Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [65]
The funeral was the next day, on February 8, 1999. It was an overcast day and a light rain began to fall. People said that even the sky was crying for King Hussein. Most Jordanians had known no other king, so for the country his death was intensely personal, more like losing a member of their family than a head of state. Hundreds of thousands of distraught mourners lined the streets as an armored car carried his coffin, surrounded by flowers and covered by the Jordanian flag, to Raghadan Palace, his final resting place. As the car passed by, people surged forward, sobbing and wailing, trying vainly to seize a last glimpse of my father or to touch his coffin. The car was followed by an honor guard and a man leading my father’s favorite white horse. Out of respect for my father, the horse, named Amr, would never be ridden again.
In the palace grounds an extraordinary collection of world leaders had come to pay their respects. Dubbed the “funeral of the century” by one observer, it brought together perhaps one of the most disparate groups of world leaders ever assembled. Some of the mourners were at war with each other, and one or two had even tried to kill each other in the past. But they were all united by their shared respect and admiration for my father. President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and President Hafez al-Assad of Syria had come, joined by Crown Prince Mohammed of Morocco, President Yasser Arafat, and Saif al-Islam, the son of the Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi. There were President Clinton and three former U.S. presidents, George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford. Russian president Boris Yeltsin was there, as were Prince Charles and the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had come, as had Khaled Meshaal, a leader of Hamas, whom Netanyahu had tried to assassinate the year before. In all, representatives of some seventy-five countries came to Amman to honor my father. Inside the palace, my father lay in state, watched over by the Royal Guard. The Circassians, a Muslim people from the Caucasus who immigrated to Amman in the nineteenth century, provide the Royal Guard for Jordan’s kings. They had served my father loyally for many years. Now they stood by him as he took his final journey.
My brothers and I carried my father’s coffin from the Royal Guards Mosque to his grave in the palace burial ground, next to the graves of his father, King Talal, and his grandfather, King Abdullah I. My brothers and I stood at attention while a trumpeter played the last post. The Royal Guard fired a fifteen-gun salute as my father was lowered to his final resting place.
Although it was a day of great sadness, Jordanians felt a sense of pride that the whole world had come to pay its respects to their king. There was also a sense of determination as many realized that they needed to be strong to keep the country together. Many Jordanians fondly referred to their king as Abu Abdullah, “father of Abdullah,” as is common in the Arab world. In the weeks and months to come, I would benefit more times than I could count from Jordanians’ love for my father and from their determination to help his son succeed.
After the funeral I headed to Parliament, to be sworn in as king. I had asked the chief of protocol to get a portrait of my father for the ceremony. As I walked in, I saw a huge picture of my father on the podium, dominating the room. I stood to attention. I felt his kind gaze looking down on me, and my eyes began to mist. Struggling to keep control, I stood motionless for several seconds,