TRANSJORDAN
From Amman's rooftops, watching women sang out with joy, their shrill voices sounding like the collective cooing of a thousand pigeons. In the crowded streets, the people yelled: "Yaish el MalekLong live the King!" Abdullah Ibn Hussein, direct descendant of the Prophet, also known to his good British friends as "The Ab," had just been proclaimed monarch over the 30,000 square miles of lava and desert reaches and over the 300,000 souls of Trans-Jordan,
Calmest man in the kingdom was the new ruler himself. In an unadorned chamber of his hilltop palace...