papa doc and mama liz

From Alex von Tunzelmann’s excellent Red Heat: Conspiracy, Murder and the Cold War in the Caribbean

The State Department was also excercised by the arrival in Port-au-Prince of an Egyptian businessman, Mohammed Fayed, and his apparent acceptance into the Duvalier family circle. A new Fayed-Duvalier oil refinery was announced. There were persistent rumours that Fayed was to marry Duvalier’s favourite daughter, Marie-Denise. ‘While Fayed may say this to all the girls, there remains nevertheless the possibility that he is in earnest re his alleged plans for investment in Haiti and is seeking to strengthen his ties with Duvalier by domestic marriage’ reported Timmons…

 …Fayed’s sojourn in Haiti lasted six months and ended in comedy. He sent a pot of’crude oil’ provided to him by his Haitian contacts to London for analysis. It turned out to be low grade molasses. Fayed’s Hiaitian partners had dug it out of an abandoned French-era sugar plantation. Disgraced, Fayed fled Haiti, while Papa Doc threatened vaguely to have him murdered. Eventually, he ended up in London where, under the name Mohamed al-Fayed, he would achieve considerable fame during his ownership of the department store Harrods.

If Mohammed and Marie-Denise had made a go of it and if a fatal accident hadn’t wrenched Lady Di from the arms of Dodi, the houses of Papa Doc and Mama Liz could have been brought together by marriage. Oh such might have beens…

I recommend the von Tunzelmann, book, by the way: droll without being facetious.

 

Comments

[ajay]

I am impressed by the arrogance of someone who wants to get into the oil business but is unable to tell the difference between crude oil and molasses when presented with a jar of it.

Mind you, according to "The Prize" (just started, not bad), Calouste Gulbenkian went out on a boat for his fifty-ninth birthday off Morocco and saw a large cargo ship with a very odd silhouette: very long and flat, with a small superstructure right at the back. He asked his daughter what it was and was told it was an oil tanker. He'd never seen one before.