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Jordan is a country that has little or no excuse for existence. A chunk torn from the desert, with boundaries traced on sand, it has no geographical unity, national identity, political history or economic viability. It was created by the British for the British: an armed camp at the crossroads of the world, a watchtower in the center of oil lands they ruled in all but fact.
Last week this bleak land was the pivot and focus for all the tensions of the Middle East. Its 500,000 Arab refugees were the area's most corrosive concentration of hatred for Israel. Its Arab Legion was the Middle East's finest force, whose allegiance could sharply tilt the whole area's precarious balance. Egypt wooed it and played venomously on the bitterness of its refugees. The British, swallowing their pride, strove to maintain their slipping hold on this onetime docile ward.
At the center of these clutching pressures was the slim, short, 20-year-old youngster who is King of Jordan. The British used to call Hussein (rhymes with Biscayne) "a nice little King." Now, since he peremptorily fired Britain's Lieut. General John Bagot Glubb as head of the Arab Legion, they are not so sure. Neither, apparently, is Hussein.
All This Worry. Last week he seemed sobered by his new sense of power, the next moment as youthfully impulsive as the Harrow schoolboy he once was. He spent one typical morning gravely conferring on affairs of state in his palace office, then suddenly ordered his private de Havilland plane made ready, zipped out to the airport in his Lincoln, screeched to a halt, jumped out and asked a saluting R.A.F. officer. "O.K. if I go to Jerusalem?"
Climbing into the pilot's seat, the King took off toward the dark clouds hanging low over the naked hills of the Holy Land to the west, minutes later swooped down to a neat landing in Jerusalem. There he dashed off to confer for two hours with young (34), mustachioed Lieut. Colonel Abu Nawar, his favorite military adviser of the moment, then stopped off briefly at a Legion camp to tell clustering legionnaires: "Work together, observe discipline, and we shall have happiness, Allah willing."
Back over the Amman airport, the plane's nose wheel stuck in the well. For 20 minutes Hussein circled the field, waggling the wings to try to shake the wheel down into position, was finally advised from the ground to use an emergency bottle of compressed air, which slammed the wheel into place with a shock that shook the plane like an explosion. Says the King airily: "All this worry about my flying is silly. I've taken off from the desert at night by the lights of automobile head lamps. I've flown with overweight loads and in all kinds of weather. Flying is safe enough for anyone with a good head and a good aircraft." Then he was off to a party.