Good King Ab

TRANSJORDAN

From Amman's rooftops, watching women sang out with joy, their shrill voices sounding like the collective cooing of a thousand pigeons. In the crowded streets, the people yelled: "Yaish el Malek--Long live the King!" Abdullah Ibn Hussein, direct descendant of the Prophet, also known to his good British friends as "The Ab," had just been proclaimed monarch over the 30,000 square miles of lava and desert reaches and over the 300,000 souls of Trans-Jordan,

Calmest man in the kingdom was the new ruler himself. In an unadorned chamber of his hilltop palace he settled down on his throne--a raised, overstuffed armchair. The tough, aging (64) little man wore a simple black silk abbaya (flowing robe) with a gleaming white shirtfront, a white and gold headdress, and the gold chain which in Arab countries takes the place of a crown. Near him were his two sons and his kinsman Abdul Ilah, Regent of Iraq (which Abdullah dreams of drawing into a Greater Syria federation).

No emissaries came from Arabia's Ibn Saud (the new King's old enemy) nor from the Soviet Union (which regards the new British-sponsored state with suspicion). Abdullah I made a polite speech from the throne, carefully avoiding most of the Middle East's hottest issues, whereupon the court and guests proceeded to Marka airfield to review Trans-Jordan's British-trained Arab Legion. Its leader, Glubb Pasha (occidental title: Brigadier John Bagot Glubb, D.S.O., O.B.E.) stood next to His Majesty on the sun-scathed reviewing stand, picturesquely martial in a spiked helmet, with a long sword by his side. After the two-hour parade, everybody had lunch (main course: 56 whole roast sheep), while Trans-Jordan's masses launched on a three-day fete involving much shooting, soothsaying, and the consumption of vast quantities of stuffed peppers with soda pop.

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