Word: hassan
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...Hassan's erudition and braininess can be handicaps. He is difficult to follow in dialogue, not just because of his high-speed, rumbling delivery but also because of the breadth of his conversational span. He bounces from one subject to another without pause. "You'll never get a superficial sound bite out of him," says an aide. "He immediately goes deep into substance." A longtime associate of Hassan's says he has not once managed to surprise the prince with a piece of news; Hassan has always learned it first, from an aide, the media or the Internet...
...short barrel of a man with a weakness for Big Macs, Hassan pushes himself through rigorous physical exercise. "Maneuvers," his family calls them. He works out in his home gym and plays polo with the army team...
While the King, with his Casanova appeal, is wed to his fourth wife, the U.S.-born Lisa Halaby, Hassan's personal life has been conventional. He met his Pakistani wife, the energetic Princess Sarvath, in London when both were 11 and he gave her measles. The two have three daughters and a son Rashid, 19, a potential heir to the throne. Hassan made time for bedtime stories, reading the girls The Scarlet Pimpernel before they were school...
...family lives in the royal compound in Amman in an elegant but relatively modest stone house. Like Hussein, perhaps more so, Hassan avoids ostentation. Both brothers do their own driving. Hassan is an observant Muslim who attends the mosque and frequently cites Koranic verses. The Hashemites, descendants of the Sharifs of Mecca, base their legitimacy on their direct lineage to the Prophet Muhammad. Hassan's life-style has facilitated amicable relations with the Muslim Brotherhood, the most important opposition faction in Jordan. He was also instrumental in repairing ties with Iran, strained over charges that Tehran was fomenting Islamic unrest...
...Israelis regard Hassan in the same light as his brother--as a reliable, even warm ally. Like the King, however, he has been scathing at times in his criticisms of the current Israeli government's obstinacy toward the Palestinians. That has made Hassan well liked within Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Periodically, the prince has mediated between the two sides. Within Jordan, Hassan has been viewed with suspicion by the majority of the population made up of Palestinian refugees and their descendants. This distrust baffles and disturbs the prince, but it has lessened over time. Today there are key Palestinians...