Amman Just Another Quiet Town as Gulf Crisis Recedes : Jordan: Most Asian refugees have departed. Saddamania cools. Despair over the economy lessens.

A month ago, the Biggest Show in the Middle East was playing Amman, with high-wire drama and eye-catching color filling every inch of the tent:

In Ring No. 1, the tragic spectacle of tens of thousands of Asian refugees from Kuwait and Iraq, swarming for food and shelter in pitiful camps on the Jordanian desert.

In Ring 2, Saddamania, the magical explosion of popular support for the Iraqi president. Saddam Hussein seemed to look out on Jordan from every shop window and utility pole, a face in the hall of mirrors.

And in the center ring, the grand finale, announced with fanfare by the government of Jordan, the economy of a modern state disappearing before the very eyes of the audience.

That was then. Last weekend, the first rains of winter ran through the streets and gullies of this hilly capital of white-rock homes. On the crowded streets dipping past the old mosque in the sunken center of the city, hundreds of taxis trolled for leg-weary shoppers. Not one carried a poster of the Iraqi president on its rear windshield.

The season was changing, and the Big Show was gone.

Amman, always quiet for a population of 830,000, has returned to its leisurely, small-town pace. The Persian Gulf crisis still touches the city, and many of the problems and some of the passion remain, but the spotlight has passed.

The Hotel Jordan Intercontinental, packed to the rafters with foreign journalists a month ago, has shut two of its three restaurants for renovations. In the last, on the rooftop, a Jordanian blonde sings “La Cucaracha” to Japanese television crews.

The Information Ministry calls reporters, pushing interviews with government officials who could not be reached in late September or early October.

A month ago, arrival at Amman’s Queen Alia International Airport was like a descent into Bombay or Dhaka: Thousands of Asian refugees, women of the subcontinent in exotic saris , filled every corner of the terminals.

Waiting for check-in with their life’s belongings in cheap suitcases and cardboard boxes, curled in sleep on chairs and lounges, washing their feet in restroom sinks--all the indignities of the refugee trail were borne with resignation and, sometimes, airport humor.

More than 100,000 Asians have left the Middle East through Jordan since the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, uprooting through force and fear a way of life dependent on imported labor. But the transit camps that once held tens of thousands, sometimes for weeks, now average between 200 and 400, and refugees rarely stay for more than 24 hours.

An encampment of Bangladeshis on the airport road--formerly rows of canvas and blue plastic tents and rudimentary showers and toilets just feet from the traffic lanes--is nearly vacant. Just a few families are waiting to arrange passage home. In the city, near the U.S. Embassy, the little sari-sari businesses of Filipino refugees--some soap, combs and barrettes for sale on a towel spread on the sidewalk--are gone, along with their operators.

About a mile away, at the Iraqi Embassy, functionaries no longer dodge through the steel office door with arms full of posters of their president to distribute. A Jordanian official said his government had nothing to do with the posters’ disappearance.

In conversation, most Jordanians, particularly the Palestinians, still support the Baghdad government, and both the Arab- and English-language editorialists bash away at Washington and London. But the hoopla of the pro-Iraqi movement--the organized aspect, anyway--has cooled with the climate. No major demonstrations have been staged for at least two weeks.

The passion of the Palestinian community, diplomats note, was distracted by the more personal issue of the deaths of 20 Palestinians in Jerusalem on Oct. 8 and the violence that has followed.

Jordan’s King Hussein, meanwhile, steers a middle course and remains an icon of stability. Only two things could threaten his rule, one diplomat said: a complete collapse of the economy or, politically, “if he makes a U-turn in heavy traffic”--meaning to go sharply against Iraq.

And although the economic numbers remain dismal, even the economy seems less a topic of despair now that the initial shock has been psychologically absorbed.

Despite the popular tilt to Iraq in the Persian Gulf crisis, King Hussein’s government closed the doors to Baghdad, its No. 1 trading partner. Two weeks ago the last operation defying the U.N. embargo--voluntary shipments of food and medicine from political sympathizers--was shut down.

American officials asked about the continued movement of Jordanian trucks into Iraq and were granted a look inside. They confirmed the Jordanian account: The trucks, suspicious because they were refrigerated, were crossing the border empty and returning with the household furnishings of Jordanian and Palestinian refugees.

But no Jordanian trucks are crossing the Saudi border. Other reasons were given, but Saudi pique at the Jordanian position on the political crisis has caused closure of the border to the once-profitable trade in fruit and vegetables for the oil countries of the Persian Gulf.

And the Riyadh government has yet to resume pumping oil to Jordan, cut off in a politically colored contract squabble in late September. (Jordan receives most of its oil from Iraq, in an internationally accepted exception to the embargo.)

This week Swissair, Austrian Airlines and Alitalia, the Italian carrier, ended their service to Amman. The general drop in tourism in the troubled Middle East was blamed, and service cancellations are likely to accentuate the problem.