At Home with Muhammad Ali

by Hana Ali

  With the strength and clarity of the voice with which he had once spoken, my father looked up at him and said, “What makes you think I can’t talk, man?”

  No one goes through life without hardships. Sometimes they are out of our control. But we can decide how we will react to them. My father looked for the deeper meaning in things, and in the end, he grew from life’s lesson. As he always said, “The man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”

  Over the years, a lot changed for my father. His speech and motor skills became a shadow of what they once were, but his indomitable spirit remained utterly intact.

  Dad standing on Jack Johnson’s rock at Fighters’ Heaven.

  © Jean Kilroy

  37

  I lay in bed for a while, thinking about everything and staring at a photograph taken on the steps of Fremont Place—before the divorce. It’s one of the few photos I have of myself sitting in my mother’s lap, with Laila on my father’s. It was usually the other way around. For years, the image made me sad—it served as a painful reminder of all that was lost. Now, it sits on my dresser beside another photograph, taken the year after my parents’ divorce: the four of us—Mom, Dad, Laila, and I—are snuggled together in the doorframe of our new house.

  My mind traveled back to weekend afternoons, when Dad would say, “Let’s go cruising, Hana.”

  Mom, not wanting to mess up her freshly rolled hair, stayed home with Laila as my father and I drove up Crenshaw Boulevard in the convertible like Bonnie and Clyde—the sun beaming down on my smiling face. He bought the bean pies packed in pink boxes from the Muslim men who stood on the corners dressed in bow ties and suits. He always overpaid.

  “Thanks, Champ! You’re lookin’ good!”

  “Thank you, brother!” he’d say, holding up his victory fist as the light turned green and we drove away. As we cruised the streets, people spotted him and tooted their horns and shouted in excitement: “Look, there goes Muhammad Ali!”

  “You’ll always be ‘The Greatest,’ Champ!”

  Another victory fist went up.

  Once, a tour bus was passing by and a passenger spotted Dad as we were waiting at the light. He motioned for the driver to pull over. He did, and my father signed countless autographs and performed his disappearing thumb trick.

  Then, on our way home, he would let me sit on his lap and pretend I was driving.

  The memories will always shine.

  I looked at the picture again. Photographs are beautiful things. They provide another way to feel, touch, love, and remember. They take an instant out of time and alter life by holding it still. A fleeting moment is captured and preserved—frozen in a place where it will live forever. When I look at both photographs of us now, before and after the divorce, I realize that, somewhere in time, we will always be a family.

  * * *

  “Hana, Laila,” Dad said on an old tape recording. “Come give Mommy a kiss goodbye . . . Where are you going, Veronica?”

  “To the dentist to get my two front teeth fixed.”

  “I want to go with you, Mommy.”

  “Laila, stay home with Daddy and Hana. I’ll be back.”

  “What’s wrong with your teeth, Veronica?”

  “They died.”

  “How did they die?”

  “I got hit in the mouth with a baseball in the second grade.”

  His voice softened. “You did?”

  “Uh-huh. I’m going to make you an appointment while I’m there,” she said, heading toward the door. “To get your teeth cleaned.”

  “Okay . . .”

  Suddenly, a memory stirred and shifted.

  I wondered if my father wrote those letters to my mother because of what not writing one had once cost him. Gene Kilroy, my father’s old business manager and lifelong friend, told me about a girl Dad had had a crush on when he was a teenager. “It was when he flew to Rome, for the Olympics. He went over there and never wrote to her. By the time he got back, she had a new boyfriend.”

  He never wrote to the girl because he didn’t know how to spell “Louisville” and was too embarrassed to ask anyone in the Olympic Village. When he got home, he went to her house and found her sitting on the front porch with another boy.

  “I’m sorry, Cassius,” she said. “I thought you lost interest because you never wrote me.”

  The relationship was too new to be love, but I’m sure my father remembered the feeling of losing what might have been.

  Maybe he wrote so many letters to my mother because he didn’t want to make the same mistake twice.

  At last, after all the interviews, recordings, and newspaper articles, I finally opened the envelope containing my father’s letters to my mother. I flipped through the pages, reading the various titles: “Let’s Try Again,” “Our Melody of Love,” “Veronica, It’s Never Too Late,” “Veronica, Princess of Enchantment,” “Dear Veronica, Love Always,” “To My Veronica,” “When It’s Over” . . . Some of the pages weren’t dated or titled. They opened without an introduction:

  I’ve been so many places and I’ve seen so many faces

  until I felt lost in between places.

  After all the love in my life,

  after all the pains in my life,

  I think you are going to remain my wife.

  Where have you been, my love?

  Where have you been, my dove . . .?

  I’ve been searching so long for happiness;

  somehow, I’ve never found tenderness . . .

  Now you’ve become my sunshine . . .

  Yes, my love, we are one heart . . .

  we both knew from the start.

  I read one of his poems next:

  You are admired for many reasons,

  for you are a pearl of wisdom that keeps its beauty in all seasons.

  Your smile is beautiful and priceless . . .

  Even your eyes sparkle like a star . . .

  Veronica, my Princess of Enchantment, you are rare.

  Today your golden glow shows you care . . .

  So please, Veronica, let’s laugh together without hesitation,

  this will bring about a beautiful sensation . . .

  As I read the next one, I laughed out loud; it was a nice feeling for a change. Most of his letters made me cry:

  I have found that you have the disposition of an angel.

  The way you get around every day, you have the endurance of a camel.

  From the first day that I saw you, I saw the tenderness of a shepherd.

  You have always had the devotion of a true mother.

  The way you always see things, you have the vision of an eagle.

  You are a peaceful person and you have the gentleness of a sheep.

  Every day you show the industry of a beaver

  and the harmlessness of a dove,

  while also the wisdom of an owl.

  All this is why I love you so much.

  When I had finished reading the last letter, I put them back into the manila envelope they’d been stored in. Dad had tried everything to win Mom back: poetry, pleading, reasoning. And, in the end, he had even tried letting go:

  When It’s Over

  Veronica, our love has now come to its end simply because we are only friends. Now that our love has ceased to exist, let’s try to find another means to persist. We were very good for each other; now we are somewhat like a sister and a brother. However, things can never be the same since we have disobeyed the rules of the game. For every move, we make the new year, I want you to give me your ear. For us I pray that it’s not really over, my dear.

  It was said to me one time that life is something like a dime, for it’s never easy to understand how heartaches and despair can take command. However, we both will move further on to new adventures waiting down the line, and perhaps we will find happiness behind with the shadow of Zaire in our mind. But looking back is not the way, for that time has faded with yesterday, th
ere’s so much to do today, and unpleasant times will just drift away.

  Love, Muhammad

  January 8, 1983

  I remember sliding down the mahogany stairs on the cardboard boxes that my mother was using to pack the house. Unaware of what they were for, what they symbolized, I had the time of my life soaring down those steps. I would soon discover our days living together as a family were coming to an end.

  Dad would visit us at our new house all the time before marrying Lonnie and moving to Michigan. My mom would make him lunch and coffee, and we’d spend the day together doing nothing special, just hanging out and talking. Then, when it was time for him to leave, I would hug him with all of my might. After he walked out the door, Laila carried on with what she was doing. But I stood in the doorway—with my head pressed against the glass, watching him with tears in my eyes, as he slowly walked back down the driveway, got into his car, and drove away.

  I’d been worrying about my father since I was about five or six years old. Now I was worrying that he was lonely. I worried that he didn’t have food to eat. I worried that he might lose his keys and have to sleep outside. Eventually, I figured that worrying about my father was just a side effect of being his daughter.

  There’s not much I can share about that time. The pain was so overwhelming, I’ve blocked much of it from my memory. Like most children, my world was a safe haven, centered around my parents, perfectly formed and protected. A bubble that would never pop. Then one afternoon after school someone asked me how I felt about my parents getting divorced. After that, the bubble exploded and everything went blank.

  I don’t remember begging my mother to give my father another chance, or promising to be a good little girl. I can’t recall the last night I spent in my bed, or moving to our new house. I don’t remember the last time I saw Fremont Place, or saying goodbye to my father. From that moment after school, my first clear memory is staring out the window from the living room of our new house, watching my father walk up the driveway to visit us.

  “When I married your father, I thought we’d be together for life. Then things gradually changed . . . I was not planning on divorcing him, but I went from knowing to not knowing for sure if it would last forever.”

  He was standing in the foyer of the Fremont Place house when she’d told him—at the bottom of the stairs next to the grandfather clock. There was a small door in the middle of the clock that I used to hide behind when playing hide-and-seek with my father. At five years old, I’d stick my head in the small opening of the clock, thinking I had found the perfect hiding place—unaware my rear end was poking out like a sore thumb in my red pajamas. Dad always pretended not to see me.

  “I want a divorce,” she’d said.

  He said nothing. Tears welled in his eyes as he stood there. He had known this was coming. They’d been distant for a while, but his fears had become reality when she said it out loud. He stood there motionless, the tears that had been awaiting their release streaming slowly down his face.

  “I felt bad,” Mom said. “He walked through the house after I told him, crying out loud.”

  They had spoken to a marriage counselor for four hours the year before. It was a lost cause, probably did more harm than good.

  “I can see why you want a divorce,” the counselor said to my mother. Hearing my father’s views about a woman’s role in a marriage bolstered the case against him. But they were just that—views. He couldn’t enforce them and he never tried to.

  I wonder if Mom told the counselor how much time she spent at the equestrian center, riding her horses Midnight Missy and Sterling around the tracks for ribbons. Running little errands in the day or practicing opera in her bedroom. How she ate her meals alone, and hired cooks and governesses to take care of us, even when she was at home. I wonder if she told him it wasn’t entirely my father’s fault—that she, too, was to blame. That she could have done more, tried harder, made it her priority to be a family again. Couldn’t she? Knowing Mom, she confessed nothing. In her eyes, it was all my father’s doing. But one of his letters told a different story.

  To My Veronica

  We need today a little more tolerance with each other. We cannot seem to meet on the same ground. I like it when you call me or buzz me before you leave home early in the morning because I may want to tell you something or hug you good-bye or whatever. Us being so different, having such different capacities, states of inhibitions, and tasks in our everyday life . . . If Muhammad and Veronica had no tolerance, no desire to keep forgiving, we could never bring harmony into our soul. For you and I live in a world that is not easy and every day demands a victory.

  I write to you because you never have much time for me. You are moving at all times. If we don’t slow down and talk more, the germs of our actions will spread and bring greater calamities.

  In both of us our being is good. Our lack of religion has created a strange way of family life. We, meaning us and the two girls, never pray together. They say the family who prays together stays together. Now I see that as true. We never worship God together. We never go out together for nothing, not even ice cream for the girls. We never eat any of the three meals together. All these things about natural life our girls will never know when they have children.

  We need to find out in what way happiness can be brought about and, in this way, we can realize the peace which is the longing of our soul, and we can impart it to Hana and Laila, thereby attaining our goal, which is the happiness and peace in our lives.

  Muhammad Ali

  Me squeezing Dad’s arm as he visits us two years after the divorce.

  As I said, in the months after the divorce, Dad visited us at our new house often, as he’d promised he would. After he married Lonnie and moved to Michigan, she would pick us up when they were in town while Dad waited in the hotel. Over the years, in between visits, he called us regularly and sent letters and little notes in the mail.

  February 23, 1990

  Dear Hana and Laila,

  I miss you all so much. I pray to Allah all the time. I pray five times a day. I pray that He will help and guide you to the right way of life. One day soon I will see you all. I love you. I hope and pray that I will see you soon. I want you to send me a picture. I will go now. Hope to see you soon.

  From your father,

  Muhammad Ali

  P.S. Serve Allah; He is the Goal.

  I used to save my father’s telephone messages on our answering service. I’d listen to them repeatedly. I remembered calling him on the intercom from the telephone in my bedroom every morning at Fremont Place. I’d get a kick out of the fact that I could talk to him on the phone, then run down to his office right after and he’d be there, sitting behind his desk.

  Listening to his messages on the phone at our new house made me sad. I couldn’t run down the steps anymore and jump into his arms. There was a whole ocean between us now. But then there were the messages that made me smile—of him making snarling and howling sounds, pretending to be a monster. Before hanging up, he always told us how much he loved us.

  Knowing my father, I think he was afraid we would forget him, as if that were possible. I remember calling him one afternoon when I was around twelve years old, after I got home from my tennis lessons. I wanted to tell him my mother was getting remarried.

  “Is he as pretty as me?” he asked, half joking.

  “No,” I said. Which was the truth. Dad chuckled and asked how school was and if I thought any of the boys were cute. As I told him about my latest crush, he softly interrupted.

  “Are you going to call him ‘daddy’?”

  “Never,” I said. “You’re my only daddy and always will be.”

  He got off the phone happy.

  A couple months later I got into a fight at school. It was a rainy day, and I was named as the safety monitor during recess and lunch. My job was to report students who were misusing the playground equipment. A fourth grader was throwing balls at one of the other students,
so I reported the incident. After school, the girl walked up to me just as our new governess, Haley, was arriving to pick Laila and me up. It had just started to rain, so Haley was holding an umbrella.

  “Hey, Hana,” said the girl, “you have brain damage just like your dad.” Then she smiled and walked away.

  After that everything went blank. The next thing I remember was hearing Haley screaming and trying to pull me off the girl. I had grabbed her open umbrella and started beating the girl with it. A few weeks later her mother tried to sue us, but nothing came of it. And whenever she walked past me in the hall she would make faces and turn up her chin, but she never made fun of my father again.

  That was the only fight I ever got into. There was another girl at school named Bertha who was in the same grade as me and used to try to stare me down in class and push me while we were standing in the lunch line. She even pushed me onto the ground once, when we were playing handball. She continued to bully me for a while, but eventually it stopped and we sort of became friends. I don’t know why, but I could never make myself hit Bertha or push her back. But that day when the other girl told me my father had brain damage, I turned into the Tasmanian devil without a second thought.

  I brought my father by my mother’s house on the Venice Canals once, when he was in Los Angeles with Lonnie on business. It was sometime before he lit the Olympic torch in 1996. Mom was married to Carl Anderson, her third husband, at the time. When they saw each other, they hugged and my mother’s eyes filled with tears. She rushed into her bedroom. She never liked anyone to see her crying. Dad looked at me, confused.

  “Why is she crying?”

  “I’ll go ask her,” I said.

  Mom was sitting on her bed, wiping her nose with a napkin, when I entered the room.

  “Dad wants to know why you’re crying. He might think you feel sorry for him or something.”

  “No, it’s not that,” she said, tearing up again.

  “Then what is it?”

  “When I looked in his eyes, I saw God.”

  I know it sounds improbable, but I knew what she meant. There was a divinity that emanated from him. So many people and reporters have written about it over the years. How, while in his presence, they felt an innocence, a spiritual strength that couldn’t be expressed in words. I guess, after all the time that had passed, she had forgotten what it felt like.