Lisa Najeeb Halaby was born in 1951 to Najeeb and Doris Halabay in California. Growing up she spent a lot of time with her paternal grandmother. Her family moved to Washington in the early 1960s because her father had been created the directer of the FAA under President Kennedy. Later Najeeb became the second directer of PAN-AM and the family spent a lot of time traveling places because it was free. During this time Lisa went to a school that she did not like because it did not let her be who she wanted to be. She then transfered to another school that was more suited to her style and then went on to Prinston. Halfway through she took some time off to travel in the United States, but went back to get her masters in Urban Planning. After she graduated in the mid 1970s she went to Austrailia were she worked for a company based partly in the middle East. She was then transfered to the middle east and fell in love with it because of her middle-eastern decent. Because her father was the president of PAN-AM he knew famous people and during a tour of the middle east had Lis meet King Hussain of Jordan. Nothing happened at first, but several months later he invited her to his castle for lunch and to meet the children of his last wife that had died in a helicopture accident. They soon fell in love and got married. Lisa became a muslim and Hussain gave her the title of Queen Noor meaning light in Arabic. Noor and Hussain eventually added to his 8 children with four of their own. Their marriage was not perfect, they had many trials and hardships dealing with everything going on in the middle east at the time, but they were happy and they loved each other. Then in the mid to late 1990s Hussain found out that he had cancer. They tried to cure him, but in Febuary of 1999 he died. Noor was heartbroken, but things were to get worse. There was a power struggle between her and her step-son Abdullah because as his father's eldest male heir, he thought he should be King, but Noor wanted her eldest son Hamzah to be king. Eventually Adbullah became King. Noor now spends her time between Jordon, London and New York spending time with her children and her siblings as well as many chartiable organizations that she has in Jordon.
|
