Hussein's New Light from America

The King chooses a lissome, Princeton-educated commoner

It was an improbable match. He is 42, a thrice-married widower, world-weary and prematurely gray after 26 years as leader of one of the Middle East's most pivotal and volatile nations. She is 26, a Princeton-educated single career girl with a keen interest in the arts. He is swarthy, dark-eyed and short (5 ft. 6 in.). She is blonde, blue-eyed and lissome at 5 ft. 7 in. He is a King, and she a commoner, but that seemed not to matter at all. Last week the royal court in Amman announced that Jordan's King Hussein had "chosen," as his "life partner" and fourth wife, Washington-born Elizabeth (Lisa) Halaby. She is the daughter of Najeeb Halaby, onetime Federal Aviation Administrator and Pan Am president whose forebears were Syrians. The wedding is expected to take place some time next month.

Unlike Hussein's Jordanian-born third wife. Alia, who died in a helicopter crash 15 months ago, Lisa will not, at least initially, be named Queen. Instead she will be a princess, with the Arabic name Nur el Hussein (Light of Hussein). Raised as a Protestant, she will convert to Islam.

Hussein's courtship of Lisa Halaby was a whirlwind affair that spanned only ten weeks before he proposed and she accepted. After graduating from Princeton in 1974 with a degree in architecture, she took a job with an airlines service company in which her father holds an interest; a year ago she landed a position as designer and decorator for Alia,* the Royal Jordanian Airlines. Lisa first met the King three months ago,.when she and her visiting father were royal house guests at the winter palace in Aqaba. The twosome quickly discovered a common interest in sailing, skiing and driving fast cars, and Hussein was smitten.

Friends of both families hope that Princess Nur will light up Hussein's domestic life, which has been almost as stormy as his quarter-century reign over the embattled Hashemite kingdom. After establishing early in his adulthood a reputation as a playboy with a roving eye, the King was married briefly at 19 to a distant cousin. Following a divorce in 1957, he wed an English girl named Toni Gardiner and rechristened her Princess Muna el Hussein (Desire of Hussein). The King's desire waned in 1972, after he met beauteous Alia Toukan, 23, the U.S.-educated daughter of a prominent Jordanian family. The third wedding took place when the second divorce was made public, and Alia became Hussein's first Queen.

The happy King and Alia had a prince and princess of their own and adopted a baby girl orphaned by an airplane crash. When Alia was killed returning from a flying tour to a Jordanian hospital, Hussein tearfully announced the death of "my precious companion." Before long, though, his name began to be linked with those of other women.

The girl he settled on already has a regal air. "She was very different from most of the females at Princeton, more determined," recalled an architecture-school classmate last week. "She was a controlled person." Known to her close friends as "Buck," she worked hard at her studies but liked to organize dinners and parties. She dropped out for a year to attend a photography workshop in Aspen, where she developed into a competent skier; she also plays a mean game of tennis and squash.

Hussein probably needs some joy in his private life to offset what Amman observers say is a deepening sense of iso lation, insecurity and pessimism. Although Jordan is prospering economically, he is worried about the future of his country and indeed about the entire Arab world. Unhappy about Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's peace initiative, he feels that President Carter is incapable of pressuring the Israelis into making concessions that would permit a peace settlement. If Sadat, by chance, were to sign a separate agreement with Israel, Hussein would come under pressure from Saudi Arabia and the U.S. to negotiate with Israel about the West Bank. But his powerful neighbors Syria and Iraq would exert counterpressure on him to try to block any such deal. The end result, the King gloomily concludes, would be an Israeli diplomatic triumph and an internecine split between Arab states.

Judging from the current lack of progress on peace negotiations, Hussein is not likely to feel any pressure over the West Bank in the near future. That ought to allow him plenty of leisure time to cement his latest American alliance.

* The airline was named after Hussein's eldest daughter, not his late wife.

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