Meet The New King

By By Scott Macleod/Amman

Forget the crown. Dress down a little. In this day and age, that's what you might expect of a monarch like Jordan's Abdullah II. But every few weeks, the 38-year-old ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom gives his wife Queen Rania a jolt by dressing up, carefully adjusting his disguise in the mirror, before heading to work in the morning. Instead of a business suit or perhaps his military uniform, he's wearing jeans, an old army jacket and--get this--an Afro wig, a bushy brown beard and some makeup to darken his eyebrows. To ensure he won't be recognized even by his gait, he drops a pebble in his shoe to effect a limp. "It's a shock!" the Queen says as she and Abdullah share a chuckle during an interview with TIME. "The wig," she jokes, nudging her husband, "needs a bit of work." Adds Abdullah: "The kids think it's hilarious. It's a lot of fun."

And a sign of a quiet revolution under way in Jordan. The new King, who ascended the throne after his father's death last year, is intent on doing the nation's business in unusual ways. Hence the getups. Ten times in disguise--ranging from a TV reporter to a sick patient--but also frequently without it, the King has plunged into his domain on snap inspection missions. What he discovers--civil servants drinking tea, gossiping and knocking off early as they give their countrymen endless runarounds--has him axing useless officials and groaning about the bloated bureaucracy when he gets home.

If last year Jordanians could not tell you much about the man who is now their King, it was because his ascent to the throne was such a surprise. The eldest son of the late King Hussein was a career military officer, the longtime heir apparent being Hussein's younger brother Hassan. But in the span of two dramatic weeks exactly one year ago, Hussein sacked Hassan, named Abdullah the new heir, suffered a cancer relapse and died. Many Jordanians feared that their small country would not survive without "the father." But now Abdullah is leading his kingdom into an era where building efficient, modern states may be more important than such paralyzing old issues as the Arab-Israeli conflict. "The message has changed," says Abdullah. "We have peace and want others to enjoy it. We need to shift from politics to the economy. My priority is to bring prosperity. We have to get on the same line of music as the young generation, a global generation."

The new emphasis comes not a moment too soon: well over half of Jordanians are under age 16, and will soon be demanding a slice of the economic cake. To give it to them, Abdullah has devised a plan centered on a privatization effort that is almost unprecedented in the Arab world, where authoritarian kings and presidents have feared--with good reason--that economic freedom would ultimately weaken their hold on political power. Abdullah, however, is openly declaring his aim of bringing democracy to Jordan.

Last week Abdullah and Rania invited TIME to follow them for two days, sharing their ideas and their style as well as gaining insights into their private side. Nestled on the family-room sofa of their four-story suburban house--comfortable, but not what anybody would call a palace--they remembered the disbelief they felt a year ago when their public roles changed forever. Rania recalls the moment when Abdullah arrived at parliament to be sworn in as King. "He stood at attention before the portrait of His Late Majesty longer than he normally would," she says. "He was trying to keep his composure." Earlier, as he had driven his father to the airport en route to the U.S. for what proved to be his final journey, Abdullah had desperately wanted to ask the dying King questions about how to govern. "But I didn't want to waste those last 30 minutes with him," he says. Earlier they had had a heart-to-heart talk. "He told me, 'You know, Abdullah, I feel really bad. I always threw you out there. I never stepped in to help you when I could have.' I said, 'No. I learned the hard way, and I am happy about that.'"

Despite their unexpected call to duty, the young royals refuse to adopt a more formal style. In a region where most royal wives are still hidden behind the veil, Jordanians know that their 29-year-old Queen, who is Palestinian by birth, earned a business-administration degree and once worked in marketing at the Amman offices of Apple Computer and Citibank. Every week the couple join friends for a night out. "It's good for people to see the King and Queen having a hamburger at Planet Hollywood," says Abdullah. "It sends the right message: 'There they are, part of our society.'"

The couple refuse to bow to tribal traditions, maintaining a partnership more common in Washington than in Amman. Abdullah credits his wife with helping open his eyes to the benefits of free enterprise. Aware of how such a comment could be distorted by critics, she quickly adds, "He has economic advisers. They are the experts."

While Abdullah does not seek to fill his father's peacemaking shoes, he has played a behind-the-scenes role in the latest round of talks, influencing last December's decision by Syrian President Hafez Assad to resume negotiations with Israel. And though Jordan receives all its oil at preferential, U.N.-approved prices from Iraq, Abdullah evinces no love for Saddam Hussein. He is friendly with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, however, and will make his first visit as King to Israel this month.

But Abdullah is pointedly making the economy the centerpiece of his reign. While Jordanians were watching his incognito exploits, international investors were impressed by his reformist zeal. Ignoring his ministers' skepticism, the King twice last summer called parliament into session and rammed through bills reforming everything from trade barriers to copyright infringement. The move took guts, considering that Jordan has suffered four consecutive years of zero growth, thanks in part to U.N. sanctions against Iraq, Jordan's main trading partner.

The kingdom was rewarded. In December, Jordan was granted membership in the World Trade Organization. The King insists it's just a start. "We are going to go through massive reforms," he says, including slashing the bloated government work force 50%. To help make Jordan the regional center for information technology, he envisions a total overhaul of the education system. He has already decreed that schoolchildren start learning English in the first grade and computers in the fourth.

Much is riding on whether the effort pays off. The risk is that the fruits of his reforms will not kick in quickly enough for a country where more than 1 in 4 able-bodied men is out of work. The most volatile hot spots may be Jordan's refugee camps, home to 1.5 million Palestinians. In the Baqaa camp near Amman, a group of preteens at a sports center praised the King as "the best." At a cramped cafe down a garbage-strewn alleyway, however, angry young men gathered. "Half the people here don't have a job, have never had a job, and never will have a job," shouted a 23-year-old man calling himself Abu Sultan. "All this talk about change is crap."

As for democracy, Abdullah candidly admits uncertainty. "I don't have a blueprint for where it is going to go," he says. Some Jordanians are concerned that despite his promises, he will turn out to be another one-man show. "The question," says government critic Laith Shubeilat, "is whether the people will be given the mechanisms and freedom to affect their destiny." Palestinians complain that the system is still weighted in favor of Jordanians of Bedouin origin, at the expense of the Palestinians who make up some two-thirds of the population.

If Abdullah worries much about the future, he doesn't show it. "We want to be a Switzerland, or a Singapore, of the Middle East," he says while sipping a small glass of mint tea, his Queen nodding in agreement. "I want people in other Arab countries saying to their leaders, 'We want to be a Jordan.'" That may be setting the bar too high. But after a year of Abdullah on the throne, with all his surprises and disguises, at least one thing seems settled: Jordanians know who he is and have a sense of where he hopes to lead them.