Queen Rania, a beauty battling for balance

By Roula Khalaf
Published: July 6 2001 19:09GMT

Queen Rania's chief of protocol greets me at the River Cafe and tells me she is stuck in the Hammersmith traffic. "If she knew her way around, she would get out and walk," he assures me.

When the grey Mercedes enters the driveway half an hour later, Jordan's tall, riveting beauty steps out. She apologises as we make our way to a table in a shady corner of the garden.

She seems in a hurry and suggests we order promptly. "I hope they have good desserts," she says - a surprising remark given her tiny waist. Only nine months ago, she gave birth to daughter Selma, her third child. "You lose weight quickly after the third child," she explains. "And I work out."

I stare at her - as do many around us - as she studies the menu. Her white Celine trouser suit and small diamond-studded earrings seem fit for smart royalty. But the camouflage top is the taste of a fashion-conscious 30-year-old. A few lines are visible under her huge brown eyes; the shiny eye-shadow is definitely superfluous.

Rania, brought up in a middle-class Palestinian family, has won sudden stardom as the youngest queen in the world.

"Being the youngest queen doesn't mean anything," she says, as she settles on a safe bet of mozzarella salad, grilled sea bass and sparkling mineral water. "Being young is temporary."

She maintains the same confident, no-nonsense style throughout the lunch, as she displays her two personalities - the queen who speaks seemingly well- rehearsed lines with a US accent and the more spontaneous working mother who attempts to juggle family life and a hectic job and peppers her talk with Arabic expressions.

As she nibbles on a piece of bread, she tells me that King Abdullah - "my husband," as she refers to him - took the children that morning to buy toys (she does not mention that he was due to meet British Prime Minister Tony Blair that day).

The rest of the family met her in London for a short break, following a trip to the US, where Rania attended the congressional launch of a bill providing $155m to the US Agency for International Development for microfinance projects around the world.

Her star status and interest in microfinance, the main activity of a foundation she runs, have turned her into the unofficial spokeswoman for the industry - a role the Business Administration graduate from the American University in Cairo seems keen to highlight.

"In a country like ours where we have unemployment, where we want people to be more self- reliant and not count on the government to create jobs for them, microfinance can be part of a solution," she says. "It's also excellent for women. The majority of borrowers in Jordan are women and they gain confidence, become in control of their lives."

There is, surprisingly, no hint of inexperience in her fast talk, even though she was thrust into the limelight in controversial and unexpected circumstances. The late King Hussein altered the course of the succession shortly before his death two years ago, removing his brother Hassan as crown prince and appointing Abdullah, his eldest son.

Also awkward was that her mother-in-law, the glamorous Noor, retained her title as queen - a move the late king insisted upon. "There is no tension between us," insists Rania, denying rumours of a family feud. "It's very normal to have gossip about this. People come and go into positions. I understand this and she understands this - and I'm not a jealous person."

Much of Rania's focus seems to be on helping push forward King Abdullah's agenda of modernising a desert kingdom with a struggling economy. She travels around the country to open new computer centres in schools - one of her husband's key projects. And, like him, she is often abroad.

But while the couple may be toasted in the west as a model of modern leadership in the Arab world, they are criticised at home for spending too much time away. Some people ask whether the royal family is more concerned with its international image than Jordan's problems.

"When people see me and King Abdullah, they see Jordan," says Rania. "In this global community we live in, if you don't have your agenda on the world scene, you don't get the attention." In fact, she adds, "if you ask me what I hate most about my job, I'd say it's the travelling. I'd love to stay in Jordan, with my three kids, in my house."

Perhaps because the king is untouchable, any disapproval of the royal couple has been targeted at Rania.

As we move on to the second course, I glance at her khaki handbag and ask how she feels when she is called the "handbag" queen in the fancy salons of Amman, the Jordanian capital.

"Of course I shop, every woman shops, and everything in my wardrobe I bought because I need to be involved in every aspect of my life," she says. "Labels will come and go, but the most important thing is not to feel victimised. It just comes with the territory."

It is easy to be a popular leader, she says. "But those who follow public opinion all the time sometimes make the weakest leaders."

Is this not a time when the monarchy in Jordan might want to make an effort to win popular approval for the sake of stability? Since the Palestinian uprising against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip erupted last year, neighbouring Jordan has faced concerns of a spillover.

Most of the kingdom's population is of Palestinian origin and it complains of discrimination in politics and public service. Jordan's 1994 peace treaty with Israel - never favoured by the local population - has become increasingly difficult to defend.

The government has appeared to raise tensions through a ban on anti-Israeli demonstrations and a brief decision last month to restrict access to Palestinians from the occupied territories.

"People have the right to express themselves but we've had enough demonstrations. The trouble with them is that they're not peaceful and they turn into non-productive situations," says Rania, toeing the official line. "And if you're in the UK and you see demonstrations in Jordan, the tourists won't go."

Jordan, she says, can only help the Palestinians in the territories if it is strong and stable.

While Rania's Palestinian origins were once thought an asset to the king, they have become controversial. During a soccer match last year, supporters of the Jordanian team called on the king to take a Jordanian wife.

Rania is unperturbed when the subject is brought up. "When I came, people started saying that I'll bring the two people together, but I think the fact that I'm married to the king means that the two people are already together.

"Now we have an uprising and people are using me as a symbol of what's going on. There will always be some people who will say I'm not Palestinian enough and others who will say I'm not Jordanian enough, no matter what I do."

As a chocolate cake with caramel ice-cream is placed before her - chocolate is "one of my major vices" - we talk about Tulkarm, the West Bank town her family comes from and where her grandmothers now live under Israeli economic blockades.

She has not been there recently.

An aide approaches to remind her she is due at another appointment. Half the cake is left on the plate when she rises to leave.

That evening, she was to attend the dinner of the Osteoporosis foundation of which she is the international patron. I learn later that it was the event where the Prince of Wales publicly kissed Camilla Parker Bowles for the first time. I am kissed, too - as she leaves, the queen places three kisses on my cheeks, as is the Arab tradition, and says she hopes we will keep in touch.


©FINANCIAL TIMES

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