Leap of Faith, by Queen Noor
$4.72 at the Parkville Bookworm
I love exotic things, as evidenced by my love of Thai and Indian food and chai, oolong, and green tea, the fact that I like reading books set in far-flung countries, and that I like trying new things. (I was the first of my friends to try Thai food and samosas, and some of them have never eaten sushi, despite the fact that it's popular now.)
This love of exotic things is what drew me to Leap of Faith, the memoir of the American-born queen of a middle Eastern country, Jordan's Queen Noor. In her book, she talks a lot about her courtship with, and marriage to, the late King Hussein, but she also discusses Jordan, its relationship with the world, her life before she met the King and was just Lisa Halaby, all-American girl, and the recent history of the Middle East.
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From the beginning, I was captivated by Queen Noor's descriptions of Jordanian landscape, particularly in the country's pre-oil-boom days. She made it sound wondrous, and there was an exotic, magical quality to her description of her first impression of Jordan, what with "the serene expanse of desert landscape washed golden" at sunset and the "almost mystical sense of peace" she talks about on page two. In a later paragraph on the same page, there's mention of oranges, bananas, and other fresh fruit being sold along the road through lush fields, sheep grazing in fields, and how families picnic on the shores of the Dead Sea. The talk of exoticness early on set high expectations for me. As the book drew on, the descriptions of Jordanian landscape were less frequent, but Queen Noor still talked about life as the queen of a Middle Eastern monarchy, which still had the appeal of being exotic to me, since I've never met royalty, nor do I expect to anytime soon.
One interesting thing to note: most people think that royalty live opulent lifestyles. While this may be true for some modern monarchies, King Hussein and Queen Noor preferred a simpler lifestyle.
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Overall, I liked the book. The exoticness of a book set in a small Middle Eastern country and written by an American-born queen charmed me, and Queen Noor's style of writing appealed to me.
My favorite scene in the book was when Queen Noor asked her Jordanian nanny to fetch her camera, but the nanny, having misheard her, instead returned with a camel, and the children spent the afternoon taking camel rides.