Other People's Houses

by Hilary McPhee

  By this point, I would have walked barefoot over burning sods to follow this story. Presumably, whoever had researched me as a candidate for the project had unearthed my passion for the region’s archaeology. That I might be being given a set piece only occurred to me very much later, and then reluctantly.

  As the convoy slowly descended the hill to the old town below, I was handed a folded black abaya to put on in the car, so I could enter the Prince’s mosque. I managed to pull it over my head so that my jacket, skirt and legs were completely covered when I climbed out of the vehicle, parked where a crowd was already gathering. I held a fold of the cloth across my face, so only my eyes were showing, and followed Prince Hassan through several gloriously carpeted courtyards, with fine tiles and carved stonework, into the beautiful, austere building of pale pink and white stone. I was left to myself to look up in wonder, before being introduced to the imam, and mumbling ‘Salaam alaikum,’ and, more idiotically, ‘Ana ismee Hilary min Australie’.

  By the time we came out of the mosque, to where the soldiers from the convoy were waiting, the crowd was very large, and the Prince was mobbed by men wanting to touch and greet him. His guards went ahead, clearing a path, and Hassan walked, smiling and pausing and greeting people by name, while I followed some way behind in my abaya, with a delicious feeling of being able to look everywhere and see everything, completely invisible.

  By now it was late afternoon, but I had to be shown the ultramodern sports centre, which was then hosting a squash contest for young men from all over the Middle East. Prince Hassan went to change and reappeared in sports gear, and proceeded to play a round or two with a young Egyptian player. Crowds again gathered, barracking loudly, cheering them both on. Here was a Prince who played like a champion; or maybe the Egyptian boy had been selected to lose a few rounds to a Prince. Photographs of them followed, with arms linked, much laughter and banter. This seemed to be a regular event. His Royal Highness, I was assured by the manager of the centre, was an expert squash player, a black belt in judo and a champion polo player. Sport, and his patronage of it, was clearly a paramount feature of his sacred sites.

  The last leg of the tour was to be a coffee shop in the old quarter near Rainbow Street. Everyone—including the Prince’s cardiologist, the sports-centre manager and a publicist—piled into the cars, but at a street corner an elderly man who had been a neighbour spotted Prince Hassan and rapped on the window, insisting everyone come to his place for refreshments.

  Inside the house, the men donned red and white kaffiyas, the Prince being handed a set of heavy black cords to put over his, and seated themselves around a low table. The two women—the publicist and I—sat neatly on a bench against a wall. A proud young fellow, the grandson of the old man who had played in the street outside with Prince Hassan as a child, served tall glasses of mint tea, and almond biscuits. The conversation and jokes were in Arabic, with an occasional reminiscence, or observation about the highly regrettable changes happening in modern Amman, translated for me. I sat in a fog of delight, imagining those 1950s children free to roam. No guards, few cars, everyone looking out for each other, a midwife called to attend the Queen Mother—a neighbourhood where the children of the rich and poor mingled. Of that, much was made.

  Back at the hotel, I sat in the dining room and emailed my enthusiasm to my husband in America, and my family in Australia, before the connection crashed and I lost the lot. I went upstairs, ran another enormous bath and ordered a meal. I was to be collected early the next morning by a driver who would take me to the Roman Decapolis city of Jerash, and on to Mount Nebo, with lunch somewhere in the middle.

  I have no record in my diary or much memory of that day, when my brain was buzzing with the idea of the book—of how I could make it happen. Impediments had faded away.

  The heated car went rather fast along well-made highways; first to Jerash, with its magnificent triple-arched gateway built to mark the Emperor Hadrian’s arrival in the city in 129AD. Here, I was met by an official and given a tour of the colonnaded streets, the marketplace and the hilltop temples, and a demonstration of the amphitheatre’s astonishing acoustics. I asked the obvious touristic questions, already assuming I would see Jerash again.

  Somewhere on the way to Mount Nebo, south of Amman, through wintery hills and towards snow-covered slopes in the distance, the driver stopped for lunch at a large, rather empty, roadside restaurant that seemed to be expecting me. My table was inside; his outside, so he could smoke and not have to make conversation, I supposed. I can’t recall what I ate but it would probably have been minted lentil soup, and kebabs and rice.

  Then there was another hour’s driving, until we took a winding road up to Mount Nebo, where Moses looked across the River Jordan into the Promised Land. A small, square Byzantine Christian church, with fine mosaics, stood at the summit, which had a lookout with a marker pointing across the River Jordan to the Dead Sea, and beyond to Hebron, Ramallah, Jericho and Nablus. I could make out, in the middle distance, the rooftops of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The mountains were folded like ancient elephant’s skin, with the river cutting deep. Far below, I could see river plains planted in neat rows and Lake Tiberias glinting in the distance. This was the most sacred of biblical sites, with Moses revered as a prophet by Muslims, Jews and Christians. This was Palestine, the site of endless struggle and distress.

  That evening, I had just started to pack for my departure early the next day when the phone rang. A breathless-sounding receptionist announced that the Palace switchboard wished to connect His Royal Highness Prince Hassan. His sonorous voice came on the line. Had I enjoyed the tour? Of course. Would I consider returning to Amman in March or April if the idea of the book appealed? Of course. The office would be in touch to sort out the details. Of course. I would be most happy to help, I said.

  The idea of the book appealed mightily. I could see it there, beneath the lumps and awkwardness of the transcribing of a first, and very partial, draft. I had seen worse, and the bones of a fascinating account of a large life were there. And ‘help’ was the word Prince Hassan and others used, according to my diary. I knew how I could shape it by interviewing and editing, coordinating a small team of a transcriber and a researcher.

  The transcriptions I had read were original and striking, but only hinted at what was possible, and at what was needed to make the kind of book I was envisaging, with an international readership, and a strong message. The timing was right for a book about the war, and its unfolding horrors, from the Jordanian perspective, and Jordan was as close to the war zone as I could get. A once-powerful man’s part in essential nation-building was an important element. Jordan must have benefited a very great deal from those thirty years with Prince Hassan as Crown Prince. I had read enough of his speeches and public utterances to know something of his politics and principles and also his institution-building. His international profile assured an English and American readership. Australian publishers would be harder to interest.

  In retrospect, it looks so obvious. I had just experienced three days of the kind of intellectual seduction I was not accustomed to, and been offered insights into a part of the world I’d yearned to know other than from books. Such a pushover, I look from this distance. Such a gift of a project, it looked to me then.

  The air of secrecy—or paranoia, even—around the project was not yet apparent to me; nor had confidentiality been mentioned at this point. Had I known enough about all the hierarchical complexities of an Arab monarchy, of any kind of monarchy, maybe I would have been sensible, sought advice and backed away. In Australia, I had witnessed second-hand after the Keating government fell something of the sensitivities involved, the anger, the humiliation, the fractured allegiances and loss of face, that go with loss of office. Was my professional vanity, my simple desire for an exotic project, deluding me about its difficulty? Publishers are accustomed to having to pick their way through awkward terrain in order to extract an important story. The calamity of the Iraq War w
as escalating and my country’s part in it was deeply distressing.

  This was the end of a rather tough year for me. My husband had returned for my mother’s funeral, but had left a few days later to keep travelling around the US for his next book and would be away for a few more months at least. My three grown-up children and my stepdaughter were scattered and managing perfectly well without me. I needed an adventure, and here it was.

  So, yes, I said; yes, I would be more than pleased to help.

  I flew to Chennai the next morning, to have Christmas and New Year at Adishakti in Pondicherry with Indian friends. My husband was spending his Christmas in Boston before continuing his Amtrak journey. I hadn’t suggested we meet in New York for Christmas, hoping he would. But he was engrossed in his next book. We spoke on the phone every few days—always at the wrong time for one of us, time differences, God knows what else, I tried hard not to imagine. But he was pleased for me and was glad I had agreed to go back to Amman after Easter. We discussed what kind of contract I should negotiate, and I said I would seek advice about the fee. A small thought surfaced according to my diary. The tone of this conversation seems different.

  By the time my husband the writer returns from his American journeying in February, everything is indeed different. Late one hot summer evening, outside in the heavy scent of the yellow roses he’d planted, he tells me that he wants to keep moving.

  And so, I flew to Amman a few weeks later, as if to another planet.

  2

  Between the head and the heart

  BEGIN, I TELL myself, at the beginning of an adventure, not at the end of a marriage of twenty years; an end that I didn’t start to understand until I’d been alone on the other side of the world for many months.

  I thought he was suggesting something else when he told me he was happiest on his own, a workable writerly separation, him writing at the beach, me working in town, meeting at weekends, the dog and the grown-up children shunting around this midlife horror show, or whatever it was. But he wasn’t. He’d already told the family he was leaving—his better self discovered in America, when he was travelling for his next book on Amtrak trains, then driving the highways and backroads in a white Pontiac G6, redneck local radio tempered by Mark Twain audiobooks. I’d been following his journey, on a map pinned to the kitchen wall.

  So, alone at 1 a.m., I sent close friends an email telling them of his decision, and of mine to go back to Amman after Easter. I left the house, to be rented to another family. And Morry, the dog, to go with him to the country—which I had to agree would be a better life.

  A few days before I flew out, I rang an old friend, a doctor–writer, and asked him round for a coffee and advice. He arrived the next morning, gave me a hug and I put my carefully phrased questions to him. If I died overseas, what would happen? If I ran out of pills for my wonky heart, what would happen? What if I forgot to take them? What would that feel like? To reassure him, I said I had met Prince Hassan’s cardiologist. My new job, he thought, was a bit of a joke. Or that’s what I thought he thought. Later on, I came home to the answering machine flashing. Three messages throughout the day. St Vincent’s Hospital. Lifeline. St Vincent’s again. It took me years to forgive him.

  Before I left Australia, I sent a draft heads of agreement to my Australian school friend, the PA. We emailed back and forth, and I outlined my understanding of the project, based on the rough sample I had read. She was to pass this on to Princess Badiya, in London, who was drawing up the contract. I quoted a modest fee in Australian dollars. I took no advice about it; I was an experienced publisher who knew the ropes, after all.

  I did ask a few questions about surveillance and security, which were part of people’s lives in the region, and part of the Prince’s and his family’s lives since the crudely orchestrated change in succession in January 1999.

  The PA had been in Jordan when the army helicopters circled the compound for the first few days after the announcement that the Crown Prince and heir apparent would be replaced by his nephew, the present King Abdullah II. The Prince had maintained a dignified silence in the face of slander and gossip, loyally defending his brother’s decision, always quoting Arabic rhetoric to explain their relationship: two bodies, one soul.

  The succession change was the first thing I was asked about when I told people where I was heading. Even my physician in Melbourne wanted to know about it. Palaces and princes sound exotic. My friends were curious, my family bemused. No one knew much about Jordan’s political realities, only about the late King Hussein, the epitome of a handsome and charming Arab monarch. He was the dashing international statesman, married four times, first to an Egyptian, then to an Englishwoman, then to a beautiful young Jordanian who was killed in a plane crash, then to an Arab–American who converted to Islam. All of this added considerable lustre to his profile, and was bait to the world’s glossy magazines.

  Much more interesting to me was the story I wished to explore. How the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, if not an exemplar of tolerance and plurality, was a country that punched above its weight in what was almost the eye of the storm. How Jordan, despite its lack of oil, and diminishing natural resources, could boast established institutions, increased literacy and living standards, educated girls and young women; and how it worked, again and again, with Israel and its Arab neighbours towards a solution to the Palestinian crisis. The role of the Crown Prince in a turbulent region was pivotal. I had glimpsed enough to know that.

  The compound to which I’d been admitted had been laid out by the British Resident in 1926, an oasis in a garden on one of the hills of Amman above Downtown, with the suq and the mosque and the Roman amphitheatre. Prince Hassan’s grandfather was the Sheikh Abdullah, installed by Winston Churchill as King of Transjordan, who built the palaces and guest houses in the compound. With carved wooden features, parquet flooring, dark furniture, balconies, and garden vistas with fountains approached by steps and curved walls, they were magnificent in the style of that era. There was none of the grandiosity and glitter of the marble and concrete gigantic palaces built in recent years—or so it seemed to me. Here I would sit, with a dictaphone and notebook, over a period of more than two years and eight visits to Jordan, at first asking my carefully prepared questions, based on a conventional memoir transcription begun years before by someone else; who exactly, was never made clear.

  And when, quite soon, my own questions started, I became something between a trusted amanuensis and an audience, as the Prince would recount his philosophical and political approach to his work in the region. These conversations were as informal as it was possible to be in what was a modern Arab court, with staff who bowed and women who stood to attention, and soldiers who carried the Prince’s papers and books, and then discreetly stood guard some way off, and ousters who brought silver trays of Arabic coffee in tiny blue and white cups, or glasses of orange-scented tea.

  The garden might well have changed. Then it was still English in style, with climbing roses, tubs of azaleas, window boxes of petunias, jonquils and daffodils in spring. Now it may be very different if talented gardeners from arid parts of the world have managed to reduce water consumption. Scents wafted towards me as I was let in through the main gates each morning by the Bedouin guards, who knew me as ‘Miss Hilary’. The young garden waterers greeted me each morning when I arrived, by looking at me and putting their heads on one side, not speaking. I was foreign and doing something mysterious. They were Egyptians, with no rights to anything except a minimal lunch and being bussed to their concrete dormitories at the end of the day—though labourers’ wages are higher in Jordan than in Egypt, I was told, and here they are housed and fed, so they can send most of the money back to their wives and mothers. They watered constantly, great, gushing hand-held hoses, which often overlapped with the sprinkler system that was on all morning. The garden chairs were wet, the steps were slippery. The gravel was watered, the driveways, every man-made surface. Whole villages outside Amman would not use
that much water in a month, I read somewhere; but a garden is the entitlement of princes, its beauty mandatory. I could hear the sound of water running somewhere all day; I tried to forget the efforts we were making at home to conserve it. In summer, I removed my sandals and squelched across the grass to the pavilion. In winter, I carried spare shoes, as my boots would take all morning to dry against the roaring central heating banks. By contrast, when I first ran a bath in my hotel, and then later, in my apartment in the grounds, the water ran dark red. I learned to leave it running until it cleared, but baths in Amman were always deep and sandy.

  Most mornings, I walked down the drive, turned left up the steps, and picked my way across soaking grass to the lawn to where, if the Prince was available, I would sit for several hours in the cool shade or a sun-filled courtyard, asking my well-prepared questions. His answers came in long, perfect sentences that only rambled when he was tired.

  The Prince I was there to interview made pencilled notes in minute handwriting on the margins of books, and with a fountain pen on yellow notepads. He was a raconteur who thought aloud in long sentences, which looped and wound back on themselves, always ending where he wanted them to, as he moved deftly between quotation and anecdote, analysis and prognostication, and occasional bawdy jokes. His classical Arabic, I was told many times, was impeccable, and drew crowds—and was then a source of some tension between him and the young King, who was half-English. Prince Hassan’s French was perfect, and his Hebrew, Russian, Turkish, German, Italian, Urdu and Hindi pretty damn good, I was told.