Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [47]
“He is a very charismatic man,” I replied. The general whipped out his notepad and, pencil at the ready, asked, “What do you mean by ‘charismatic’?”
I leaned over to my protocol officer, Faisal, and quietly said, “See if you can get us on an earlier flight.”
Faisal had us on a flight leaving early the next morning, and after writing a formal letter of thanks to the Great Leader for his hospitality, I headed to bed. At about 4:30 a.m. there was another knock at my door and Faisal appeared with a look of astonishment on his face, saying, “You’re not going to believe this . . .”
Waiting for me in the guest room were the same twenty generals, accompanied by a steaming pot of traditional sweet-and-sour North Korean soup. Apparently they were serious about having me try it before I left. I took a sip and said, “It’s very good.” One of the generals looked at me and said, “What do you mean by ‘very good’?” as the rest of the group raised their notepads.
We made it onto our flight that morning without any further delays and headed to Russia for the final leg of our trip. We flew on a Russian-made airplane that was similar to a TriStar, and a couple of hours into the flight I happened to look up at the cockpit. The crew were sitting on the floor playing cards and the copilot was asleep with his feet up on the dashboard. They carried on like this for most of the fourteen-hour flight. After experiencing the best of Pyongyang’s hospitality, Moscow felt almost like home, and I was happy to meet friends from the Russian army who were at the airport to receive me.
In June 1994, shortly after Rania and I moved into our new house, our first child, a boy, was born. We named him Hussein, in honor of my father. In Arab culture, when a man has a son, close friends and relatives often stop calling him by his own name and refer to him as the father of his son. So many people began to refer to me as “Abu Hussein,” which means “Father of Hussein.” It is hard to express how proud I was—and still am—to hear that phrase.
Not long after that, Rania left the Jordan Export Development and Commercial Centers Corporation (now Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation), where she had worked since 1993, to set up the Jordan River Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to tackling tough social issues. She decided to focus on speaking out against child abuse, which is a taboo subject in much of the Arab world, and on empowering Jordanian women by encouraging entrepreneurship. Some of the foundation’s first projects sponsored training, offered funding for craftmaking programs, and helped teach women how to set up new businesses. Once a woman starts to bring in money, she is empowered in the household, because she is also a breadwinner. If her husband wants to try to keep her down, she can demand respect by pointing out that she is contributing to the family finances. So opportunities for women to work or become entrepreneurs can have a sizable social impact.
My father was very supportive of Rania’s work. He had encouraged Jordanian women to enter professions typically regarded as male bastions, and had even sponsored women’s motor-racing teams. On his recommendation, Royal Jordanian was the first airline in the Middle East to have female pilots.
A few months before Rania began setting up her foundation, I became commander of Special Forces. I had been promoted to colonel in late January 1993 and had finally managed to persuade the army’s senior brass that I was there to stay. We trained hard, aware of the many enemies threatening Jordan, including terrorist fighters returning from the wars