WASHINGTON, 6 March 2004 — The house in suburban McLean, Va., is modern, tasteful and spacious, the river view lovely. Queen Noor strides into the kitchen wearing blue jeans and a sweater. She’s sophisticated but informal, very Town & Country.
She sips ginger tea at the kitchen table. At 52, she is striking: blond, slender and tall. She talks thoughtfully of being a widow and a single mother, of shepherding her kids through college, of her work, of trying to live a “normal’’ life.
Nothing here screams “royalty’’ — no tiaras, no bowing servants — except for the family pictures in the kitchen. For 21 years, Noor was King Hussein’s wife and Jordan’s unofficial ambassador to the world. It’s been five years since he died, leaving her with a title but no throne, a regal past but an uncertain future. The public Noor is a world-famous advocate for Palestinian rights, women’s and environmental issues, and peace in the Middle East. Her autobiography, “Leap of Faith,’’ is an international best seller. She commands $60,000 per speech on the lecture circuit. She dines with Nelson Mandela, consults with Kofi Annan, is serenaded by Sting.
She jets around the world, followed by cameras and gossip. Her homes, her four children, her dates are discussed in newspapers in Washington, New York, London and Amman. She is admired, envied and dissected in two different cultures.
Based in Washington, her hometown, she’s carefully crafting a complicated new life.
“I have been trying, and I admit very awkwardly, to try to strike a balance where I can live a normal, natural life here, where I don’t do anything here or in Jordan that I would not be comfortable with in either place,’’ she says. This is the inherent paradox of Noor: She’s between a crown and a hard place.
Noor became a media sensation the day she got married in 1978 at 26. She happily embraced the role of Hussein’s public partner but believed her private life should be off-limits. On her first royal visit to Washington, she was upset when reporters failed to ask substantive questions. “I hoped to be taken as a credible voice with serious matters to discuss,’’ she writes in her book.
Twenty-six years later, so much has changed — and so little. Noor has implemented ambitious plans to improve the economic, educational and cultural lives of Jordanians. Her Web site lists reams of charitable interests around the world: Refugees International, Landmine Survivors Network, Conservation International, The World Wildlife Fund. She makes 70 to 100 speeches and appearances annually. But she is also a queen, a title that overshadows everything else about her. (Jordan actually has two queens: Noor and Queen Rania, wife of King Abdullah.) “I’m always going to be instinctively a private person and also motivated to be a public servant,’’ she says. “So I’m always going to be trying to reconcile these two essential parts of me. Obviously, it works well sometimes and it can be somewhat awkward on other occasions. I’m learning my way slowly through all this.’’
For the past six months, she’s been in talks with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, looking for ways to use her experience in the Middle East in the areas of peace building, women’s rights and sustainable development.
“I’ll go in as a UN person, not as Queen Noor of Jordan,’’ she says. “It’s going to be interesting to see how it works, because as a Muslim and an Arab and given my history, I actually can be an effective advocate within Muslim and other communities. I’m trying to see if I can do that in my own right as a world citizen’’ rather than as an official representative of Jordan.
Washington philanthropist and friend Jim Kimsey, chairman of the International Commission on Missing Persons, has twice traveled with Noor to the Balkans, where they met with heads of states in an effort to open mass graves for DNA identification. Noor, he says, made a huge difference in persuading officials to allow access to the sites. He cites a meeting with former Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica in which the two men heatedly “traded some testosterone.’’ Noor, he says, deftly defused the tension.
Many predicted she would be the perfect person to bridge the cultural gap between Americans and the Arab world after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Her speeches plead for greater cooperation, understanding and compassion.
“She’s smart, she’s eloquent, she’s gracious, and very direct and sincere,’’ says James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute here. “Over the years, she developed a gravitas. When she spoke, she spoke like a leader.’’
“If she hadn’t become queen of Jordan, I think she’d have become a public policy wonk,’’ says Victoria Pope, who edited her book. “She loves that stuff. She’s really terribly serious.’’ But she’s a queen, and people come to look as much as to listen. Like any celebrity in politics, the messenger is as important as the message.
The former Lisa Halaby was the eldest child of Najeeb Halaby, a navy pilot of Syrian descent who had the top job at Pan Am and wealthy, influential friends all over the world — including King Hussein.
Noor grew up in privilege: Elite private schools, ski trips to Austria and Switzerland. In her book, Noor describes herself as a loner, bookish, happiest in serious conversations. By the time she entered Princeton University, where she graduated in 1974, classmates had labeled her snobbish and haughty.
But her reserved bearing was a natural fit for a queen, and she embraced her new life and her new name (as a wedding gift, Hussein renamed his fourth wife Noor Al-Hussein, or Light of Hussein).
She originally intended to stay in Jordan after Hussein’s death but has ended up spending most of her time here. Her children — Crown Prince Hamzah, 23, Prince Hashim, 22, Princess Iman, 20, and Princess Raiyah, 18 — attended schools in the United States and England. Noor’s ailing father and her sister lived here, and a family trust owned River House, Hussein’s 10-acre estate on the Potomac. (The property was sold in 2001 to Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder.)
