by Avi Shlaim
The way was now clear to bring Talal back from his nursing home in Geneva. He was flown to Amman aboard an Arab Legion aircraft on 6 September 1951, welcomed at the airport by a guard of honour and a strong detachment of armoured cars, and conveyed in a cavalcade to the parliament building to take the oath of office. He was invested as king before the assembled members of both the upper and lower houses of parliament and the diplomatic corps, of which Kirkbride was the doyen. Three days later Hussein bin Talal was officially named crown prince. Talal’s formal accession to the throne marked the end of an era in the history of Jordan. In the words of one observer, it ‘proved to be the “crowning” act in the transition of power from Abdullah to a group of men whose understanding of the twin pillars of the Hashemite monarchy – survival and endurance – was no less than his own’.31
Talal himself survived on the throne barely a year. His kingship was essentially an interregnum between the long reign of his father and the even longer reign of his eldest son. Talal’s most significant achievement was the inauguration, on 1 January 1952, of ‘The Constitution of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’, which replaced the 1946 constitution. The new constitution reflected Talal’s pan-Arabism, describing the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as an independent sovereign Arab state and the people of Jordan as ‘part of the Arab Nation’. Islam was the religion of the state and Arabic its official language. The system of government was described as ‘parliamentary with a hereditary monarchy’. The nation was said to be the source of all power, but in actuality the palace had real power and parliament only the semblance of it.
In Talal’s constitution, legislative power was vested in the king and the National Assembly, which was comprised of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Executive power was vested in the king, to exercise through his ministers or directly through royal decree. The king was the head of state and the supreme commander of the armed forces; he ratified the laws and promulgated them; he declared war, concluded peace and ratified international treaties and agreements; and he issued orders for holding elections to the Chamber of Deputies. The Council of Ministers, consisting of the prime minister and his ministers, was entrusted with administering the affairs of state, internal and external; it was collectively responsible before the Chamber of Deputies for its policies. The chamber could force the resignation of the council by passing a motion of no confidence. But, under the constitution, ultimate power rested in the hands of the king. It was the king who hired and fired prime ministers, ministers and senators, and it was he who had the sole prerogative to adjourn, prorogue or dissolve the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate. Talal’s constitution was an improvement on his father’s, but it was far removed from any modern notion of a constitutional monarchy. In a constitutional monarchy the monarch reigns but does not rule; in the Jordanian system of government the monarch both reigns and rules.
Talal’s return to Jordan freed Hussein to resume his education. His own preference was to return to Victoria College. But Egypt’s antagonistic attitude towards Jordan, and the presence there of individuals who had aided and abetted the murderers of King Abdullah, made it an unsafe place for the new heir to the throne. The same old guard, both Jordanian and British, who had defeated Naif and brought back Talal now decided to send Hussein to Harrow in England, followed by an abbreviated training course at the military academy at Sandhurst. Talal had also been to both Harrow and Sandhurst, and emerged from them with an anti-British bias. Greater care was therefore taken with Hussein’s schooling to ensure that this pattern did not repeat itself; he was to develop a more positive attitude towards the host country.
At Harrow, Hussein was at first unhappy and longed to be back at Victoria College. At Victoria there was a good social mix, a lively social life and a cosmopolitan atmosphere, whereas at Harrow most of the boys were from upper-class English families, discipline was strict, and the teachers were sticklers for protocol. At Victoria they spoke English at a leisurely pace; at Harrow ‘everybody seemed to gabble at double speed.’ At Victoria Hussein’s main subjects had centred around the Arabic language; at Harrow his best subjects were history and English literature. When he arrived at Harrow, Faisal, his cousin, friend and heir apparent to the Iraqi Hashemite throne, was already there. Hussein and Faisal were the only boys who did not have surnames. Their snobbish classmates, unable to call them by their given names, rarely called them anything at all.
On the one hand, Hussein was at a psychological disadvantage at this quintessentially English public school. On the other, he felt himself to be ‘a man among boys’ because of the teachings of his grandfather, his position at home and all he had been through.32 Hussein’s housemaster at Harrow gave the following appraisal: ‘A determined fellow but limited in his academic ability. I would not say he was a success at Harrow, but we did what we could to equip him for the scramble we knew would face him when he returned to the Middle East.’33 The report perhaps says as much about the institution as about the pupil.
Hussein’s royal status did set him apart from the other boys. A string of journalists from the Middle East came to the school to interview him and Faisal, giving them a handy excuse for missing lessons. Things gradually improved. Hussein learned to play rugby and enjoyed the game enormously. He was allowed more leave than the other boys and often went to London for weekends. Fawzi Mulki, the young Jordanian ambassador, was very kind and indulgent towards him. Hussein also got a driving licence, and a friend of his father’s gave him his first motor-car, a sky-blue Rover. This was the beginning of his love of fast cars, and he soon developed a taste for ever bigger and better ones.
For the summer holidays Hussein went to Geneva to join his mother, two brothers and sister. On 12 August 1952, when the others were out, a hotel page came in with a large envelope on a silver platter. Hussein did not need to open it to know that his days as a schoolboy had ended, as the envelope was addressed to ‘His Majesty, King Hussein’. Inside was a letter from the prime minister, informing him that his father had abdicated and that he was now king of Jordan. Hussein, like the rest of his family, was aware that his father’s mental illness had grown more serious in the months since he had ascended the throne, but news of the abdication was no less distressing for having been expected. The decision had been taken by the two houses of parliament, and Hussein’s presence in Jordan was required as soon as possible. The previous day the prime minister, Tawfiq Abul Huda, had reported to the two houses that Talal was no longer fit to exercise his constitutional powers. He then submitted reports on the monarch’s health made by two foreign and three Jordanian doctors. The constitution included a provision that if any Jordanian king was incapacitated by mental illness, parliament had the power to depose him and to transfer the royal prerogatives to his heir. Thus, at the age of seventeen, Hussein became the king of Jordan. His first act was to compose a cable to the prime minister, advising him that he would return as soon as possible and that he would be honoured to serve his country and the Arab world to the best of his ability.34 The deposed king was sent to a sanatorium in Turkey, where he stayed in less than splendid isolation until his death in 1972.
The abdication of Talal was an embarrassing episode in the history of the Hashemite dynasty and a painful experience for all his children. Hussein often talked about his grandfather as a mentor and role model but rarely mentioned his father. The precise nature of his illness was never made public, and this fed suspicions not only of the British and the politicians who removed Talal but of the role played by members of his own family. Prince Hassan, Hussein’s younger brother, was only five years old at the time but in later life he was assailed by mounting doubts regarding the diagnosis of Talal: not everything that was said about his father rang true to him. Hassan also thought that the treatment meted out to Talal, even by his nearest and dearest, was unjustifiably cruel:
My father exuded an ethos of patriotism which, in a funny way, my mother and my brother worked together to do ‘damage control’ to because… they fel
t that he was an ‘unguided missile’. The only way to control him was to neutralize him. Effectively, they put him behind bars for 20 years… My feeling is that my father was misdiagnosed. Maybe he was bipolar, but he was not schizophrenic. The strange thing is that I have never seen his medical papers. They were not given to me by my brother. For some reason he didn’t want me or my sister to have these papers. And I feel that my father’s diagnosis was not scientific.35
Hussein’s flight back home in 1952 was an emotional one: he had left Jordan as a prince and he was now returning as a king. At the airport he inspected the guard of honour and shook hands with the country’s leaders. Among them was Glubb Pasha fingering his beads in the Arab manner. If the official welcome home was stiff and formal, the rejoicing of the crowds that lined up the streets was spontaneous and frenzied. The people knew very little about their new king, but there was a huge reservoir of sympathy and affection for him following the murder of his grandfather and the abdication of his popular father. For Hussein, who had been an innocent bystander until now, this was an exhilarating experience: the people were not only cheering but sending out messages of sympathy and encouragement to the boy of seventeen suddenly made king.36
Hussein could not assume his constitutional powers until he reached the age of eighteen (or just under eighteen, as his age was determined by the Islamic calendar). So a regency council of three – the prime minister and the presidents of the upper and lower houses of parliament – was appointed to exercise them until then. This was the royal equivalent of a gap year for a college student, and Hussein’s was both instructive and enjoyable. He went on a three-week tour of the country, visiting every major city and town, and scores of villages; he paid courtesy calls to numerous Bedouin shaikhs and chieftains. Another part of Hussein’s grooming for the succession consisted of military training. His uncle, Sharif Nasser bin Jamil, had grown up in Iraq and attended the Baghdad Military Academy. When Zain became queen, she brought her younger brother over to Jordan, and he too became a force in Jordanian politics. Sharif Nasser was insistent that his nephew should receive military training at Sandhurst. Glubb Pasha also welcomed the idea and arranged with the War Office that his protégé should have a special, shortened course, cramming the normal curriculum into six months. Hussein was overjoyed at the prospect.
Hussein reported for duty at Sandhurst on 9 September 1952. Officer Cadet King Hussein of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, was allotted Room 109, Inkerman Company, the Old College. Officials at the Foreign Office monitored Hussein’s training and took steps to ensure that he ‘profited not only in his military instruction’ but also from exposure to ‘aspects of British life’. Sandhurst’s commandant was encouraged to strike a balance between cushioning Hussein from the ‘rigour of Sandhurst’ and avoiding an excess of ‘privileged treatment’ that could, in the long run, ‘backfire’ against both Hussein and Britain.37
Looking back on his days at Sandhurst, Hussein thought that in many ways they were the most formative of his life. At Harrow he had been treated as a boy; at Sandhurst as a man. He was given a choice between the soft option and the hard way, and with evident pride he chose the hard way. He also found the studies more interesting than at Harrow. ‘We Arabs are a martial race,’ he wrote in his memoirs, ‘so perhaps I took easily to the tough life of a cadet.’ He appreciated the discipline, and he liked the atmosphere and especially the team spirit at Sandhurst. Because his tour was short, he had extra spells of drills and marching, took part in night assaults across rough country, learned to fire modern weapons and did his utmost to grasp the essentials of military science. Hussein’s academic performance, however, was as undistinguished as it had been at Harrow. ‘He did not seem to care much for the more academic side of the syllabus,’ according to his company commander, Major David Horsfield, ‘but shone to advantage in the practical part – drill, tactics, rifle shooting and mechanical engineering.’38
At Sandhurst, Hussein, like most other cadets, worked hard and played hard. For although the training pushed them to the limit of their physical and mental endurance, off duty they could relax and enjoy themselves. Hussein’s pleasures included a Lincoln convertible that he drove at startlingly high speed and riding a motorcycle. There were also frequent visits to London at weekends to sample the high life. Fawzi al-Mulki again took charge of Hussein’s extracurricular education, introducing him to young Jordanian officers who were in the United Kingdom for training. Mulki also took pains to ensure that the cadet-king enjoyed himself, for example, by going to parties at which he could meet attractive young women.
After Sandhurst’s passing out parade, a month-long, cross-country tour of England, Wales and Scotland was organized for the fresh graduate by the Foreign Office. At the end of the tour he went to London to prepare for his flight home and the start of a new life. Hussein’s British minders were evidently pleased with the result. Britain’s educational establishment, as one biographer has put it, had ‘produced a leader it could be proud of; he had all the qualities that Harrow and Sandhurst were built to foster – courage, resolution, enterprise, a measure of self-assertiveness, a good practical judgement and the best public school manners’.39 About the good manners there could never be any doubt. For the rest of his life, Hussein addressed men of quite ordinary station – including academics like the present writer and newspaper reporters -as ‘sir’. The ‘self-assertiveness’ took a little longer to manifest itself.
3
The Making of a King
Hussein was not quite eighteen when he assumed his constitutional prerogatives as the King of Jordan. On 2 May 1953, his eighteenth birthday according to the Islamic lunar calendar, he took the oath of office in the parliament building in Amman as the first step in his inauguration as king. The city was colourfully decorated, with flags flying everywhere, and large crowds gathered in the streets to cheer their new king. On the same day Hussein’s cousin Faisal, his junior by six months, ascended the throne in Baghdad. Hussein wore his ceremonial uniform, and his car was escorted by cavalry of the Royal Guard on its way from the Basman Palace to parliament. It was the most momentous day of his life. Outwardly he tried to convey a sense of composure but inwardly he was assailed by self-doubt and an overwhelming sense of duty, with his mother’s advice ringing in his ear: never to let power go to his head.1
The cheering of the crowds in the streets masked widespread national anxiety. From the outside, Jordan looked like a cheerful little country, but it was also an anxious one. The assassination of Abdullah, its founder, plunged the kingdom into crisis, confusion and power struggles. Hussein ascended the throne in circumstances that were deeply uncertain, and because he was so young and inexperienced he himself was part of that uncertainty. It was only natural for people to wonder whether the boy-king would be able to hold the country together. A cloud of doubt hung over Jordan, and it was to remain for a long time.
Queen Zain provided one element of continuity. She was a strong-willed and politically astute Hashemite with an intense commitment to the ideals and interests of her family, and was by far the most influential informal member of the Jordanian political establishment. Fluent in French, Zain assiduously promoted the interests of the Hashemite dynasty in her contacts with foreign diplomats. Selwyn Lloyd, the British foreign secretary, dubbed her ‘the Metternich of the Arab world’. She regarded the British as the principal protectors of the monarchy and referred to them as ‘the neighbours’ because their embassy adjoined the royal compound. The Egyptians, on the other hand, were a hostile and subversive force. After 1953 Talal ceased to play any part in Jordanian politics. Zain, however, continued to play a very influential part behind the scenes after her eldest son ascended the throne: guide, confidante and counsellor, as well as mother to the king.
For the first year or two after becoming king, Hussein lived in the Basman Palace. It was too large and formal for his taste, so he moved to a small villa of his own in Al-Hummar in the royal compound northwest of Amman.
The Basman Palace continued to house the royal court, with offices for Hussein and those who worked with him. It also contained a large dining room for official ceremonies and banquets. Zain continued to live in the Zahran Palace with her three younger children: Muhammad, who was thirteen, Hassan, who was five, and Basma, who was two. Princess Basma recollected that family life was very close, regardless of the amount of time that Hussein spent with them: ‘When he became king, I was barely three years old. At that time, for me and for my brothers he was really a father figure, particularly to me, because I was so young then that I have no early recollections of my father. It was my brother who filled that role. He continued to fill that role for the rest of my life. But on top of that he became my very close friend. He really was a hero for me.’
Hussein was also a major figure in the life of his younger brother Hassan, who was sent at the age of ten to Summerfields Preparatory School and then to Harrow. Hassan would return to Amman every holiday and often joined Hussein on his trips abroad. For the middle brother, Prince Muhammad, Hussein was a father figure and a hero, as he was for their sister. Muhammad inherited their father’s charm, kindness and gracious manners, as well as his psychological fragility. Princess Basma noted the special relationship that evolved between her siblings: