Word: amman
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...modestly educated (like Hussein, she never went to college)-in many ways a better match than Hussein's first wife, Queen Dina, who was taller, seven years older, and holder of an M.A. from Cambridge. Hussein got to know Toni at go-cart races in Amman, and both are fond of fast cars, planes and dancing. "Toni," said a friend, "is not very anything. She's a simple, gay girl who will cha-cha-cha with him when the day's state cares are over...
Gift from Cairo. To appease enemies and critics, Hussein released 600 short-term prisoners, slashed other sentences by a third, and commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment. He even visited Amman Central Prison, released and embraced a onetime aide convicted of plotting. In a cream-colored Rolls-Royce prudently surrounded by a cordon of armored cars, the King stopped off at the Grand Hussein Mosque for lengthy prayers. He promised elections "soon," though one Jordanian predicted that they would result in a "75% pro-Nasser Parliament...
...mother's modest palace, Hussein and Toni (who has been converted to the Moslem faith) said their vows, signed five copies of the wedding contract, exchanged rings, and then everybody in the room shouted "Mabrouk!" (good luck). With his bride at his side, Hussein drove through Amman's streets in a cream-colored Mercedes to take the cheers of most of the city's population. That night the couple retired to one of Hussein's palaces, Basman, where they had the company of two pet lions...
Nobody could be sure what the Amman crowds were really thinking or how they would react to an anti-Toni campaign from Cairo. But Hussein had been engaged on what he calls "a policy of rapprochement with the Arab world," and, along with a golden bowl from the Kennedys and a silver tea service from Queen Elizabeth II, he got an important present from Nasser: Cairo radio said not a critical word about the marriage...
...will need all the sympathy he can get for his proposed second marriage (the first, to Queen Dina, ended in divorce in 1957 after she had borne him a daughter). Hussein has lately been mending his fences with Nasser to secure his shaky throne, and a British Queen in Amman is hardly to Cairo's liking. Moreover, two-thirds of Jordan's population are Palestinian refugees from British partition days. Hussein's choice of a British girl was made in defiance of the counsel of his closest advisers, and split the royal family itself (the strong-minded...