Queen Noor: Articles, Interviews & Speeches

maryshawn · #1 01-08-2005, 10:18 PM

images from the QN interview with the Royal Jordanian Airline in Jan. 7, 1981 (taken, in part from "The Jordan Times."

Visiting children in orphanages in Jordan, presiding over conferences and meeting Jordanians....images from her new life.

maryshawn · #2 01-12-2005, 01:21 AM

At work and at play with King Hussein and a very young Raiyah.

maryshawn · #3 01-12-2005, 01:47 AM

Excerpts from article:

Even more remarkable is the lack of air conditioning at al Nadwa, a circumstance that takes visitors by surprise but bothers QN not at all. The upstairs had to enlarge after moving in and is strictly off limits to all but friends, family and staff. There are eight bedrooms, seven of them are in use by Their Majesties's seven children--Princesses Haya, Abir, Iman and Raiyah and Princes Hamzah, Hashim and Ali. The eighth bedroom is KH and QN's, making for a good bit of family togetherness.

"The children are not compartmentalized in another part of the house," comments Noor. "They are always about. That has been very important. I know that sometimes this hasn't been the case for families in our position but I am certainly determined we have as much of a family life as possible."

"Queen Noor approaches being a mother to all seven children with the zeal and energy and full participation she devotes to everything. She develops a weekly schedule with each child which includes lessons of all sorts depending on their interests--from karate to violin. Whenever she can, she replaces the nanny by being there with the children."

"She reads to all the children every night and brings several with her when she travels. During a quick trip to NY, she will bring Iman, Abir and Haya, for example, to stay with her sister. 'Our busy schedules mean we must try to find ways to fit them in creatively. Of course, it would be better if I was giving them all the attention but one does the best one can."

This supports her book, where she writes:

"As my sister, Abir and Haya were driving past Queen Alia's tomb, Abir turned to my sister and said 'will you be our mother when our new mommy dies?"

Later, she says:

"As my husband lay dying, I was particularly concerned for Haya, Ali and Abir, who had already lost a parent........"

So while she later received a lot of grief from the children when they became teens, she shows she tried hard and empathized....not just empathized via feelings but tried hard to ensure they always felt part of the family too. I think criticism of QN re: parenting has always been a bit harsh. KH isn't mentioned as being around planning things for them. They met, courted, married and then he "dumped her in the deep end....." re: work and family, allowing her to sort it all out for herself. Was this a marriage of convenience, too, so he could go about his life, content the children had a mother at home to manage things????? I wonder.

Sometimes, children who lose parents at young ages glorify them and NO ONE can live up to the standards. They are also resentful of those with both parents around. This anger can go on for a long time. QN states in her book she time and again thought about counseling for all during this time but couldn't risk confidential issues leaking out......for example, one of the children being overheard saying something which would be the next day's headline. This might have helped. For such blessed people, they also were limited when problems arose as there were so few to confide in for help.

I could go on but I wish people who criticize QN would stop and consider what she did, how she tried, the constraints and lack of support from KH. Few of us at 26 could've gone into a foreign country and assumed all the roles she had to assume as well as she did.....and no one is perfect.

Is it my imagination or is Princess Haya's anger growing? In the Roland Dallas book in 2000 she was quite complimentary re: Noor as a stepmom. But there are times when this young woman I used to admire so very much acts like a spoiled brat. For no other reason, that marriage was not such a good thing. She needed a joyful, stable person w/one wife to dote on.....my opinion!

sommone · #4 01-12-2005, 03:15 AM

I think that QN must have known that it would be a difficult adjustment for everyone involved not just her. I mean Ali, Abir, and Haya were small children dealing with the loss of their mother, and while you would think that over time the anger would subside, and the children would become accepting of the situation, but that wasn't necessarily the case. I'm sure they did need some counseling, but couldn't seek it for fear their personal problems would be printed in the paper, and that is sad. Maybe some of their anger was directed towards KH for remarrying someone else, but instead probably projected onto Noor, which wouldn't have been fair. We don't know. Also, one needs to take in account that there is always two sides to a story. I had read that they lived with several other different relatives at one point...I'm wondering if this was doing the "teen" years or was it due to tensions as QN mentioned in the home.

tipper · #5 01-12-2005, 07:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maryshawn

So while she later received a lot of grief from the children when they became teens, she shows she tried hard and empathized....not just empathized via feelings but tried hard to ensure they always felt part of the family too. I think criticism of QN re: parenting has always been a bit harsh. KH isn't mentioned as being around planning things for them. They met, courted, married and then he "dumped her in the deep end....." re: work and family, allowing her to sort it all out for herself. Was this a marriage of convenience, too, so he could go about his life, content the children had a mother at home to manage things????? I wonder.

Sometimes, children who lose parents at young ages glorify them and NO ONE can live up to the standards. They are also resentful of those with both parents around. This anger can go on for a long time. QN states in her book she time and again thought about counseling for all during this time but couldn't risk confidential issues leaking out......for example, one of the children being overheard saying something which would be the next day's headline. This might have helped. For such blessed people, they also were limited when problems arose as there were so few to confide in for help.

well said, Mary, I think the problem started when Hamzah was born, as Ali could not compare QN to his own mum, as he did not even remember her..... I think he got jealous, being the youngest of all had made him so close to QN- I also think it was wrong to send Hayah and Ali to college so early in their time, I have pix of QN, KH and their 4 kids during a winter holiday ,but Ali, Hayah and Abir were not with them- that was in '87. Anyway, it was a shame only QN was missing at Ali and Hayah's weddings- ali even invited Muna at his own wedding, but not the very person who helped to raise him up since he was 2 and a half-

suria · #6 01-12-2005, 09:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tipper

well said, Mary, I think the problem started when Hamzah was born, as Ali could not compare QN to his own mum, as he did not even remember her..... I think he got jealous, being the youngest of all had made him so close to QN- I also think it was wrong to send Hayah and Ali to college so early in their time, I have pix of QN, KH and their 4 kids during a winter holiday ,but Ali, Hayah and Abir were not with them- that was in '87. Anyway, it was a shame only QN was missing at Ali and Hayah's weddings- ali even invited Muna at his own wedding, but not the very person who helped to raise him up since he was 2 and a half-

this would be a shame if QN was a real mother for him who knows why PA would do something like this their must be many resones to do such a thing, PA+PH were not with QN everytime its her family her own kids don't you think that they were rule out from most of the pictures look to her when she goes some place its only her own kids look to the pic a bove i dont think PA said no i dont want to take a photo with you. maybe he couldn't feel her after she had her own kid maybe he saw the diference and couldn't live with it maybe he felt how much he is barren when he saw QN playing and going out with her own kids you can't plam a little kid

maryshawn · #7 01-12-2005, 05:57 PM

I guess we will never know what drove the rift. I will say QN--according to staffers--tried again and again to create a "family"---even inviting ex-s of KH's to events to possibly win over their childrens' favor. I don't know if the ex's attended---if they did, it might have been out of respect for KH.

Time and again, QN and those around her use one word to describe her: Idealist. Idealists are great; I wouldn't want a world w/o them but I'm sure it hurt QN when she was rebuffed. As an idealist, you think others are like you and want the best outcomes. Over time, she definitely became hurt and resentful. "Perhaps the King should not have married yet again so the family would not have another wife to use as a convenient scapegoat!" she wrote in her journal in the late 80s. And, re: stepkids, maybe she gave up. Getting a list of complaints of all the things you are doing wrong must have been daunting--and it was all along the lines of "she got that and I didn't" and "he did this and you wouldn't let me" and whose bedroom was nicer, etc. I can see her throwing up her hands and saying fine, whatever!!!!!!! It would be interesting to learn what Muna said to her kids re: Noor. Feisal is close to Noor. I suspect one of the stepkids who called her, upset about the journalist, was either Zein or Aisha. Abdullah? I don't know--they seemed to have a good rapport for awhile but an article summed it up "once KA married QR, it did not bode well for Noor--particularly after the children arrived. Their children got in the way of Noor's children." I do know this: If KH were still around, QN would've been at every wedding and all related events. You don't snub the "founder of the feast." And all are clever enough to know that; that's what makes me ill. She's been disenfranchised because she is a widow. The fact she was their beloved father's choice as wife should be reason enough to treat her with some modicum of respect. Ahhh, my friends who believe in the afterlife would have a field day with this one as KH greets KA and the rest......Interestingly enough QN "doesn't know what she thinks of an afterlife" though she "feels KH's presence." Does Islam support the concept of an afterlife? I genuinely don't know and am curious if it is addressed as so much of islam is about the here and now and how you live your life today--which I love. Anyone know?

Reina · #8 03-17-2005, 03:02 PM

I found this article about QN from 1991. It is from the "Ten Years Ago in 'Spy'" Journal. I got the idea to start a thread about old news of the JRF-I guess before the 21st century. Enjoy.
Ten Years Ago in ‘Spy’ (January–February 1991)

Mules or clogs, Your Highness?

A tremendously juicy profile, by Harriet Barovick (later to write for Time and CNN), of Lisa Halaby, renowned the world over under her nom de mariage, Queen Noor of Jordan. His Highness the King, by all accounts, is not only shorter than Tom Cruise but shorter than his lovely American bride (fourth to accompany the churlish dwarf potentate up the marriage aisle).

Queen Noor has frequently referred to herself as a “humble civil servant,” a “working queen” with a “modest” way of life and “no time to worry about [our] own safety.” In addition to the palace in Amman, the palace in Aqaba and a new lavish private residence outside Amman bought this year [1991?], the royal couple also own a country estate in the hills above Vienna – this is thought to be the future residence-in-exile, and they have poured some $5 million into restoring the place, in the process equipping it with an elaborate security system that includes guard dogs, a video camera at every entrance, and a wraparound electric double fence. [...]

A queen must look right, and Noor’s taste in clothes runs toward Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin. At the palace, a chambermaid is employed to attend exclusively to Her Majesty’s wardrobe, which is distributed through several rooms and includes – is this the fin-de-siècle indicator of imminent exile? – hundreds of pairs of shoes. Every item has been photographed, and the photographs are organized into albums to make packing easier.

You mean Her Highness is not preparing herself like a nail-biting kidney-transplant candidate, with an entire LearJet loaded on the tarmac and ready to go?

Reina · #9 03-17-2005, 06:24 PM

I did not read this yet, but it looks like an interesting read. It is too long to post in one post, so I will do it in separate posts.

Title:THE ALL-AMERICAN GIRL WHO BECAME QUEEN , By: Rompalske, Dorothy, Biography, 10927891, Sep97, Vol. 1, Issue 9
Database:Academic Search Premier

Section: ROYALTY

THE ALL-AMERICAN GIRL WHO BECAME QUEEN - PART 1

Lisa Halaby went to the Mideast to work. Next thing she knew, she was married to a king.

American Lisa Halaby was leading a charmed life in Tehran in 1975 when someone read the grounds at the bottom of her coffee cup and predicted that she would have a remarkable future. The striking 24-year-old Princeton graduate with the cascading mane of honey-blond hair had moved to the capital of Iran after obtaining a position with a prominent British architectural firm under contract there. The job was perfect: It combined her degree in architecture with her taste for travel and adventure, but more importantly, it allowed Lisa to explore her Arab ancestry.

And while her fair hair and blue eyes reflected her mother Doris' Swedish origins, it was her father Najeeb's roots in Syria and Lebanon that Lisa found intriguing. Even the coffee grounds seemed to agree--their pattern foretold that she was destined to return to her Arab roots and marry an important leader. "It was the strangest thing, accurate to the last detail," she would remark many years later about the prediction. By then, she was no longer known as Lisa Halaby, but as Noor al-Hussein, Queen of Jordan, the name given to her in marriage by her husband, who was indeed an important leader-Hussein Ibn Talal, King of Jordan.

Lisa Halaby had been formally introduced to King Hussein in January 1977 at the dedication ceremony of new airport facilities she'd helped to design in Amman,Jordan's capital. In the spring of 1978 the king renewed Lisa's acquaintance, whisking her off for romantic moonlit rides through the hills of Amman on the back of his BMW motorcycle. After a secret six-week courtship, the monarch proposed and Lisa accepted, brushing aside her reservations about marrying into his royal family. As she told the New York Times Magazine, "I was unsure I would be exactly what he needed, that I wouldn't be a hindrance, being relatively new to Jordan and because it happened fairly quickly." True love, however, ruled the day and the couple were married in a small, private ceremony in Amman on June 15,1978.

Shortly before the marriage, Lisa, who had been a nonpracticing Protestant, converted to Islam. The Arabic name the king chose for her, Noor al-Hussein (meaning "light of Hussein"), seemed appropriate beyond the obvious allusion to her crown of golden hair. Lisa's presence had indeed become a light in Hussein's life, lifting the king, at age 40, from the depression he'd fallen into while mourning the loss of his third wife, Queen Alia, who'd died tragically in a helicopter crash in 1977. When she became queen, Lisa also took on the responsibilities of stepmother to Alia's three young children, plus five others from Hussein's first two marriages, which had ended in divorce.

The whirlwind courtship between the willowy beauty and the dashing, intense king, set against the backdrop of one of the world's oldest and most picturesque cities, captured the imagination of the American public. There were frequent references in the press to another U.S. blond who'd made a royal match, Princess Grace of Monaco. Queen Noor, however, was said to be annoyed by the comparison, and she made it clear in several interviews that she was not living a fairy-tale existence. Unlike Grace Kelly, who became princess of a peaceful resort kingdom, Lisa Halaby had married into a troubled country at the center of a volatile region.

Reina · #10 03-17-2005, 06:26 PM

THE ALL-AMERICAN GIRL WHO BECAME QUEEN - PART 2

For Jordanian conservatives, the American-born Noor was a controversial choice for queen. Before her, by tradition, only full-blooded Arabs had held the title of Queen of Jordan, while other women who married into the royal family, including King Hussein's first two wives, were awarded the lesser title of Princess. Noor's determination (with the king's encouragement) to be the country's first queen with an active role in her husband's government defied still more conventions. She is the first one to have an office on the grounds of the royal palace, from which she works full time on the issues that concern her most--community development, education, women's rights, the environment, and world hunger. Her role as spokesperson in the West for her husband's sometimes unpopular political positions has made her a lightning rod for criticism both in this country and in Jordan, where the people love King Hussein and are hesitant to criticize him directly.

At first glance, there doesn't seem much in Queen Noor's privileged East Coast background that would prepare her to take on such a weighty role. The oldest of three children, Lisa Najeeb Halaby was born in Washington, D.C., on August 23, 1951, into one of this country's most prominent Arab-American families. Her father, attorney Najeeb Halaby, worked at that time for the U.S. Department of Defense. He would later head the Federal Aviation Administration during the Kennedy administration, and then serve as president of Pan American Airways before starting his own venture capital firm, Halaby International. While growing up, Lisa attended some of the most exclusive private schools in the country: National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., Chapin School in New York City, and Concord Academy in Massachusetts. She entered Princeton University in 1969 as a member of its historic first coeducational class.

Tall, athletic, and beautiful, Lisa was also one of Princeton's original women cheerleaders, yet it was her keen intelligence, ambition, and curiosity about the world that her college friends recall as her most striking attributes. Like many students of her generation, she was passionate about the antiwar movement and she seriously considered joining the Peace Corps. Game to explore all her options, Lisa took a leave of absence after her sophomore year to move to Aspen, Colorado, where she worked as a waitress to support herself while studying photography and spending her free time on the ski slopes.

By the mid 1970's Lisa had begun to develop an interest in her Arab ancestry and when she returned to Princeton a year later, she began to study architecture and urban planning, convinced that a degree in those fields could help her land a job overseas. After graduation, she worked briefly in Australia before securing a job as a draftsman in Tehran. When that position ended in 1976, Lisa returned to the United States and considered switching to a career in journalism. Then her father offered her a job with Arabair Services Corporation, a company he'd started in partnership with the Jordanian government. Lisa was working for one of that firm's clients, Royal Jordanian Airlines (Alia), when she met King Hussein.

After their wedding the royal couple took a honeymoon at Aqaba, the king's resort home by the Red Sea. Then the brand-new bride, stepmother, and queen immersed herself with enthusiasm in the culture of her adopted country. She quickly learned to speak fluent Arabic-the only language she uses while performing her official duties. When at home at the royal palace, which is set within a heavily guarded compound of gardens and low office buildings at the center of Amman, Queen Noor and King Hussein, who was educated in England at Harrow and Sandhurst, usually converse in English. Their four children together--Prince Hamzah, born in 1980; Prince Hashim, born in 1981; Princess Iman, born in 1983; and Princess Raiyah, born in 1986--speak Arabic as their first language, but are also fluent in English.

Reina · #11 03-17-2005, 06:26 PM

THE ALL-AMERICAN GIRL WHO BECAME QUEEN - PART 3

The queen has adopted a distinctly casual style of dress, yet she maintains a straightforward, regal demeanor. Those who meet her frequently comment on her unusually formal way of speaking. After interviewing Noor for a 1991 profile in Vanity Fair, Dominick Dunne observed, "So deliberate is her prose style that at times I had the ridiculous feeling that she was translating in her mind from Arabic to English ... Every sentence is thought out and spoken in a modulated, complicated, sometimes convoluted manner."

Of course, as the modern-minded queen of a country largely populated by Islamic fundamentalists who believe that women belong only in the home, Noor has to be conscious of the impression she makes with her words and her clothing. While she refuses to dress to suit the radical elements in her country, she respects Middle Eastern standards of modesty. For work she favors below-the-knee khaki skirts and simple blouses or suits, and she never wears a veil. (Jordan, one of the most progressive countries in the Middle East when it comes to women's rights, does not require women to be veiled, although many there still maintain the ancient Islamic tradition.) For trips to the desert countryside, the queen is often seen sporting traditional clothing-American traditional, that is blue jeans and cowboy boots. She enjoys driving her own jeep, though Noor is always accompanied by a caravan of security vehicles.

Security is a serious issue for the royal family. King Hussein, the 38th-generation descendant of the prophet Muhammad, has been on the throne longer than any ruler in the Middle East, despite more than 25 attempts by assassins to end his reign. The first one occurred in 1951 when he was only 15 years old. An assassin fired at Hussein and his grandfather, King Abdullah, during an official visit to Jerusalem. The king was killed, but young Hussein was saved by chance when a medal pinned to the front of his military-school uniform deflected the killer's bullet. He ascended to the throne two years later, after a brief reign by his father, who was removed from power after being diagnosed with a mental illness.

Jordan's strategic geographical position, smack in the middle of Israel, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, adds significantly to its security concerns; King Hussein, conscious of his country's vulnerability, has long been seen as a stabilizing force for peace in the region. His role as friend to the West was jeopardized during the Gulf crisis, however, when he failed to support the Bush administration's decision to send troops to the Middle East to defend Kuwait against the invasion by Saddam Hussein (no relation to the Jordanian monarchy).

With more than half his country's population made up of Palestinians, who supported Saddam Hussein and vehemently opposed any Western presence in the Gulf, King Hussein found himself in an untenable position during the crisis--he could either alienate more than half his people, or anger the Americans, who had refused to allow him the time he believed he needed to negotiate a peaceful withdrawal of Saddam's troops. Queen Noor took on her most important role at this time. At the king's request, she traveled to the United States and embarked on a diplomatic effort to make her husband's difficult stance understood. While she garnered a fair amount of press for her efforts, she made virtually no impression on the Bush administration.

When asked in March 1991 by the New York Times if she had ever felt torn between the two cultures that had framed her life, Queen Noor responded as the Arab she'd truly become: "I don't think I've ever felt any contradiction or any struggle there."

With the Gulf War ended, Jordan has forged an improved relationship with the Clinton administration. Queen Noor can again focus on the internal problems that affect the lives of her people; her crusade to promote democracy in Jordan has been particularly effective.

Recent rumors of discord in the royal marriage, and reports that the king has what the press euphemistically calls "a wandering eye," may be painful for Noor, but she has handled them with the characteristic dignity and discretion she's demonstrated since the beginning of her reign. For while fate may have chosen a beautiful all-American girl to be queen of an Arab nation, this brilliant woman is wise enough to know that life, after all, is not a fairy tale.

Amina · #12 04-28-2005, 01:30 PM

Thought i would post this interview with QN done in 2003 from Englands Daily Telegraph saturday magazine. FEEL FREE TO POST ANY OTHER ARTICLES ETC THAT U HAVE ON QN

THE KING AND I - PART 1

American-born Queen Noor gained a unique insight into the Middle East crisis during her 21-year marriage to the late King Hussein of Jordan. Now she has written a book about their search for peace, and how she continues the quest in her husband’s memory.

By Jessica Berens
Photograph by Jeremy Murch

It is a cup of tea, a silver tray and chandelier. It is a white sofa, a discreet house in Knightsbridge and a queen, the former Queen of Jordan to be exact. She sits gracefully, straight-backed on a straight-backed chair in front of me. I am quite deep in the sofa, and getting all the time, through no fault of my own. Drowning in velvety depths, the questions emerge, muffled from behind a line of cushions which, imbued with a life of their won, seem to be conspiring to push me further under…My feet leave the floor. I sued to want t o marry a psychiatrist, I tell her. But now I would an osteopath. She chuckles. She knows what it is like. She has just finished editing her book on a computer, and the pains in her neck have been something else. Official protocol calls for ‘Your Majesty’, but, she says, ‘I usually tell people, “That’s such a mouthful. Call me Queen Noor.”’

There are some of the effects one might expect: a uniformed maid, a thin ‘executive assistant’, an atmosphere of discreet respect; ‘Her majesty is stuck in traffic,’ I have been told, but now she is here: no crow, of course, but no make-up either; no mask to enhance the personage, or hide it. She is, at 51, chic in black, and tall enough, at around 6ft, to encourage one that the Queen of England, when visiting Jordan, did not like standing next to her for fear of appearing short. Queen Noor has lamented the world’s obsession with her appearance; in the past it has made her feel like a ‘useless accessory’, but I’m afraid that is what the world is like, especially when gazing on royalty. And to gaze on this particular royalty is to find it hard to imagine as the former child she ahs described – shy, awkward, with eyes squinting behind Coke-bottle glasses. It is also hard to imagine this groomed and lovely dignitary talking in a dolphin voice to her late husband, King Hussein of Jordan. Theirs was a romance of a 21-year long marriage, and though he died of cancer in 1999, her everyday life is still sustained by the memory of his ‘faith and optimism’. Now she has written a book and, she says, he is ‘the hero’ of it. Leap of Faith – Memoirs of an Unexpected Life is a lucid and detailed account of her life from her birth, as Lisa Najeeb Halaby, in America, to his death. Often critical of America (whose politicians and diplomats are, in general, documented as embarrassing bullies), and pro-Palestinian in its outlook, the memoir is clear and honest, though it seems as interested in celebrating the life of King Hussein as safeguarding the security of a vulnerable country where a destabilised monarchy could have serious socio-economic consequences.

Lisa Halaby met the King of Jordan after her father, Najeeb Halaby, an airline executive, introduced them in Jordan in 1976. Two years later they started dating; watching Peter Sellers videos, hanging out in the palace – that kind of thing. He smiled a lot and was funny; it was not difficult out fall in love with him. ‘I wish he was sitting her with me,’ she says. ‘He would tell the stories much better than I am.’ She was 26, and he was 42; he was two inches shorter than her, so there was a lot of chat about all that. She was self-contained person, and very reserved, having weathered her perfectionist Arab-American father and her Swedish-American mother Doris, between whom marital tensions were so great that, at one point, their teenage daughter begged them to get a divorce Lisa and her younger brother and sister were moved between California, New Your and Washington; she has described a childhood in which she always felt the outsider, constantly crippled with shyness, and was so aloof that her mother took her to a child psychologist who told them she would grow out it, which she did not.

She is still driven, she admits, by a feeling of low self-worth, the legacy of a demanding distant father. ‘To the day I did I won’t feel adequate,’ she says. ‘It’s not that it eats away at me every moment of every day, but I do feel it every day. I feel that every day I should do better and that every moment should be productive.’

King Hussein, meanwhile, had lost his third wife Alia in a helicopter crash in 1977, and had three children between the ages of two and five. There were another five elder children living with their two mothers, King Hussein’s former wives. And, though Lisa was well aware of the potential difficulties of this marriage (the fact that she was an American being one of many of them), like any other fiancée she allowed love, idealism and optimism to override her misgivings. Eighteen days after his proposal she accepted. She converted to Islam and he named her Noor, Light of Hussein. As the leader of a tiny, poor autocracy, with no oil and sitting nervously next to Israel, King Hussein knew what it was to be embroiled in the violence of relentless Middle Eastern turmoil, and the personal risks that this entailed. He had already survived several assassination attempts, and at the age of 16 had watched as his grandfather, King Abdullah, was murdered in front of him. The assassin, who stepped out from behind a pillar at a mosque in Jerusalem, shot the old man, and then shot at Hussein, whose life was saved only because the bullet ricocheted off the medal that his grandfather had insisted he wear that morning.

Amina · #13 04-28-2005, 01:33 PM

THE KING AND I - PART 2

King Hussein carried a gun and hired the best security force in the world. He had to. He had to live behind armoured glass, and so did Noor. Blonde, beautiful, gleaming-toothed, privately educated (at Chapin in New York, and Concord Academy in Massachusetts) and well-connected, she had graduated form Princeton. Her only mishaps had been a mugging in New York and falling off her horse a couple of times. ‘I always felt completely safe in Jordan and around Jordanians,’ she says. ‘The fear that we both had was for the impact of generalised violence on people in the region, but the one thing that joined the two of us and blossomed in my life with him was the utter conviction that you have to live beyond yourself. You cannot let your won feelings and fear dominate your life, or you can accomplish nothing for anyone else.’

After a long struggle against cancer which began in 1992, King Hussein died in February 1999. He had devoted his life to tireless diplomacy and peace initiative’s, and in 1998 his efforts were acknowledged with a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. He had, according to one foreign correspondent, ‘veered unnervingly between disaster and recovery’; having lost eh West Bank and Jerusalem to Israel during the Six Day War in 1967, he became the Arab leader generally seen as a ‘wise elder statesman who was genuinely loved – a rarity in a region of dictators who rule by force’. As Hussein lay dying at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, and the question of the succession became a central issue, intrigue and speculation placed the various wives at each others’ throats, jostling for power on behalf of their progeny. The picture was of tiaras on and nails out. The king’s bother, Crown Prince Hassan, had been nominated as his successor in 1965, but was shockingly and abruptly removed at the last minute and replaced by Abdullah, Hussein’s son by his British-born wife, Princess Muna, the former Antoinette Gardiner from whom he was divorced in 1972. Queen Noor’s eldest son, Hamzah now 22, was appointed Crown Prince. Angered and hurt by the destructive rumours that he saw as being perpetrated by Prince Hassan’s followers, King Hussein wrote a public letter to his brother which, released to the media, highlighted their political differences and the ‘slandering and falsehoods’ that had ‘offended’ his family and ‘given me many sleepless nights while I was on my sickbed.’

‘Leap of Faith’ is not a royal pot boiler, and there are no pictures of ludicrous parties with Elton John; that she never wanted; she is not a silly woman, and neither was she motivated by money. Her model was the Washington Post heiress Katherine Graham’s autobiography, Personal History, which says Noor, ‘effectively developed the sense of the texture of history and culture and society, and was a book that was about much more than her’. In a process that lasted more than two years, Queen Noor compiled her book form the journals that she ahs kept throughout her life, and form interviews that ensure that various conversations and memories were recorded accurately. The final result is devoid of cattiness, or gossip – and it is sparing of any cr9iticism of Jordan’s conservative social infrastructure, where the media is state run and where political power stays in the hands of an unelected elite.

‘There has been a great deal of misunderstanding of my husband’s policies over a period of time. He never relied on public relations, he simply believed that the merit of your efforts is what endures. I thought there was a story to tell – about a search for peace in the Middle East – and about our culture and Islam, which is not well understood, especially in Western countries and particularly in the United States. Most of my marriage had been spent, amongst other things trying to bridge that gap.’

The family had some say in the content of the book; here children, she says, had access to it; and she showed the final draft to King Abdullah and some of his advisers. ‘I like him very much and I respect him,’ she says. ‘Jordan is an excruciatingly difficult position, and I had no desire to add to his burdens. I know what the burdens are almost better than anyone – I lived with them for so long. I felt that I had nothing to hide. I am frank about King Hussein’s willingness to explore every possible avenue for peace in the Middle East – and also it is very clear that he never compromised or betrayed the Palestinians or any Arab. A number of people had a variety of opinions on various aspects of it – we had a lot of spirited discussions that raised interesting issues about truth and fact and objectivity.

‘One member of the family said people aren’t ready for the truth yet, but I don’t believe we can advance or achieve any measure of peace or security if we are not willing to be as objective as possible about our history and learn from it as we develop the future.’

Alluding to the ‘constant barrage of tales’ that fermented around the accession, Queen Noor comments very little in the book, except to say that they were devastating to her children. Abdullah, she writes, was a natural choice. ‘He had risen to the rank of Major General in the Jordanian Army’s elite Special Forces, which would ensure him the critical support of the military, especially the loyal Bedouin.’ The King told her that Hamzah, then 19, ‘would be eaten by the lions’.

‘Contrary to the media reports that I had been pressuring my husband to name Hamzah his successor – I had been advocating all along that Hamzah should have an opportunity to attend university and develop his intellectual interests and talents.’

Abdullah, meanwhile, was surprised to find himself in the hot seat, and a hot seat it undoubtly is. The new king had, according to Queen Noor, always assumed that Hamzah would be his father’s choice of successor. He told her that his