Such is life. All the way to your own demise you are forever linked with your son Dodi being in the same car with former Princess Diana when Dodi's inebriated chauffeur lost control of the vehicle as they were being chased by paparazzi in cars and on motor bikes, causing the chauffeur to lose control of the vehicle and smash into an unforgiving, concrete column, killing all three occupants in the summer of 1997.
Princess Diana had recently been divorced from then Prince Charles, now King Charles III, when she was starting to be squired around by Dodi, Mohamed al-Fayed's playboy son. Love is in the air, and they're in the back seat of limo being driven by Dodi's chauffeur just after they had a meal at the Ritz Hotel in Paris, owned at the time by Dodi's dad.
Dodi's father was a multi-billionaire, but only pegged by Forbes this year at two times over $1 billion, a $2 billion ranking that put him in a pedestrian 1,516th place of the richest people in the world.
Mohamad al-Fayed was born in Egypt and despite having vast holdings in the U.K. that included Harrod's department store, and a Premier League football club Fulham, he could never really be accepted by the upper crust, tight-lipped Brits. As hard as he tried, they would never grant him citizenship and a British passport.
He really hardly needed one, because he had homes everywhere, in London, Geneva, Paris, New York, St Tropez and other locations. No doubt, that kind of ownership offers a lot of bathrooms to put your toothbrushes in.
Mr. McFadden tells us Mohamed started out selling sewing machines and later joined his two brothers in a shipping business. Mohamed's first wife was Samira, the sister of Adnan Khashoggi, the flamboyant Saudi businessman and arms dealer. Dodi was the only child from the union with his first wife.
Perhaps it was the in-law relationship with a man as notorious as Khashoggi that kept the imperious Brits at arms-length from Mohamad, but the relationship certainly didn't seem to hurt Mohamed.
Mr McFadden tells us the Fayed shipping business flourished and profited handsomely from an oil boom in the Persian Gulf and ferrying construction material to Dubai.
Owning a British crown jewel like Harrod's and a soccer club could not buy Mohamed respect. He was a bit like Aristotle Onassis who married a former first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, but who could never be seen by the Kennedy family as something other than an oily Greek.
Here, the Egyptian's son squires a royal princess around but sees it do nothing for the father's acceptance by the elite Brits. An Egyptian is just as oily as a Greek.
Somewhat like the Germans who sport "von" in front of their surname to connote aristocracy, Mohamed added the prefix "al" to Fayed to denote aristocratic origins, of which there really were none.
Aside from the snub, McFadden tells us al-Fayed by all accounts prospered, "paid millions in taxes, employed thousands of people and through his enterprises contributed mightily to the economy."
There is something to be said for living until you're 94. Despite the efforts of the legendary New York Times obituary writer, Robert McFadden, and what I'm sure are the vast resources of the New York Times, the best they can come up with about Mohamed al-Fayed's early years is: "Details about his early life are murky."
Live an extremely long life, and there is no one around who can tell anyone what you were like as a kid and a young lad.
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