Hussein's Wish

For hours, the Amman radio had readied the nation for "an announcement of happy and private news." But when Jordan's King Hussein took the microphone, his tone was suppliant and defensive. "I have all my life, my brethren, hidden my worries, my problems and cares from you," he said, "wearing a smile on my face which never knew its way into my heart." The truth was far different. "I know loneliness eating my days and nights. I feel my spirit tearing and burning in a fire of gloomy loneliness and pitiful isolation. I needed affection." Then the 25-year-old King announced his news. He had found "the girl of my dreams" in the unlikely guise of a British army officer's daughter.

Mended Fences. Hussein's loneliness was perhaps exaggerated, since modern Arab monarchs have given up few of their forebears' fabled prerogatives; but he 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 Queen Mother was notably absent from Amman when the announcement was made).

The cause of the furor is 20-year-old, blue-eyed, chestnut-haired Toni Avril Gardiner. Granddaughter of a shepherd and daughter of an army officer, Toni was born in Suffolk, educated in Anglican schools in England except for a three-year sojourn in Malaya (1955-58), when her father put in a stint in Kuala Lumpur. After finishing high school, Toni went to work as a payroll clerk for London's Peak Engineering Co. But, as one company official tactfully explained, "her calculations were rather erratic," and she ended up on the telephone switchboard.

The Second Bomb. Then, in December 1959, Lieut. Colonel Gardiner was sent to Jordan to serve with a British military advisory group, became unofficially Hussein's chief anti-bomb and security officer. When an assassin tried to blow up Hussein last year and succeeded only in killing his Premier, Gardiner was the first man to enter the smoking offices to search for a possible second bomb.

To take some of the edge off the unorthodox marriage, Toni last month embraced the Moslem faith, has begun studying Arabic. Hussein also gave her an Arab name, Muna al Hussein--the Wish of Hussein. Radio Cairo and Radio Baghdad have thus far studiously avoided reporting the news of the engagement, but Cairo's Al Akhbar was less polite. "The engagement will lead to an acute crisis in Jordan, and a loss of popularity for Hussein in the Arab world. His engagement to a British girl shows Hussein is searching for a warmth and affection he did not find in the hearts of the Jordanian people." But at week's end the Jordanian people seemed to have responded to the King's appeal for understanding. When Hussein took Toni for a spin in his open Mercedes 300, they were greeted with approving shouts and cheers.

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