Word: amman
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...even though his grandfather was King, Hussein was far from rich. His family lived in a small, unheated villa in Amman, had to make do on a government stipend of $3,000 a year. The house got so cold one winter, he recalls, that his little sister died of pneumonia. The money once ran so low that his mother had to sell his bicycle in order to pay the bills. His fortunes have since improved. In addition to the three royal residences assigned him, he now has a villa at Aqaba. His real home, however, is a modest converted farmhouse...
Royal routine bores him. He receives visitors informally, talks easily and frankly. But he would rather be out of the palace, is constantly showing up to inaugurate schools and factories in towns all over Jordan. He often cruises around Amman alone in his Mercedes, waving at people, feeling the air, occasionally stopping to chat. In his early days, he delighted in disguising himself as a taxi driver, hacking around Amman at night to find out what people really thought of the King. He doesn't have to ask today...
...Amman, all schoolrooms and mosques have been converted into refugee centers, their furniture stacked in corners, their floors covered with straw mats and the mats in turn covered by ragged, hollow-eyed, miserable people. Ten new tent camps have been opened near Amman, but they are hardly more livable. Hot desert winds whip up sandstorms in the summer afternoons, choking the air and knocking down tents. Camp authorities fear that when winter arrives, at least half of their charges will freeze to death in the cold desert nights...
...most of them knocked out by Israeli jets. Official casualty figures list more than 6,000 soldiers killed or missing-but there is evidence that perhaps 5,000 of them are hiding out on the west bank, waiting for a chance to steal across the river and return to Amman. Despite his pleas for military aid from the West, Hussein says that he has got no specific commitments from either the U.S. or Britain. Hussein is far from happy with the way the war was fought. "There was not enough coordination, not enough planning, not enough anything," he says...
Work for Mukhtars. Despite all the tensions, throughout most of the Israeli-occupied areas of Jordan life was returning to normal. The governor of what had once been Jordanian Jerusalem was out of a job, and the mayor of Jericho had fled to Amman; the mayors and mukhtars of more than 50 other towns were back at their desks, and Arab police were back on their beats...