Jordanians Confront Monarch’s Mortality : Mideast: After their king’s mostly temperate reign of 40 years, Hussein’s cancer surgery forces his subjects to question what the future holds.

AMMAN, Jordan —  First they wept for him. Then they prayed. And finally, millions gave offerings of thanks from the heart: larger-than-life portraits of ailing King Hussein, hand-painted and draped from bridges, hotels, office towers and shops; pledges to build mosques and schools in his name; thousands of banners proclaiming their monarch “a national treasure” and his recovery a miracle.

But some things were not visible during Jordanians’ spontaneous, extraordinary eruption of devotion to their leader earlier this month, an outpouring that appeared on the surface to be a manifestation of hope in a region better-known for civil wars and cynical dictators.

King Hussein himself was not on the scene; he was still recuperating in London from surgery he underwent earlier in the United States. And, of course, there was the meaning of this royal story.

For many in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan--this country’s full, official name--the demonstration for the monarch, who lost a kidney and had a blockage removed from his urinary tract due to cancer, signified grass-roots gratitude that the king still lives.

“It’s mind-boggling, really,” observed Mustafa Hamarneh, head of Jordan University’s independent Center for Strategic Studies. “Today, you just can’t find really genuine love, an outpouring of sympathy like this, anywhere outside Jordan. The unique thing that is taking place before us here today is that this is all grass-roots. There is no master plan behind it to package him or boost him. This is all in spite of the official media.”

But for Jordanian analysts, strategists and politicians--for Jordan’s friends and foes throughout the volatile Middle East--the real meaning of their countrymen’s demonstrations of gratitude is summed up in one phrase: succession to the throne.

The king’s need to undergo cancer surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., was, in the words of one diplomat, “an alarm bell for the entire Jordanian nation and the region,” a reminder that, after 40 years of largely temperate, benign rule, Hussein is, indeed, mortal. He himself reinforced that message, reminding reporters after his operation that all human beings “must pass on someday.”

Hamarneh, a committed leftist, explained it this way: “For most of us, the man has been with us since the beginning of life itself. We don’t know anybody else. And all of a sudden he has cancer. There’s a real phobia about cancer in our culture. . . . For most, well, it’s a final sort of thing.”

And the question that gnaws is, What next?

There is an heir apparent--the king’s brother, Crown Prince Hassan, the constitutional successor to Jordan’s throne. The Western-educated prince is widely respected for his intellect and administrative abilities; he has played a quiet, major role in implementing Hussein’s policies.

But the prince has won far less admiration than his older brother among Palestinians here, who represent more than half the population. The unspoken fear is that the prince will be unable to manage a post-Hussein crisis that could result in Jordan’s becoming a de facto Palestine.

“The prince is going to have problems whenever he takes over,” one Western expert here said. “He’s just not going to be as beloved as his brother. But everyone here wants a better life. Everyone, even the Palestinians, has a great economic stake in Jordan’s future. That will require stability, and the prince represents that stability.”

Jordanian strategists like Hamarneh see the prince’s biggest problem as being “the shadow syndrome. . . . The crown prince has a problem that I think every second man has in the shadow of a great and popular leader. Crown Prince Hassan is a very able man intellectually, and I don’t think people have a good idea of his capabilities simply because he is living in the shadow of his brother. . . . I think most of these concerns will disappear once he is in office.”

But for the moment, the concerns have deepened in the weeks since the king underwent surgery. The reason: timing.

The king’s illness could not have come at a more critical juncture for the Middle East and for Jordan, which has just begun to mend fences with its Arab neighbors and the United States. Those relations were ruptured when domestic pressures from Jordan’s volatile, pro-Iraqi Palestinian community prompted the king to speak out on behalf of the Baghdad regime during the Persian Gulf War.

Despite alienation Jordan suffered because of its Gulf War stance, the king has played an instrumental, behind-the-scenes role in recent months in helping guide the Arab-Israeli peace talks.

In meetings with American, British and other European officials during his recovery, the king has won praise not only for staunchly backing the peace process but also for his recent decision to crack down on an array of trade merchandise that had been crossing Jordan’s borders into Iraq in violation of the U.N. embargo against Baghdad.

Earlier, the king had told reporters at the Mayo Clinic that he could not believe that Iraq’s leaders could live and rule so comfortably while their people endured the worst effects of the U.N. sanctions. That view greatly pleased Saudi Arabia’s wealthy rulers, who have shunned the Jordanian monarch ever since he refused to join the U.S.-led coalition to free Kuwait.

That statement also led to a long meeting between the king and the Saudi ambassador to the United States, a session many analysts believe will lead the way to restoration of vital economic ties between financially strapped Jordan and its wealthy Gulf neighbors.

But that glimmer of rapprochement between King Hussein and his neighbors is among the few silver linings in Jordan’s royal trauma, and one that, in the end, serves merely to remind so many here of the vulnerability of a kingdom that relies so heavily on its ruler.

In the atmosphere of Jordan’s nascent democracy, however, openly expressing and debating such concerns is still considered virtually taboo beyond the private drawing rooms and back-yard barbecues of Amman’s powerful intellectual elite.