0.cached.png
By Newsweek Editors
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
HE WAS THE SON OF one of the wealthiest men in the world. But until he started to squire Princess Diana, Emad (Dodi) Fayed was unknown to most of his countrymen. The 41-year-old Egyptian heir to the Harrods department-store fortune died last week in the same gruesome collision that killed the princess. And now, just as the British public is left to mourn the mother of its future king, so is the Arab world left to grieve its glamorous, newly discovered, jet-setter.
Like Diana herself, Dodi had tried for years to attain acceptance in a world that never seemed to know what to make of him. But even in the fast-paced, money-talks atmosphere of Hollywood, he found it difficult to gain credibility. Major feature films that he said he produced, including ""Chariots of Fire'' (1981), ""F/X'' (1986) and the 1991 sequel, ""Hook'' (1991), and ""The Scarlet Letter'' (1995), were not quite the accomplishments they seemed to be. Industry sources say that Dodi's father, Mohamed, was really the one whose millions financed ""Chariots,'' and that family connections landed Dodi the ""Hook'' script. There is also evidence that he was only preliminarily involved with ""The Scarlet Letter,'' and that he invested little or none of his own money in either of the ""F/X'' projects.
Though he may well have been more playboy than businessman, Dodi seemed to fill a void for the princess that wasn't just romantic: like her, he knew firsthand the privilege and constraints of a millionaire's life, complete with bodyguards, death threats and multimillion-dollar yachts. The minute the first photo of the pair appeared in the press, model Kelly Fisher tearfully announced to journalists that she would sue for breach of contract, saying she had first dibs on Dodi. (He countered that, if there indeed had been any engagement, it had long since been broken off.)
Read More on News
It's unlikely that any degree of Di-and-Dodi magic, as ephemeral and harmless as it may have been, would have gotten the family patriarch what he couldn't get on his own. Mohamed Al Fayed has done everything within his power to win over the country he's lived in for nearly three decades, including buying a British soccer club, a castle in the Scottish Highlands, even sending Dodi to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.
Still, Britain has refused to grant Mohamed citizenship. Perhaps out of simple self-aggrandizement (Mohamed was unavailable for comment), Dodi's father allegedly characterized a middling background as something much grander. According to the Department of Trade and Industry report on the 1985 Harrods purchase by Mohamed and his brother Ali, the Fayeds' testimony was tainted by lies. Though the findings didn't affect the Harrods deal, the reports' allegations that the Fayeds produced false statements and documents, including false birth certificates, has cast a pall over the family's reputation--and possibly torpedoed Mohamed's citizenship petition forever.
Citizenship, however, may be one of the few things Mohamed never gets. A consummate opportunist, he hooked up long ago with the Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi after a chance meeting in Egypt with Khashoggi's father. Then he married Adnan's sister, Samira, at a time when Adnan's fortunes were taking off, and later forged an advantageous friendship with the Sultan of Brunei. During most of the '60s and '70s, Fayed plied his trade as a go-between in the oil-rich gulf states. It was during this period that he added an ""Al'' to his name, becoming Mohamed Al Fayed--an affectation usually reserved for Saudi princes intent on drawing attention to their lineage.
Notably, Dodi never adopted the moniker. Perhaps he--and Di--really were greater populists than either of their families would allow.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines