What was going on when I was born?

IN less difficult economic times Rick and Nurit Amdur would be settling into their new, larger apartment about now, someplace where their 13-month-old son, Ariel, could romp and where there would be a modicum of privacy for Mom and Dad. The Amdurs, who are in the importing business, rented their two-bedroom apartment in the East 80's five years ago, expecting to move when a child came along. Like many couples in their situation, they assumed that if they continued to progress in their careers and managed to put some money aside, a move would be the next logical step. ''With what has happened to the money situation now it just doesn't make sense for us to move,'' Mrs. Amdur said. ''If you have something saved and it is working for you in investments or whatever, you hate to take it out. And if you have to borrow money at 18 percent, it can really hurt your cash flow to a point where you couldn't do anything else for a year or more.'' Instead of moving, the Amdurs decided before the baby was born to use some of their savings to make their 1,000-square-foot apartment more space-efficient. They spent $3,000 enclosing an outdoor terrace with glass, effectively adding another room. They plan to install small desk units in their large bedroom to make up for the office space that has become their child's room.

President Reagan has written a letter to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia asking for help in finding an Arab haven for the 6,000 fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organization now in west Beirut, Administration officials said today. Mr. Reagan was understood to have urged that Syria be asked to take most of the soldiers and that other Arab countries take the rest. Administration officials said the main stumbling block to resolving the crisis in Beirut was finding an Arab country willing to accept the forces. The officials said the United States, which had been involved in the Beirut negotiations through a special envoy, Philip C. Habib, believed that it was up to the Arab states themselves to decide where the Palestinian troops should go.

The New York State Court of Appeals refused yesterday to block the transfer of 1,000 convicts to the newly converted prison facility at the Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in West Brentwood, L.I. The first four busloads of prisoners from the Queensboro Correctional Facility in Long Island City arrived less than three hours after the court's ruling was issued at 3:30 P.M. The transfer is part of a plan to shift inmates to newly built cellblocks in vacant buildings at four state mental institutions and thus relieve overcrowding in the state's existing prisons. Officials of the State Department of Correctional Services had delayed the transfer while Judge Bernard S. Meyer, an associate judge on the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, held a hearing in Manhattan. The judges then conferred by telephone and later issued their 6-to-0 ruling from Albany. Judge Hugh R. Jones did not participate.

New car sales by the Big Three auto makers fell 14.8 percent in the July 1-10 period, the companies reported. G.M.'s sales were down 18.9 percent, Chrysler's 15.9 percent, and Ford's 3.7 percent. It was the third consecutive period in which sales levels were below those of a year earlier. Analysts cited a lack of buyer incentives. (Page D1.) A new supplementary appropriations bill was approved by Senate and House conferees. There were no assurances from the White House, however, that the $5.5 billion measure would not be vetoed as inflationary, as its two predecessors were. (A1.)

New York City's decision this week to halt negotiations with one of the companies seeking a cable television franchise underscores the fact that politics continue to pervade the franchising process. At the same time, the factors that led to the decision suggest that the once boundless optimism about the profitability of cable television's future is giving way to more sober assessments about the costs of wiring such cities as New York. In a letter made public this week, the city told the Cablevision Systems New York City Corporation that, because no agreement had been reached with the company after more than six months of talks, the city would instead seek to get the five other companies seeking franchises to agree on a formula for wiring the areas originally assigned to Cablevision. In a sense, Cablevision has become the victim of its own political strategy. Because cable franchises are deemed so valuable and the fights to win them are so competitive, many companies have proved willing to submit bids to cities that make more political than economic sense.

On the beaches here and along the boardwalks that link nearly a dozen small villages on the west end of Fire Island, the main concern this summer is not the beach erosion, but something residents fear is more threatening to their way of life - rising taxes. Residents recently got word from the Town of Islip, which encompasses more than a dozen Fire Island communities, that their properties had been reassessed - in some cases to an amount 30 times their current valuation. ''It was all so sudden and done in a way that has outraged the community,'' said Norma M. Ervin, president of the Fire Island Association, a property owners' group. ''We know real estate values have gone up around here, but not by that much,'' she said, noting that her own oceanfront property in Saltaire had been reassessed from $86,000 to $250,000. ''We feel we are being singled out by the Town of Islip, and getting next to nothing in return.''

New car sales by the nation's Big Three auto makers fell 14.8 percent in the July 1-10 period, the companies reported today. Early July marks the third consecutive period in which sales levels were below those of a year earlier. Analysts attribute the lag to the lack of consumer incentives, which had been in effect in May. The first 10 days of June showed only a marginal gain, eight-tenths of one percent.

A high-yielding, fast-selling new form of life insurance, whose appeal was jeopardized by an Internal Revenue Service ruling last month, is expected to recover most of its allure as a result of provisions being written into new tax legislation. The Senate Finance Committee, headed by Senator Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, is expected to report the final wording of the bill on Thursday. The measure is ''very favorable'' for most forms of universal life insurance, said David S. Carpenter, president of the Transamerica Occidental Life Insurance Company. Transamerica, with headquarters in Los Angeles, is a leading seller of the so-called universal policies.

American officials reported today that Iranian troops had penetrated 6 to 10 miles into Iraq in what they described as the initial phase of an invasion. Defense Department officials said Iranian armored units began the offensive by attacking southern Iraqi border positions Tuesday night and appeared to be driving toward Basra, Iraq's second largest city, 14 miles west of the border. The invading forces appeared to be east-northeast of the city. Iran said they were nine miles from Basra. Iraq said its forces had halted the drive at a point six miles inside the country.

This resource-rich province on the high plains of western Canada harbors a long political tradition of fierce independence, marked by periodic eruptions of grass-roots radicalism. But the energy program introduced in 1980 by the Liberal national Government of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau has sparked particular ire. While acknowledging that the persistent worldwide abundance of oil is one factor in depressing oil, gas and synthetic fuel development in his province, Premier Peter Lougheed of Alberta, a Conservative, charges that the federal plan has exacerbated these problems. He points to the slowdown or abandonment of the efforts to develop synthetic fuels in his province, the evaporation of large amounts of capital and the movement of Canadian drilling rigs south of the border to a warmer political climate. Last year, Mr. Lougheed waged a prickly war of nerves with Ottawa over features of the plan that his constituency considered particularly objectionable, and won some concessions. But the anger in Alberta has not passed. In February, Albertans elected to their provincial Legislature the first western Canadian dedicated to separation from Canada.

In a continuing effort to block the illegal export of strategic high-technology equipment to Communist countries, the United States Commissioner of Customs said he has seized $400,000 worth of American-made computers in West Germany that were believed to be en route to the Soviet Union. But the head of the Toronto company that purchased and exported the equipment denied in a telephone interview today that the computers were destined for the Soviet Union or that they were strategically important. ''That's incorrect,'' Glen Langdon, the president of MLPI Business Systems Inc. of Canada, said of the computers' alleged destination. Mr. Langdon also said that the computers have ''been on the market since 1975'' and were ''as significant strategically as sending over a Dodge Dart.''

The Federal Government declared today that the neighborhood surrounding the Love Canal was now safe enough to live in. At least 21,800 tons of chemical wastes were dumped into the canal in the 1940's and 1950's. The announcement was made by the Federal Public Health Service. It based its finding on a long-awaited study by the Environmental Protection Agency that was released here today. The determination by the Federal authorities covered the area a block and a half or more away from the canal. ''We're saying that the area is habitable,'' said Dr. Clark W. Heath of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.