In the tale of Di and Dodi, Britain's complexities bared
YOUSSEF M. IBRAHIM
New York Times
573 words
24 August 1997
LONDON - The peccadilloes of Britain's royal family are not new, and neither are the kingdom's racial hang-ups about the inhabitants of the lands it ruled before downsizing to a service economy. But now those two defining national characteristics have joined to deliver humor and soap-opera-quality entertainment, in the love affair of Di and Dodi.
Di, of course, is 36-year-old Princess Diana, mother of the future king of Britain and ex-wife of the next king; she has recently been called a mindless ""fruit'' who thinks nothing of flying 160 miles by helicopter to consult her psychic.
Dodi is 41-year-old
Emad Fayed, an Egyptian-born graduate of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst,
known in tabloids as ""the playboy'' from the ""House of Harrods.'' Reports have
him traveling with a masseuse and bodyguards and offering girlfriends Cartier
jewelry. His father, Mohamed al-Fayed, is richer than the queen and owns Harrods
of Knightsbridge.
The background music to this drama is the clucking and sniping that attend
Britain's enduring class divisions and the nascent conflict between ascending
immigrants and native Britons.
In The Daily Mail, Glenys Roberts, a regular contributor, fumed that Diana may soon discover that she is ""trading in one prison, the lifestyle of the royal family,'' for a clearly worse alternative, ""an Arab one.''
Dame Barbara Cartland, the princess's step-grandmother, told The Sun, ""My only concern is that this Dodi is a foreigner.''
On the other side of the divide, Britain's vast Asian and Middle Eastern communities view the match between Christian Di and Muslim Dodi with apprehension, precisely because it might draw such hostile attention. But the worry is mitigated by ""an inflated sense of pride,'' as Fuad Nahdi, a contributor to The Independent, put it. ""You might hate and abuse us on the high streets and in alleyways,'' he wrote, ""but our boys are cruising off with your biggest catches on the high seas.''
The senior Fayed has been a major force in the British economy since he purchased Harrods 12 years ago. His other properties include the Ritz Hotel of Paris, Punch magazine, a radio station and the Fulham soccer club. Yet, he has been denied British citizenship, even though he has lived in London since 1963.
To Fayed, that is a sign of bigotry.
In retaliation, he has disclosed the names of Conservative officials who, while keeping him at arm's length, accepted his hospitality at the Ritz in Paris as well as so-called political contributions in brown paper bags that they never declared. His revelations contributed to the huge defeat ending 18 years of Tory rule in May.
Meanwhile, polls indicate that support for the monarchy has fallen below 50 percent for the first time ever.
And now the Dodi and Di affair.
Dodi's family has
been smug about it; his maternal uncle, the Saudi tycoon Adnan Khashoggi, told a
Saudi newspaper the other day, ""We welcome Diana into our family.''
Above the fray stands the Harrods boss. Mohamed Fayed has kept silent, though he
has appeared in fleeting photo opportunities, giving Diana a fatherly hug on his
$24 million yacht, or flashing victory signs at a soccer match at his club.