis when it is in a flaccid state.
It is probable that had Homo Erectus been allowed to run his evolutionary course in full, his foreskin would have permanently retracted to permanently expose the glans penis (penis tip) since a foreskin was a natural safeguard against injury to the glans penis as Homo Erectus moved through dense, tall grass, which could be prickly, in an erect and therefore very susceptible posture
A case can be made, therefore, that Enlil’s imposition of circumcision on his chosen people was meant to make them look like their god down under! He desired that as his elite sheep, the Jews should have something much more intimate in common with him. Second, CIRCUMCISION WAS LIKELY A PURELY SYMBOLIC GESTURE THAT IDENTIFIED JEWS WITH PLANET EARTH ITSELF. In other words, circumcision was the Mark of Earth that was etched on the body of “God’s Own People”. It was like Enlil was saying to the Jews that, “Blessed are you, for you shall inherit the Earth”. How do we so deduce?
Once again, you need not be reminded that Earth was originally a part of the primordial planet known as Tiamat, which lay between Jupiter and Mars. In the famous “Celestial Battle”of 4 billion years ago, Nibiru, then a new immigrant to the Solar System, smashed into Tiamat and split it into a merry-go-round train of drifting debris we today call the Asteroid Belt and one intact piece which was slung-shot into a new orbit and became our beloved Earth. In figurative terms, we may say Tiamat was circumcised, with the Asteroid Belt being the foreskin that was cleaved off and Earth being the residual appendage.
A clue to what circumcision symbolised can be gleaned from the original term that is translated “circumcise” in Genesis. This is MUL. When Jews were circumcised, they were “MUL-ED”. It is telling that Earth’s full name in the Sumerian language was “MUL-KI”, meaning “a cleaved off landmass”, or figuratively, a “circumcised celestial body”. It is a pity that the prefix MUL is frequently ignored in ancient records so that Earth is, in compound words basically (such as KISIRI, meaning “Mineral Resource Centre”), simply referred to as KI, or GE in modern spelling, which is GAEA (Eke-Ea) or GAIA in full.
Earth was Enlil’s celestial counterpart, even after Marduk became the new Lord of Earth. Thus by having the Jews circumcised, or “MUL-KED”, Enlil was symbolically vesting the planet in them so to speak. Remember, these are the same people he had dubbed a “Royal Priesthood”. To him, they were a nation of priests fully at his service.
THE MARVEL OF THE EIGHTH DAY FACTOR!
In our day, circumcision for a non-Jew is done purely for hygiene purposes. Did you know that every male member of the British royal family undergoes circumcision performed by a Jewish mohel (a Jew who administers the rite of circumcision)? It is common knowledge that Prince Charles was circumcised by Rabbi Jacob Snowman, then the official mohel of London’s Jewish community. One authority on the subject puts the desirability of circumcision in perspective thus:
“In every part of the body, the skin is flush with the layers below it, thus shielding against the intrusion of various types of bacteria. Only with regards to the foreskin, however, does the opposite apply – it actually engenders a significant increase in disease-causing bacteria, spores, and fungus. The skin of the foreskin is not securely flush with the corona, and the small gap near the head of the male member allows various infectious agents to enter the empty space. This warm, dark and moist area is highly susceptible to the cultivation of germs and infectious disease. Removal of the foreskin allows the area to be maintained in a hygienic and safe manner.”
But it is the insistence on the part of Enlil that the circumcision be performed on the 8th day of the baby’s birth we find intriguing. This edict by the God of the Jews turns out to be physiologically spot-on. The Anunnaki were no dunderheads folks: they were very well-grounded medically. A Professor of Pediatrics at the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem had this to say in an article titled PROBLEMS WITH BLOOD CLOTTING AND BLEEDING IN NEWBORNS:
“In the first days after birth, the liver is not yet developed enough to survive any surgical operations, which could cause massive bleeding and lead to the death of the newborn, whose body simply does not have the ability to stop the blood flow on its own. Physiologically, until the eighth day, the liver slowly develops, until on the eighth day itself, when it is mature enough to fulfill its role to create the clots necessary to stop bleeding.”
Blood clotting is dependent on three substances, namely platelets, prothrombin, and Vitamin K. The first two are produced by the liver, whereas Vitamin K is produced in the intestinal tract. On the 8th day, all three are at their peak. It is the only time in the life of a human being that the three are 110 percent of their normal levels. Post- the 8th day, they plummet to 100 percent or below and will never go beyond the 100 percent ceiling at any other stage of one’s life.
What that means is that the 8th DAY IS THE PERFECT DAY TO PERFORM A CIRCUMCISION AS BLOOD CLOTTING SUBSTANCES, WHICH FACILITATE HEALING, ARE AT THEIR MAXIMUM EVER. Prior to the 8th day, a small cut to any part of the baby’s body could entail serious damage to the internal organs, especially the brain, and therefore may be life-threatening. The 8th day is the earliest and safest day medically for circumcision to take place.
BASEBORN ISAAC SUCCEEDS ABE AS HYKSO PHARAOH
If Ishmael, Abraham’s firstborn son was born in 2046 BC, as seems plausible, it meant Abraham, who was born in 2123 BC, was 77 years old at the time. It was unusual for dynastic men to wait for so long before they sire a heir. They were actually expected to have a heir by age 30 or by 40 if they were late. Even in our day, Prince Charles had William at age 34 and William himself had Prince George at age 31.
But human beings are not robots: once in a while, they do break with tradition for one reason or the other. For example, Zechariah had John the Baptist when he was “advancing in age”, which in those days could mean he was 40 years and above. Joseph, who was born in 44 BC, had Jesus at age 51 years of age in 7 BC. Both had valid reasons for procreating unusually belatedly. Zechariah was too busy with his ecclesiastical duties as the Zadokite priest at the Qumran temple.
Joseph had at age 30 been commissioned by Qumran’s Essene community to market the Davidic bloodline to the Diaspora Jews in Rome and Alexandria. This was in order to assure them that the bloodline was alive and kicking and so they should not tire in lending it material support for the eventual takeover of Palestine from the usurpist Romans. It was not until 8 BC that the Essene community demanded that both Joseph and Zechariah produce heirs so as to perpetuate the Davidic (royal) and Zadokite (priestly) lines in light of their age.
In the case of Abraham, he was not in a hurry to produce a heir. Firstly, he did adopt Lot following the death of Haran, his older brother and Lot’s father, circa 2099 BC. So for as long as Lot was alive, Abraham was not without heirs. Second, it is probable that Abraham did have daughters before he had Ishmael. He was therefore quite busy under the sheets. Then in 2046 BC, he had Ishmael by his new Egyptian wife Hagar, and in 2045 Isaac arrived too. But Isaac as we have explained was not his biological son: he was the son of the black Pharaoh Mentuhotep I of southern Egypt, who had hitched Sarah when Abraham strategically introduced her as his sister and not his wife.
Isaac therefore was what we would today call a coloured since Sarah, a Hykso-Hebrew, was white skinned. Indeed, the Talmud, which the Jews regard as only second in religious authority after the Old Testament, states it categorically that the nobility poured scorn on Abraham when at a special banquet he introduced Isaac as his son. Certainly, the fact that Isaac was not Abraham’s son was public knowledge.
There’s yet another strong clue that Isaac was of a stigmatic birth. Genesis relates that Sarah had Hagar and her son Ishmael banished from the royal palace when she saw Ishmael “mocking Isaac”. Of course the mocking must have been something really outrageous for Sarah to resort to such a measure. Ishmael must have been told by her mother that Isaac was not her real brother as he was somebody else’s son and not Abraham’s. With typical childish mischief, Ishmael took to deriding Isaac over the matter and when Sarah overhead him, she was incandescent with rage. Hell must have broken loose at the palace in northern Egypt.
Sarah was irate because the bigamous marriage with Mentuhotep that gave rise to Isaac was not of her own desire: it was all part of a noble plan for Abraham to seize the throne of Egypt as a whole and of which Sarah was like any obedient spouse heedful. So to suggest that Isaac was the product of infidelity on her part was grossly unfair. Abraham indeed did synpathise and side with his wife over the Ishmael profanity considering that Hagar and her son never returned to the palace after that. They did not become the destitutes Genesis portrays them as though: Hagar was a scion of the Egyptian nobility and there was simply no way she could end up living a rootless, vagrant life.
It was Isaac who succeeded Abraham as Pharaoh Mehibire II though exactly when that happened we cannot be sure. Abraham died in 1948 BC, aged 175 years, but by that time, he had long abdicated as Pharaoh. Isaac was 97 in 1948 BC. Note that the patriarchs lived much longer than commoners largely because they partook of Ormus and that they had a significant proportion of Anunnaki blood in them. They therefore aged very slowly.
JACOB IS CROWNED AS HYKSO PHARAOH
Long before Isaac became Pharaoh, he had married an Egyptian wife (most likely a cousin on the mother’s side), just as his father Abraham had married Hagar. But a Hykso Pharaoh was under obligation to wed a fellow Hebrew spouse by whom to raise heirs. This was typically a half-sister. In the case of Isaac, it should have been a daughter of Hagar or Keturah, the latter of whom was Abraham’s third wife. Since Hagar was ejected from the palace, she was deprived of the chance of having another child with Abraham. Even if she had, her daughter would not have qualified as she would have been an Egyptian on her mother’s side. Remember, heirs arose through the mother, not the father. As for Keturah, she only had sons with Abraham, six in all.
With his son’s options being so limited, Abraham arranged for Isaac to marry Rebecca. Rebecca was a pure Hebrew: in her veins flowed the blood of Abraham’s older brother Haran (her great-uncle); Abraham’s younger brother Nahor (her grandfather); Haran’s daughter Milcah (her grandmother); and Nahor and Milcah’s son Betheul (her father). Rebecca lived at Harran, then the domicile town of the Abrahamic clan: indeed, the annals of the Assyrian kings, describing their conquests and domains in the Harran area, identify by name a city named after Nahor and another one named after Laban, a brother of Rebecca.
Being two generations removed from Isaac, Rebecca was the equivalent of a granddaughter to Isaac age-wise and so was very, very young on her marriage. Now, if we are to take the Genesis line on face value, Isaac had twins with Rebecca, namely Esau and Jacob. That, sadly, is a manufactured story. ESAU AND JACOB WERE NOT TWINS, NOR WHERE THEY BORN TO THE SAME MOTHER. Esau was the firstborn and he was born to Isaac’s first wife, an Egyptian woman. It was Jacob who was born to Rebecca. Circumstantial evidence to the effect that Esau was an Egyptian abounds.
First, we know that Esau’s descendants were Edomites, who are Arabs. And who did Esau choose for his first wife? It was Basemath, the daughter of Ishmael, the father of the Arab race. It seems Esau and Ishmael contrived to engender their own race. Second, the way Esau is characterised at birth is a resounding tell-tale. He had red hair and a generally hairy body. THESE CHARACTERISTICS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH HIS APPEARANCE: IT ALL WAS CODED LANGUAGE THAT HE WAS A PRETENDER TO THE PHARAONIC THRONE OF NORTHERN EGYPT.
The pharaonic seat of northern Egypt was known as the Red Crown, Djesher-t in Egyptian, a word that connoted red. If Esau had been Isaac and Rebecca’s son, he no doubt would have inherited the Hykso throne after Isaac since he was older than Jacob. Being none of the above, he was obliged to give way to Jacob, who duly qualified in that he was Hebrew having been mothered by the bloodline brood mare in Rebecca.
It is clear, therefore, that the Genesis story of a famished Esau selling his birthright to Jacob in exchange for a bowl of tasty stew is a pathetic and unsophisticated attempt at explaining why Jacob was the one entitled to the Hykso throne. Jacob did not wrest the inheritance from, or cajole it off Esau: he congenitally merited it. The Talmud affirms this state of affairs, when it says all Esau inherited from Isaac’s estate were domesticated animals: the kingdom (northern Egypt and potentially all the lands up to the river Euphrates) he “gave” to Jacob.
Jacob was crowned as Pharaoh Yakuber of northern Egypt in 1865 BC, when Isaac died at age 180 years, although he had been co-regent with his aged father for some time. His coronation was not without polemics though as Esau’s Egyptian constituency, which was quite formidable, thought Esau had been robbed of the throne. They never recognized Jacob as their pharaoh. In fact, Esau launched a war of words against Jacob in the months leading up to the coronation in a desperate but vain attempt at thwarting his accession.
0Y00akuber was what Jacob was known to the Egyptians. To the Hyksos, he was called I-Sira-El, or simply Israel, meaning “El’s Shield”or “God’s Rampart”. This was a name he was given by the Enlilite god Nannar-Sin, who was known as El in Canaan, his main fiefdom after Ur and Haran. Why is it that of all the four Hykso pharaohs to date (Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob) only Jacob was designated as God’s Rampart?0
NEXT WEEK: END OF HYKSO ERA
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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!
Columns
“I Propose to Diana Tonight”
About five days before Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed landed in Paris, General Atiku, a certain Edward Williams was taking a walk in a woods in the Welsh town of Mountain Ash. Williams, then 73, was a psychic of some renown. He had in the past foretold assassination attempts on US President Ronald Reagan, which occurred on March 30, 1981, and Pope John Paul II, which came to pass on May 13, 1981.
As he trudged the woods, Williams had a sudden premonition that pointed to Diana’s imminent fate as per Christopher Andersen’s book The Day Diana Died. “When the vision struck me, it was as if everything around me was obscured and replaced by shadowy figures,” Williams was later to reminisce. “In the middle was the face of Princess Diana. Her expression was sad and full of pathos. She was wearing what looked like a floral dress with a short dark cardigan. But it was vague. I went cold with fear and knew it was a sign that she was in danger.”
Williams hastily beat a retreat to his home, which he shared with his wife Mary, and related to her his presentiment, trembling like an aspen leaf as he did so. “I have never seen him so upset,” Mary recounted. “He felt he was given a sign and when he came back from his walk he was deeply shaken.”
The following day, Williams frantically sauntered into a police station to inform the police of his premonition. The officer who attended to him would have dismissed him as no more than a crackpot but he treated him seriously in view of the accuracy of his past predictions. He took a statement and immediately passed it on to the Special Branch Investigative Unit.
The report read as follows:
“On 27 August, at 14:12 hrs, a man by the name of Edward Williams came to Mountain Ash police station. He said he was a psychic and predicted that Princess Diana was going to die. In previous years, he has predicted that the Pope and Ronald Reagan were going to be the victims of assassination attempts. On both occasions he was proved to be correct. Mr Williams appeared to be quite normal.”
Williams, General, was spot-on as usual: four days later, the princess was no more.
Meanwhile, General, even as Dodi and Diana were making their way to the Fayed-owned Ritz Hotel in central Paris, British newspapers were awash with headlines that suggested Diana was kind of deranged. Writes Andrew Morton in Diana in Pursuit of Love: “In The Independent Diana was described as ‘a woman with fundamentally nothing to say about anything’. She was ‘suffering from a form of arrested development’. ‘Isn’t it time she started using her head?’ asked The Mail on Sunday. The Sunday Mirror printed a special supplement entitled ‘A Story of Love’; The News of the World claimed that William had demanded that Diana should split from Dodi: ‘William can’t help it, he just doesn’t like the man.’ William was reportedly ‘horrified’ and ‘doesn’t think Mr Fayed is good for his mother’ – or was that just the press projecting their own prejudices? The upmarket Sunday Times newspaper, which had first serialised my biography of the princess, now put her in the psychiatrist’s chair for daring to be wooed by a Muslim. The pop-psychologist Oliver James put Diana ‘On the Couch’, asking why she was so ‘depressed’ and desperate for love. Other tabloids piled in with dire prognostications – about Prince Philip’s hostility to the relationship, Diana’s prospect of exile, and the social ostracism she would face if she married Dodi.”
DIANA AND DODI AT THE RITZ
Before Diana and Dodi departed the Villa Windsor sometime after 16 hrs, General, one of Dodi’s bodyguards Trevor Rees-Jones furtively asked Diana as to what the programme for the evening was. This Trevor did out of sheer desperation as Dodi had ceased and desisted from telling members of his security detail, let alone anyone else for that matter, what his onward destination was for fear that that piece of information would be passed on to the paparazzi. Diana kindly obliged Trevor though her response was terse and scarcely revealing. “Well, eventually we will be going out to a restaurant”, that was all Diana said. Without advance knowledge of exactly what restaurant that was, Trevor and his colleagues’ hands were tied: they could not do a recce on it as was standard practice for the security team of a VIP principal. Dodi certainly, General, was being recklessly by throwing such caution to the winds.
At about 16:30, Diana and Dodi drew up at the Ritz Hotel, where they were received by acting hotel manager Claude Roulet. The front entrance of the hotel was already crawling with paparazzi, as a result of which the couple took the precaution of using the rear entrance, where hopefully they would make their entry unperturbed and unmolested. The first thing they did when they were ensconced in the now $10,000 a night Imperial Suite was to spend some time on their mobiles and set about touching base with friends, relations, and associates. Diana called at least two people, her clairvoyant friend Rita Rogers and her favourite journalist Richard Kay of The Daily Mail.
Rita, General, was alarmed that Diana had proceeded to venture to Paris notwithstanding the warning she had given Dodi and herself in relation to what she had seen of him in the crystal ball when the couple had consulted her. When quizzed as to what the hell she indeed was doing in Paris at that juncture, Diana replied that she and Dodi had simply come to do some shopping, which though partially true was not the material reason they were there. “But Diana, remember what I told Dodi,” Rita said somewhat reprovingly. Diana a bit apprehensively replied, “Yes I remember. I will be careful. I promise.” Well, she did not live up to her promise as we shall soon unpack General.
As for Richard Kay, Diana made known to him that, “I have decided I am going to radically change my life. I am going to complete my obligations to charities and to the anti-personnel land mines cause, but in November I want to completely withdraw from formal public life.”
Once she was done with her round of calls, Diana went down to the hair saloon by the hotel swimming pool to have her hair washed and blow-dried ahead of the scheduled evening dinner.
THE “TELL ME YES” RING IS DELIVERED
Since the main object of their Paris trip was to pick up the “Tell Me Yes” engagement ring Dodi had ordered in Monte Carlo a week earlier, Dodi decided to check on Repossi Jewellery, which was right within the Ritz prencincts, known as the Place Vendome. It could have taken less than a minute for Dodi to get to the store on foot but he decided to use a car to outsmart the paparazzi invasion. He was driven there by Trevor Rees-Jones, with Alexander Kez Wingfield and Claude Roulet following on foot, though he entered the shop alone.
The Repossi store had closed for the holiday season but Alberto Repossi, accompanied by his wife and brother-in-law, had decided to travel all the way from his home in Monaco and momentarily open it for the sake of the potentially highly lucrative Dodi transaction. Alberto, however, disappointed Dodi as the ring he had chosen was not the one he produced. The one he showed Dodi was pricier and perhaps more exquisite but Dodi was adamant that he wanted the exact one he had ordered as that was what Diana herself had picked. It was a ploy on the part of Repossi to make a real killing on the sale, his excuse to that effect being that Diana deserved a ring tha was well worthy of her social pedigree. With Dodi having expressed disaffection, Repossi rendered his apologies and assured Dodi he would make the right ring available shortly, whereupon Dodi repaired back to the hotel to await its delivery. But Dodi did insist nonetheless that the pricier ring be delivered too in case it appealed to Diana anyway.
Repossi delivered the two rings an hour later. They were collected by Roulet. On inspecting them, Dodi chose the very one he had seen in Monte Carlo, apparently at the insistence of Diana. There is a possibility that Diana, who was very much aware of her public image and was not comfortable with ostentatious displays of wealth, may have deliberately shown an interest in a less expensive engagement ring. It may have been a purely romantic as opposed to a prestigious choice for her.
The value of the ring, which was found on a wardrobe shelf in Dodi’s apartment after the crash, has been estimated to be between $20,000 and $250,000 as Repossi has always refused to be drawn into revealing how much Dodi paid for it. The sum, which enjoyed a 25 percent discount, was in truth paid for not by Dodi himself but by his father as was the usual practice.
Dodi was also shown Repossi’s sketches for a bracelet, a watch, and earrings which he proposed to create if Diana approved of them.
DIANA AND DODI GUSH OVER IMMINENT NUPTIALS
At about 7 pm, Dodi and Diana left the Ritz and headed for Dodi’s apartment at a place known as the Arc de Trompe. They went there to properly tog themselves out for the scheduled evening dinner. They spent two hours at the luxurious apartment. As usual, the ubiquitous paparazzi were patiently waiting for them there.
As they lingered in the apartment, Dodi beckoned over to his butler Rene Delorm and showed him the engagement ring. “Dodi came into my kitchen,” Delorm relates. “He looked into the hallway to check that Diana couldn’t hear and reached into his pocket and pulled out the box … He said, ‘Rene, I’m going to propose to the princess tonight. Make sure that we have champagne on ice when we come back from dinner’.” Rene described the ring as “a spectacular diamond encrusted ring, a massive emerald surrounded by a cluster of diamonds, set on a yellow and white gold band sitting in a small light-grey velvet box”.
Just before 9 pm, Dodi called the brother of his step-father, Hassan Yassen, who also was staying at the Ritz that night, and told him that he hoped to get married to Diana by the end of the year.
Later that same evening, both Dodi and Diana would talk to Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s dad, and make known to him their pre-nuptial intentions. “They called me and said we’re coming back (to London) on Sunday (August 31) and on Monday (September 1) they are
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RAMADAN – The Blessed Month of Fasting
Ramadan is the fasting month for Muslims, where over one billion Muslims throughout the world fast from dawn to sunset, and pray additional prayers at night. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to Allah, and self-control. It is the ninth month in the Islamic calendar. As you read this Muslims the world over have already begun fasting as the month of Ramadan has commenced (depending on the sighting of the new moon).
‘The month of Ramadan is that in which the Qur’an was revealed as guidance for people, in it are clear signs of guidance and Criterion, therefore whoever of you who witnesses this month, it is obligatory on him to fast it. But whoever is ill or traveling let him fast the same number of other days, God desires ease for you and not hardship, and He desires that you complete the ordained period and glorify God for His guidance to you, that you may be grateful”. Holy Qur’an (2 : 185)
Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars upon which the structure of Islam is built. The other four are: the declaration of one’s belief in Allah’s oneness and in the message of Muhammad (PBUH); regular attendance to prayer; payment of zakaat (obligatory charity); and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
As explained in an earlier article, fasting includes total abstinence from eating, drinking, smoking, refraining from obscenity, avoiding getting into arguments and including abstaining from marital relations, from sunrise to sunset. While fasting may appear to some as difficult Muslims see it as an opportunity to get closer to their Lord, a chance to develop spiritually and at the same time the act of fasting builds character, discipline and self-restraint.
Just as our cars require servicing at regular intervals, so do Muslims consider Ramadan as a month in which the body and spirit undergoes as it were a ‘full service’. This ‘service’ includes heightened spiritual awareness both the mental and physical aspects and also the body undergoing a process of detoxification and some of the organs get to ‘rest’ through fasting.
Because of the intensive devotional activity fasting, Ramadan has a particularly high importance, derived from its very personal nature as an act of worship but there is nothing to stop anyone from privately violating Allah’s commandment of fasting if one chooses to do so by claiming to be fasting yet eating on the sly. This means that although fasting is obligatory, its observance is purely voluntary. If a person claims to be a Muslim, he is expected to fast in Ramadan.
The reward Allah gives for proper fasting is very generous. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) quotes Allah as saying: “All actions done by a human being are his own except fasting, which belongs to Me and I will reward it accordingly.” We are also told by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) that the reward for proper fasting is admittance into heaven.
Fasting earns great reward when it is done in a ‘proper’ manner. This is because every Muslim is required to make his worship perfect. For example perfection of fasting can be achieved through restraint of one’s feelings and emotions. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said that when fasting, a person should not allow himself to be drawn into a quarrel or a slanging match. He teaches us: “On a day of fasting, let no one of you indulge in any obscenity, or enter into a slanging match. Should someone abuse or fight him, let him respond by saying: ‘I am fasting!’”
This high standard of self-restraint fits in well with fasting, which is considered as an act of self-discipline. Islam requires us to couple patience with voluntary abstention from indulgence in our physical desires. The purpose of fasting helps man to attain a high degree of sublimity, discipline and self-restraint. In other words, this standard CAN BE achieved by every Muslim who knows the purpose of fasting and strives to fulfill it.
Fasting has another special aspect. It makes all people share in the feelings of hunger and thirst. In normal circumstances, people with decent income may go from one year’s end to another without experiencing the pangs of hunger which a poor person may feel every day of his life. Such an experience helps to draw the rich one’s conscience nearer to needs of the poor. A Muslim is encouraged to be more charitable and learns to give generously for a good cause.
Fasting also has a universal or communal aspect to it. As Muslims throughout the world share in this blessed act of worship, their sense of unity is enhanced by the fact that every Muslim individual joins willingly in the fulfillment of this divine commandment. This is a unity of action and purpose, since they all fast in order to be better human beings. As a person restrains himself from the things he desires most, in the hope that he will earn Allah’s pleasure, self-discipline and sacrifice become part of his nature.
The month of Ramadan can aptly be described as a “season of worship.” Fasting is the main aspect of worship in this month, because people are more attentive to their prayers, read the Qur’an more frequently and also strive to improve on their inner and outer character. Thus, their devotion is more complete and they feel much happier in Ramadan because they feel themselves to be closer to their Creator.