FENCING WITH THE KING

A woman from Syracuse, New York, makes her first trip to Jordan with her immigrant father to celebrate King Hussein’s 60th birthday.

The 1995 monthlong birthday festivities are the government’s attempt to highlight Jordan’s influence in the region and Hussein’s peacemaking skills. Hafez Hamdan, a Yale-educated adviser to the king, has invited his younger brother, Gabe, who (like Abu-Jaber’s father) had been the king’s sparring partner years earlier, to participate in a fencing demonstration with the king. Gabe’s daughter, Amani, a recently divorced poet and professor, joins Gabe on the trip, her curiosity concerning her family history whetted after finding a scrap of poetry written and translated into English by her long-dead grandmother. Along the way she uncovers a dark family secret concerning a long-lost relative. Amani is the usual contemporary heroine of this somewhat contrived romantic melodrama: She starts as passive and insecure; then, through a series of plot manipulations and skillfully described adventures, particularly getting lost alone overnight in the desert, she discovers inner strength as well as the love of a courtly, handsome man who's half Muslim and half Jew. Inadvertently, Amani also upends Hafez’s private agenda for the Hamdan brothers’ reunion, plans motivated by a combination of greed, envy, simmering resentment, and genuine affection for his favorite niece. Hafez is a disturbing villain: a feminist, an intellectual, and a loyal aide to his king but also selfish, vengeful, anti-democratic. And perhaps murderous. The novel’s third, most complex protagonist is Jordan itself. Abu-Jaber focuses on the ruling-class Hamdan family—generous, striving, proud of their Bedouin and Orthodox Christian roots. Jordan’s poor are meagerly represented by stereotypically devoted servants and noble traditional Bedouins. Personifying Jordan, King Hussein is idealized as a grand-hearted optimist, a warrior for peace; but his government’s secret police allow no opposition, and corruption is the norm. While Abu-Jaber glories in Jordan’s beauty and culture, the shadows of poverty and authoritarianism are ever present.

A slightly overwrought family drama set against a fascinating backdrop of late-20th-century Middle Eastern politics.