Other People's Houses

by Hilary McPhee

  Helen ran me a steaming bath in a huge old tub with a view over the valley, and, in a bed stuffed with hot-water bottles in hand-knitted covers, I slept and woke, and slept again. Then we spent the next week walking along old tracks through the bare woods, talking of difficult mothers and lovers, in the way of women who have long been friends and confidantes, and have brought up their children on opposite sides of the world.

  Just in case, I’d emailed my hockey-playing school friend in Jordan, letting her know I would be in London en route to Vienna, then to India. Then my departure was delayed so I could attend the funeral of a distinguished old journalist friend. This was in a parish church, with a real graveyard and yew trees, opposite his house in an Oxfordshire village, its history stretching back to before the Reformation. Everyone followed the coffin out of the church, and stood in dark clothes under black umbrellas as it was lowered into the freezing ground to the comforting sounds of familiar prayers and hymns.

  How different it was from my mother’s coffin, hand-painted with roses by my daughter and her partner in our big front room only weeks before, being driven away from the local church to the crematorium, I think, unaccompanied. My husband had flown back from America; my Tasmanian uncles, my brothers and their families were all at a large wake at our house. Could her hand-painted coffin really have been driven off in the company of strangers? Driving back to Helen’s from Oxfordshire, I began to weep, for the first time.

  The next day, back in Gloucestershire, a woman with a posh voice, identifying herself as the personal private secretary in the London office of His Royal Highness, Prince El Hassan bin Talal, contacted me. Would I detour to Amman on my way home through Dubai, to discuss an autobiography? A formal invitation, and a sample of the Prince’s writings and transcriptions to date, would be sent to me. I should keep this strictly to myself, and read and report on it only face-to-face. Their Royal Highnesses had seen some of my writing, she said. Tickets, first class on Royal Jordanian, would be arranged, and be waiting for me next week in London, at the Goodenough Club, where I was staying.

  I didn’t take her seriously. She sounded like a British publisher or literary agent who had confused me with someone else. Helen, a freelance editor with a desk overloaded with projects from publishers in Europe and London, was as puzzled as I was. My occasional writings were unrelated, and mainly for the Melbourne Age prior to Prime Minister Howard committing Australian troops to the coalition of the willing in Iraq. The military strategist who’d replaced me on the paper was a fine one, advocating caution—but my being told to stick to culture and issues of arts funding still rankled.

  The sample of the Prince’s writings arrived through the mail, in plastic sleeves looking a bit the worse for wear. A few pages were headed THE BOOK, Preamble and, rather ominously, dated two years earlier, but contained some lines I rather liked: ‘There is always happiness after adversity, in the words of the Holy Qur’an’; ‘As for 1948, the image is blurred but the war of that decade was clearly a watershed from which this region may never recover’; ‘The period of transition in the Middle East should be understood subjectively’. There was much more about the years post 1967, and the War of Attrition, which had peaked with Black September in 1970, Amman as the ‘road to Jerusalem’, and the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein in 1990 which ‘disrupted what was left of the Arab order’.

  The preamble ended resoundingly:

  I would like to think that the insights into decades of public service would not be a dry narrative, but would rather describe how, in the company of my late brother, King Hussein, and interaction with hundreds of bright young men and women, Arabs, Europeans, Americans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, believers in human decency, if nothing else, my life has been influenced by an overwhelming ambition to develop a Middle East commonwealth of nations, of the public good and anthropolitics, in the words of Shirley Williams, ‘politics where people matter’.

  A folder of photocopied speeches, in their own plastic sleeves, were about 9/11 and the more recent ones criticised the US-led Occupation ahead of a visit of King Abdullah to Washington: ‘New Troops Will Not Solve Occupation Problems’, ‘Occupation breeds resistance, and resistance provokes extreme violence of the occupiers’.

  There was also a long transcript of an online discussion from Amman, examining questions about the changing nature of relations between the West and the Muslim world. Someone in Philadelphia had emailed: ‘If you were an ordinary citizen of Iraq looking at the current situation would you have wanted the US-led war on Iraq?’ ‘Yes and no,’ responded the Prince. ‘Obviously, I’d have wanted an end to the horrors of Saddam Hussein and the horrors of totalitarian rule in whichever form it has taken. And I object to totalitarian rule whether republican or monarchic. What is important is how do wars end? Will Iraqis be able to participate in forming their own future and their own cultural self-determination?’

  There was very little room for such debate in John Howard’s Australia—or not in the Australia I inhabited. Some of the men I knew thought invading Iraq was a dire necessity, unavoidable, given our government at the time. The parliament never had the chance to put it to the vote.

  In London, at the shabby Goodenough Club, the formal invitation and the tickets were not waiting. But still I ordered up books by ‘Hassan bin Talal’ from the British Library, and tantalised myself. They had mainly been published by British university presses in the past twenty years, and I skimmed them, impressed by their erudition, and analysis of Middle Eastern history and politics, depressed by the language of scholarly officialdom that identified them as, most likely, sponsored official giveaways. These were academic writings, from scholarly publishers for tiny readerships, rather than books from a troubled region to be widely read and debated. But the latest, and by far the best, I thought, was To Be a Muslim: Islam, Peace, and Democracy, a lucid little question–answer book explaining Islam and Muslims for lay readers. Several of the books had clutches of old photos, and potted histories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since 1948, and all had dignified cover blurbs about the role of the Crown Prince, descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, heir to the throne.

  If it was a publisher for an autobiography they were seeking, I was no longer attached to a publishing house and, in any case, the Australian publishers I knew would turn down such a book, as having a minuscule market. If they needed a ghosted memoir, I was not a ghost writer. A British publisher or a professional ghost writer was needed, not me. But if indeed what the Jordanians were after was someone who could research and shape transcribed interviews—how could I resist?

  El Hassan’s London staff were opaque when I rang to remind them of my departure date. For some unstated reason—security, presumably, as I might be an imposter—the invitation and tickets had to be handed to me in person, at the airline’s offices. The snooty staff member left me with a sense that she was rolling her eyes at Arab inefficiency, very much as British eyes were often rolled about Australian crassness; I recognised the remnants of the old imperial tone. So, I distracted myself by packing for a short stopover in Vienna with a writer friend, to see Wagner’s Lohengrin, director Barrie Kosky’s last work there before he moved to Berlin.

  I gave myself two more days in the British Library, with the full digitised archive of The Times, absorbed in its correspondents’ utterly assured reporting of Ottoman history: the skirmishes with Arab insurgents, the visits to London of Sharif Hussein in 1919 and 1920, when the British and the French were confidently carving up the territory. I attempted, but certainly failed, to get a sense of the Hashemite family tree; to comprehend the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims; or to grasp much detail about the Hashemite family, with their ancient Bedouin lineage.

  I did know something about Bedouins as the original inhabitants of the Arabian and Syrian deserts, the sheikh heading their complex kinship structure, and the scarcity of water and pastoral lands determining their semi-nomadic traditional way of life. Nineteenth and early twentieth ce
ntury French and British photographers had documented magnificently the culture of constant movement across the landscape with elaborately bedecked camel caravans, and herds of goats and sheep. And I’d read biographies of Gertrude Bell and the even more extraordinary Lady Hester Stanhope, described scornfully by Lord Byron as ‘that dangerous thing—a female wit’.

  The Times reported at length, and with photographs, the great exodus of Palestinians forced at gunpoint by Israeli soldiers to leave their homes and farms in 1948; and the Six Day War in 1967, when Jordan lost the West Bank and Gaza to Israel, when the population of displaced people in camps in Jordan doubled again. I learned that Prince Hassan, the second son of King Talal, and Jordan’s Crown Prince from 1965 to 1999, was credited with establishing the country’s institutions, and encouraging investment from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and how he had been an important player in the peace process during the years of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

  HRH El Hassan bin Talal’s list of international accolades and appointments was as would be expected of a man who the BBC often described in fruity tones as the voice of reason from a troubled region and the architect of modern Jordan. He was, among many things, chairman of the Arab Thought Forum, president of the Club of Rome, founding member and vice chairman of the Foundation for Interreligious and Intercultural Research and Dialogue, member of the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group, co-chair of the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues, moderator of the World Conference of Religions for Peace, and, prior to the invasion of Iraq, a member of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, chaired by Hans Blix. And these were only a sample of the innumerable international appointments and initiatives listed on his blue-and-gold website.

  The BBC had long dubbed him the Nelson Mandela of the Middle East. I was impressed, but wary. I knew something of diplomatic accolades and how they could be ramped up. However, learning that former Attorney-General Gareth Evans and philosopher Peter Singer were on some of the same international boards as he, I felt on firmer ground. I contemplated ringing Evans, who I knew from the Hawke and Keating years. He was then in Brussels, chairing the International Crisis Group, but I imagined I’d be wasting his time, or he’d laugh and quickly talk me out of whatever it was I found myself considering.

  My reading had pricked my interest but I was trying to hose myself down, knowing my tendency to leap into the dark. The Hashemites were probably seeking an editor of existing transcribed interviews, for a specific publication: an official giveaway, with colour plates, for visiting dignitaries. What I’d been sent was very little to go on—and likely to have been chosen as the most tantalising material.

  There was more than a whiff of drama attached to all this. In the British Library newspaper collection were the sensational 1999 headlines when the popular and glamorous King Hussein, after a long period of illness in Rochester’s Mayo Clinic, returned to Jordan at the end of his life, deposing Hassan, his younger brother, and anointing Abdullah, his eldest son, as his heir. I read extracts of King Hussein’s rambling 14-page letter ignominiously dismissing his brother, who had served him and his country for thirty years—laced with insults, it seemed to be accusing the Crown Prince of treason, and certainly of betrayal. The fact that El Hassan bin Talal had not spoken out in his own defence, but maintained a dignified silence, was commented on widely in the British press and much admired. The media couldn’t get enough of the story, which was mostly all my English friends knew about Jordan’s Royal Family—except for a few whose fathers had been in charge of archaeological digs or had worked for Shell in the 1950s. My Australian friends knew even less.

  Was I prepared to be a ghost writer, if that were needed? I had never actually encountered any Australian writers who described themselves as ‘ghosts’; ‘hacks for hire’ was more likely. They were commonly employed to write books for young sporting stars, and for old war heroes or politicians wanting to massage their legacy. At a book trade party in London, I mentioned the prospect to a couple of literary agents I knew and their reaction was, rather poorly concealed, amazement—why ever would they want an Australian? The Middle East was still seen as a British stronghold, and Jordan’s monarchy was beloved by Her Majesty the Queen who worried about the safety of Prince Hassan and his family, I was reliably informed.

  At Daunt Books, near where I stayed in North London, I bought Leap of Faith, a fat paperback memoir by Queen Noor, King Hussein’s American wife of twenty years, who was with him when he died. The King’s own conventional 1962 biography, Uneasy Lies the Head, I’d dipped into in the British Library. It read as if dictated by the handsome young monarch the foreign media dubbed Plucky Little King (PLK).

  Should the invitation and the Royal Jordanian airline tickets arrive in London, I would skim-read Leap of Faith on the plane to Amman. Useful background, I caught myself thinking. For what? A conversation with someone about a writing project I hadn’t applied to do, and in which I would surely have to explain that my being approached was a case of misinformation or mistaken identity. But the chance to visit that part of the world was starting to tempt me, and someone as formidable as former Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan must surely be would expect me to know something about his antecedents.

  The word ‘autobiography’ used by the personal private secretary demonstrated a common confusion of biographies and autobiographies. Postmodernism and creative writing classes have muddled the categories, and, ideally, liberated writers to enter imaginatively into their subject’s world while observing basic protocols, not changing facts, not hurting the living, honouring their sources. Whatever basic protocols, whatever imaginary world … I made myself snap out of it and went to the movies.

  My last few days in London, I spent walking to the library and reading for hours, then trying to pack for a northern winter and a fierce summer with friends in Pondicherry. The weather was foul; the news from the Middle East was worse. An armed insurgency was exploding again in Al Anbar province. Hamas leader Khaled Mashal had assured an angry rally in Damascus that the informal ceasefire with Israel would end after the killing in Gaza of two Palestinians.

  I spent hours one morning queuing in the rain at the Indian High Commission in Aldwych, trying to secure my visa to visit Tamil Nadu on the way home. The London Office of HRH, as I was now referring to it in my head, had assured me that a visa for Jordan would not be necessary. I would, of course, be a Guest of the Royal Court, the posh voice had said—needing only to be handed airline tickets.

  Later that evening, back at the Goodenough, the night porter passed to me through the grille a stiff square envelope bearing a small red and gilt crown. My instructions were to change at Dubai for the Royal Jordanian connection to Amman, where I would spend three days, then fly back to Dubai to connect with my Christmas Eve flight to Chennai. The airline tickets would be available before I left London; otherwise, they would await me in Vienna. I remember reading the information in the empty lobby and trying not to laugh. Jordan had again receded as a surreal and irritating mirage, all the more so after a nightmare of packing while trying to imagine what formal clothes might be called for there.

  At the check-in counter the next morning, struggling with my enormous suitcase and hand luggage full of books and notes, it took some explaining to the airline official that I might now have to be breaking the journey home at Dubai, in transit, then again on the way home from Chennai. The friend I was travelling with as far as Vienna emerged from the Christmas holiday throng like a small, fierce bird, carrying a red suitcase and wearing a tiny backpack. She had the latest news from her friends in the Sydney Morning Herald London bureau about the racial vilification raging at home, with the riots in Sydney’s Cronulla, and the calls for increased police powers. At the gate lounge, the television repeatedly showed scenes of the riots, and rows of armed police with shields on deserted beaches.

  We planned to go as far as Dubai together after our Viennese stopover. Then, depending on whet
her the tickets had arrived from the bloody Jordanians, as I now described them, I would fly north to Amman or south to India—or both in quick succession, lugging my suitcase—and my fortunate friend would fly straight home with her red case to a Melbourne summer.

  The two days in Vienna under snow were inauspicious—we’d both forgotten woollen hats and gloves. Our rooms were separated by a noisy couple and their dog. Vienna was a blur of Klimts, Schieles, Kokoschkas, and the Sigmund Freud Museum, plus a couple of visits to the decidedly unfriendly Café Braünhof, where Thomas Bernhard and his friends used to hang out. But the schnitzels and coffee were good, there were piles of international newspapers and intense-looking young men probably discussing politics and literature. I’d telephoned the Royal Jordanian agency, only to be told they had no authority yet to hand over the tickets, which did exist, they assured me. This farce was defeating me.

  Then followed the night at the opera we had come for: Barrie Kosky’s exhilarating 4-hour production of Lohengrin, with its yellow plastic doll’s house transforming into a chapel, thumbing its nose at the well-heeled audience. Tourists and elderly Viennese couples in furs, young families with straight-backed children and pale shining hair—we were all on our feet at the end, shouting bravos. My friend and I drank cocktails and ate cake in another famous café, and fell into our beds, before early-morning calls and a midday cab to the airport.