At Home with Muhammad Ali

by Hana Ali

  His eyes were bright with excitement. “How did you know? Who taught you?” he asked.

  “You did,” I said. “I learned it from the tape recordings of you talking to your friends.” There was a pause, an enduring pause, and I could see in his expression that he was far away and long ago. “Daddy, the recordings brought back so many happy memories. I listened to them all night long.”

  He smiled, and I did too.

  “What’s your favorite tape?” he asked.

  “There are so many, Daddy. I haven’t even heard them all yet. But I especially love the recordings of us running around the house with you playing—singing together in the morning—and you reading me bedtime stories at night.”

  “I remember,” he said softly.

  “But, Daddy, the tape I just heard today is my favorite.”

  “Play it,” he said. “Let me hear it.”

  I went to the car to get my purse. When I walked back into the room, I went over to his chair, kneeled down in front of him, and placed his precious round face between my hands. I looked into his eyes and told him everything my heart longed to say: I told him he’d given me the greatest gift, that whatever the future held, his children and posterity would always have this to look back on. I told him I would cherish his recordings and his voice forever. I told him he was the most wonderful father. That he was even greater at being a father than he was at being a world champion. I thanked him for bringing all of his children together so we could grow up together and be friends. I told him that because of his incredible love I’d be able to revisit, time and again, a place my long-ago self had been.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” I said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you . . .”

  By the look in his eyes I could see that something deep inside him had stirred to life. Then I sat down in the chair beside him, pulled my Walkman out of my purse, and pushed PLAY. My father leaned back in his chair and listened with his eyes closed, just as I had the first time he let me hear them, flying on the wings of my childhood memories to faraway places and adventures we both lived long ago. Where he would remain forever young. Forever strong. Forever home.

  * * *

  “Hana, let’s sing. Time for our singing lessons . . . Ready?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  We sang together: “This is dedicated to the one I love. Each night before you go to bed, my babeeeee, oooooo . . .”

  “Here’s another one, Hana.” I’m repeating after him, “Up in the morning off to school / the teachers teach the golden rule. / American history and practical math, studying real hard and hoping to pass. / Working your finger right down to the bone / the guy behind you won’t leave you alone. / Ring, ring goes the bell. / Cookin’ the lunch and waiting to sell . . .” Our voices fade out, laughing together.

  After a moment, he speaks back into the recorder. “Hana, that was you singing with your daddy, on December 9, 1979 [three years old], in our home on 55 Fremont Place in Los Angeles. You were a sweet little girl. You are so beautiful. God blessed us to raise you in a good way. Your mother, Veronica . . . she has the best of manners, and your father—I do my best. We were so happy with you. I just kiss your little jaws all the time. I always squeeze you and hug you . . .” His voice softened. “And I love you.”

  “These tapes are something I’m making because I am history conscious. We only come through this world once and we’re only young once. We’re only babies once, teenagers once, old men and old women, and then we die. But I knew it would be so beautiful for me to get this—by me being conscious of this—about making tapes and being history minded.

  “I knew that one day you would be intelligent enough to appreciate that your daddy made all these tapes so you could hear them someday. Mommy would wake me up in the morning and say, ‘Let’s make some tapes on Hana.’ We both got together and thought of this. We have Laila and Mommy talking to Grandmommy on the telephone, or whomever.

  “There’s me talking to your other sisters, Maryum, Jamillah, Rasheda, Miya, Khaliah, and your brother, Little Muhammad. I did all I could to keep you together and let you know about one another, and mainly to make tapes where you could hear one another in different times in history. So, I love you and may God bless you. I love Hana, I love Laila—all my children.

  “So, I want to say to you the Arabic greetings that mean peace be with you. Assalamu alaikum, my sweet Hana—MY LOVE.”

  Those were our last days living together as a family. The shattered pieces of my heart remain scattered around the rooms and halls of Fremont Place, deep in the cracks and crevices, embedded in the walls. I don’t know if I’ll ever recover them, the broken pieces. Or that I even want to. My childhood home has always been a part of me, and I will always be a part of it.

  The memories long confined to the annals of my mind—old ghosts I have spent my life amongst—have become almost a comfort to me now, something I anticipate and enjoy, like a movie I’ve watched a hundred times that still moves me to tears of sadness and joy. After reading all the articles and my father’s love letters to my mother, I was inspired. I wanted to bring them all to life again—the ghosts so hauntingly intertwined in my past and present. I wanted to give them a voice and let them tell their own story.

  I wish I could tell you I have forgiven my mother completely. I know she’s always loved my father. But the truth is, the little girl inside me still blames her for leaving him. Sometimes I still feel like that five-year-old girl roaming the halls of a mansion, waiting for her daddy to come home.

  Dad and me on the front steps of Fremont Place.

  © Howard Bingham

  41

  On June 3, 2016, at the age of seventy-four, my father made his ultimate journey. His flight departed at 9:10 p.m. out of Scottsdale, Arizona. I wanted to beg him to stay—beg him to take me with him, like I had when I was a little girl. But I didn’t. This time was different. He was going someplace he couldn’t take me—on a trip he would never return from.

  We were all there to wish him a final farewell—all of his children and grandchildren.

  He had prepared me for this since I was a child.

  “I’m going to die one day,” he said. “We’re all going to die. This life is short. This life is just a test for the eternal life . . . God doesn’t care that I whooped Joe Frazier. He doesn’t care that I knocked out George Foreman. He only cares about how I treated people and how many people I helped . . .”

  The week before his great journey, I Facetimed him, blowing kisses as we spoke. “I love you, Daddy—I miss you—I’m coming to visit you soon . . .”

  It was how I opened and closed every conversation, kissing him and telling him how much I loved him. Occasionally he’d ask a question or two, his words a soft whisper, gentle as a feather. But he didn’t speak that day—he didn’t have to. He had already said it all. His eyes spoke for him; they glistened with love and happiness as he listened to me filling him in on the day-to-day happenings of my life. He always liked hearing about things like that.

  “I love you, Daddy,” I said, before hanging up. “See you soon . . .”

  A week later the phone rang. It was Laila.

  “Daddy’s in the hospital, again . . .”

  The following day we landed in Arizona.

  Two years earlier, in 2014, I’d received a similar call from my sister. Kevin and I were in Scottsdale to visit my father for the weekend. It was late when we arrived. We checked into a hotel. I was getting dressed the next morning when my cell phone rang. It was Laila.

  “Don’t freak out, Hana,” she said. “Daddy’s in the hospital. They had to take him late last night. He was having trouble breathing . . . Lonnie didn’t want to wake you . . .”

  Lonnie always called Laila—I think it was too difficult for her to deliver the message to me directly. She knew how I’d react—that my eruption of tears might unleash her own.

  Laila gave me the hospital information as my tears fell. I had a feeling this was the beginning—that the end was n
ear.

  Kevin and I went straight to the hospital. During Dad’s two-week stay, I was there every day—all day and all night. Kevin stayed with me. May May and Laila were there too but left a couple days later.

  “We feel good knowing you’re here,” they said. “Let us know how he’s doing.”

  His condition was stable. But I couldn’t leave. Daddy never left me in the hospital alone. He was there day and night. Now I could do the same for him.

  I decorated the walls of his room with photos, flowers, and balloons. He slept most of the time, but we watched movies on his iPad when he was awake.

  Lonnie took the day shift; her sister Marilyn took the night.

  I called Dr. B., my employer at the time. I had been working with autistic children for ten years by then.

  “My father’s in the hospital,” I said. “I won’t be back until he’s well . . . I don’t know when that will be.”

  I called George Foreman. He and Dad kept in touch over the years.

  “Stay strong,” he said. “I’m here if you need me.” George was a huge help—and support—for me. I’ll always be grateful.

  Mom called every few days, checking on Dad’s progress, relaying messages of love.

  “He’s asleep most of the day, Mom. I’ll tell him when he wakes.”

  “Whisper in his ear,” she said. “His spirit can hear you.”

  Eventually my father got better—he always bounced back.

  “Guess what, Daddy,” I would say each time he came home from the hospital. “You were in the newspaper again. The world thinks you’re dying . . .”

  His response was always the same: “Did I make the front page?”

  After my father came home from the hospital, I stayed another three weeks. He slept most of the day, but within a few weeks he was back to his old routine, watching westerns in the morning. But he wasn’t quite the same. I sat beside him all day and night, knitting a scarf for his birthday. It belongs to President Obama now—a gift I would give him at the White House.

  My father would have wanted you to have this . . . I wrote in the letter accompanying a photograph of Dad wearing it.

  Eventually I went back home and my father regained his strength. But still I had that feeling—the end was coming.

  * * *

  I won’t go into great detail about my father’s passing on June 3, 2016, but I will share this. It was fitting for the loving life he lived. I’d spent my thirty-ninth birthday with him the year before. He celebrated his last birthday with eight of his nine children gathered around him. He laughed and smiled and watched magic tricks being performed. We all cheered at the closing act—a white dove was pulled from a hat and flew around the room above him.

  Six months later, he was checked into the hospital.

  He wasn’t in pain.

  At some point, he went to sleep, like he always did during the day, then his organs slowly started to fail and he woke up in heaven.

  Before that happened, all of his children and grandchildren had arrived at the hospital in Scottsdale. We were all there with him, telling him how much we loved him—and telling stories and reminiscing about all the fun we had with him over the years.

  “Can he hear us?” Jamillah asked.

  “Yes,” I answered. “His spirit can hear us.”

  I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. But somehow I found the strength. As we were all gathered around him, memories were shared, tears fell, laughter filled the room as we remembered happier times.

  Nurses came and went. Papers were signed . . . More tears and more laughter.

  At some point a bell started dinging; it was coming from one of the machines.

  “DING! DING! DING!”

  It sounded like a fighter’s bell—like in a boxing ring.

  “That’s your eight-count, Daddy!” said Rasheda. “Now get your ass up!”

  We all laughed—tears followed.

  We took turns holding his hand and whispering in his ear.

  We kissed him and hugged him. And told him how much we loved him.

  When it was my turn, I tried to hold back the tears. I didn’t want to make it harder for him. He wasn’t conscious, but I believe he could hear.

  “You’re doing so well, Hana,” Lonnie said at one point.

  Laila had said the same.

  I guess they thought I was going to break down.

  He had given so much to us, so much to the world. It was time to let him go.

  “I know he loved all of us,” said Laila, “but you’re the one he really loved . . .”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “Don’t say that. His spirit can hear you. You’re going to make it hard for him to go.”

  “Okay,” she said, and hugged me.

  “He really loved you . . .” I said again. “He loved us all.”

  “I know . . . I’m here for you, Hana,” said Laila. “I’m proud you’re doing so well.”

  As the end drew near, Imam Zaid Shakir walked into the room, sat beside my father, and read passages from the Quran. We all found a place to be. I stood at the foot of his bed, holding his feet, because I read someplace that the soul leaves through the feet.

  We stood there, chanting the words of the Muslim prayer.

  One by one, his organs started to fail, but his heart kept beating. In the final moments of my father’s life, I realized how blessed he had been—how peaceful his passing was. His wife and all of his children were there with him, gathered around him, taking turns whispering messages of love in his ear. He had fallen asleep a couple days before and would wake up and meet God.

  “It’s okay, Daddy,” I had whispered. “You can go now—you’ve done all you can do here. You were the best father. You made me so happy—thank you, Daddy. Go back to God now—we’ll be okay. I love you, Daddy. God bless you. Goodbye, Daddy. I’m going to miss you. You’ll always be the love of my life. You’re free now, Daddy . . . You don’t have to fight anymore.”

  His body was flown home to Kentucky.

  A few days later, on June 10, we took one last drive with our father through the streets of his hometown, Louisville. Thousands of people lined the roads and highways. They were on bridges and in building windows, chanting his name and holding up signs:

  “We Love You.”

  “Thank You.”

  “With the Greatest Respect. You Shook Up the World in Life and Death. RIP Champ.”

  For years my father and Lonnie had filled a black binder with details. All his children’s mothers were invited. Religious leaders of all faiths were invited. All the world was invited. And everyone showed up.

  Our line of black Cadillacs followed the route he planned. Past the house he grew up in on 3302 Grand Avenue. Past the street where his bike was stolen, where he met the officer who introduced him to boxing. Past Central High, where he dreamed of being a world champion and the building where he’d fallen down the stairs after kissing a pretty girl. As we drove down Broadway—past the cheering crowds of thousands—I realized the recurring dream my father used to have was his vision of this day.

  “I used to dream that I was running down Broadway and all of the people were in the street waving at me and cheering me on. I waved back at them, then all of a sudden I took off flying. I dreamed that dream all the time.”

  © John Summers

  © Adrees Latif

  * * *

  After my father passed, I finally went back to Fremont Place. It was a Sunday afternoon. I was alone, driving home from a late lunch with my friend Kenisha Norton. Her father, Ken Norton, had passed a couple years earlier. “Prepare yourself,” she said as she hugged me goodbye. “It gets worse with time.”

  I pulled up to the red light on Rossmore, the same light I’d sat at with my father years before. “Look, Daddy . . . Want to drive by and see the old house?”

  I sat there for a moment, staring at the stone pillars, searching my memory for the stories, the dreams, the faded remembrances that seemed so close yet so far away
. They felt alive, like a living, breathing entity. The sounds, the songs, the laughter and tears, rich with texture and detail, struggling to break through, to live once more.

  “This is Muhammad Ali talking to Hana and Laila at the home on Fremont Place, October the 24th, 1979. Hana and Laila are eating popsicles and I’m home with Veronica. She just turned the television on . . .”

  Moments passed. I don’t know how many.

  “HOOOOONK!!!” The sound of the horns pulled me back into the present. The light was green but was now turning yellow again.

  “Sorry . . .” I waved as I pulled into the entrance, past the stone pillars, and stopped at the guard house, a tiny white structure with a barn door and window.

  “May I help you, ma’am?”

  “Hi, yes, my name is Hana Ali. I lived here at 55 Fremont Place when I was a little girl. I was hoping I could drive by and see the house?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t let you in if you aren’t a resident.”

  “Please, sir, I won’t bother the tenants. I only need five minutes.”

  “Ma’am, I could lose my job.”

  “Pleeeease, I can give you my license.”

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “It’s okay. Maybe another time,” I said. I could see the house in the distance and imagined my seven-year-old self running buck naked down the street, up to this very window.

  “Uncle Steven won’t let me watch my cartoons! Come arrest him!”

  I started to fumble around with my purse, pretending to be looking for something—stalling for time. I looked at the house again. I could see the palm trees and Laila’s balcony.

  “Fond memories?” he asked, observing me.

  “Oh, you have no idea,” I said. Then I put my car in reverse and started to back up. He must have seen or felt something because he motioned for me to come back.

  “Okay, ma’am,” he said as my car pulled back up to his window. “But only five minutes. And I’ll need to hold on to your license.”

  “Really? Thank you so much! I can’t tell you how much this means to me. Thank you!”