(2 of 8)
Generations of Intrigue. To young King Hussein the complex intrigues of Araby are as familiar as baseball statistics to a U.S. teenager. He is a member of the proud and once mighty Hashemite clan, which held sway over holy Mecca for 38 generations and trace their ancestry to the Prophet's great-grandfather. Ever since the austere warriors of Ibn Saud stormed out of Arabia's deserts in 1919 and drove them into exile, the Hashemites have found intrigue a matter of simple survival amidst ambitious rivals.
When the British were looking for chieftains to rule their Middle East states after World War 1, they found ready at hand the two Hashemite brothers Emir Feisal and Emir Abdullah, who had fought with skill and cunning against the Turks in alliance with Lawrence of Arabia. The British installed Feisal in Iraq, created Trans-Jordan for Abdullah.
Abdullah's country was scarcely bigger than Indiana, a black-tent kingdom populated by nomadic Bedouins. But the Arab Legion, which the British created and supported for him, made Abdullah a power among the ill-organized Arab armies of the Middle East. Abdullah was a strong-minded aristocrat who used to tell his Cabinets: "Do what I say, or I'll get another government in the morning." He dreamed of an Arab "Greater Syria," a state that would include Trans-Jordan, Syria, Palestine and Lebanon.
Land of Sodom. But he was well aware that without British subsidy Jordan would starve. It was the Biblical land of Sodom, and some say that the curse has never been lifted. Only 5% of its land was cultivated at all. Among the flints and pebbles on the treeless brown hills around Amman grew scattered stands of wheat. Flanked by rich oil lands, Jordan had no oil of its own, got revenue only from tolls on the two pipelines that cross it from Iraq and Saudi Arabia. "A cement factory and a cigarette plant constitute Jordan's heavy industry," an economist observed wryly. Abdullah accordingly took Britain's advice with its money, accepted British commanders for the Arab Legion, let Britain plant its embassy inside his palace grounds. His Bedouin subjects, flocking to join the colorfully uniformed Legion, made no objection.
Murder at the Mosque. Hussein grew up in this back-country court in a feverish atmosphere of family jealousies. Grandfather Abdullah had three wives, whose offspring schemed to-obtain the succession. His father Talal was an un happy, unstable man who beat Hussein's mother and denounced his own father Abdullah as a British puppet. The old King took to the young princeling. Hussein galloped on his blooded Arabian mare through the hills of his grandfather's summer place near Jericho, and hunted small game with the rifle that Abdullah had given him. One of his grandfather's aides taught him to fence with a scimitar in the slashing Arab style. "My boy," said the King, "I want you to come always to me and try to learn what you can from what you witness at my palace. Who knows? The time may come when you will replace me on the throne."