by Hana Ali
Not all of my memories are pleasant. I spent a lot of time worrying about my father. But the chronic worrying didn’t begin until I was seven or eight years old. One morning I woke up and ran down to his office to watch him light the fire, but he wasn’t there. There was no coffee on his desk. His briefcase was beside the sofa, unopened, and his papers were still neatly stacked—the way he had left them the night before.
Daddy’s been kidnapped! It was my first thought. I searched for him all morning. But he was nowhere to be found. I pressed my cold little nose against the large picture window in his office. His Rolls-Royce was in the driveway, parked in its usual spot near the swimming pool, but where was he? I had already checked the guest rooms twice; he wasn’t there. I searched the bathrooms next—nothing. I ran into the living room, where he said his morning prayers. No sign of him. The kitchen was empty too.
I ran down to the basement and checked the far corner room, where the large freezer housing all the popsicles was. Our governess, Cruella De Vil, had no idea that I knew they were there. I’d discovered them the week before, when Daddy was looking for sweets and had carried me down with him. We did that often, staying up late together watching television while eating popsicles and bean pie. He bought them from the clean-shaven Muslim men selling their newspapers and pies at every corner on Crenshaw Boulevard.
I scanned the large, cold room. No sign of him. I opened the freezer. No popsicles left either. I ran back up the steps, looking hastily over my shoulder. The basement was spooky. I often felt as if someone was following behind me.
When Laila and I were little girls, my father worried that we’d get kidnapped. Cruella De Vil used to tell him he had nothing to worry about because anyone crazy enough to snatch me would return me immediately. I was a little wildling. I drove adults bananas, and my father was the only grown-up in the world who had patience with me. He used to sit Laila and me down on the sofa in his office and educate us on the dangers of the world. He’d warn passionately, “Be very careful riding your bikes and playing around the neighborhood. God protects you, but some people are crazy. They might try to kidnap you because you’re my daughters . . .” At four and six years old, we’d nod our heads, eyes wide, unable to fully grasp the concept or understand his concern.
Finally, I checked the third-floor media room, where I’d once found my father sleeping on the sofa. I’d figured he had fallen asleep watching his favorite actor, Christopher Lee, in Dracula, or an old western on the large television screen next to his trophy display.
I rushed up the steps, hoping to find him stretched out on the tufted leather sofa, bright-eyed, sipping his coffee, and talking on the telephone. But he wasn’t there either. Aside from the faint sound of water trickling from the fish tanks in the far corner, the room was cold and silent.
I had literally searched high and low. Daddy was always in his office when I woke, but that morning he was nowhere to be found.
Someone must have taken him, I assumed. I always noticed the way people looked at him—how they lit up whenever he entered a room, hugging and kissing him as if he were their father, brother, husband, or friend. I recognized the look in their eyes, the overwhelming and complete awe and pleasure of simply being near him. Oh, I recognized it all right. It was the same look I had on my face every day of my young life. Everyone wanted something from him—his time, attention, money, friendship, love. And he accommodated them all. Now one of these people had taken him.
“Someone stole Daddy! Someone stole Daddy!” I shouted repeatedly, running down from the third floor to my mother’s bedroom. By the time I reached her, I was out of breath.
Mom rose calmly from her slumber. “What is it, Hana?” she asked, yawning and stretching her long graceful arms, like a beautiful swan, never losing composure.
There came a stirring in the morning stillness. Sheba and Samson, the Dobermans, were barking in the background. This should have tipped me off, but it didn’t. I never thought to check outdoors.
“Mommy! Daddy’s gone—someone kidnapped him!” I cried. I was a dramatic child.
“What do you mean, Hana?” she asked with one arm around my shoulder, trying to soothe and calm my overactive imagination. My father would have thrown both arms around me. He would have carried me downstairs for a popsicle, offered me money, put on my favorite cartoon—anything to get me to stop crying. Tears were his kryptonite.
In a few minutes, my mother will put on her silk robe. We’ll walk downstairs together and find my father sleeping outside on the patio sofa, fully clothed. He’ll explain how he’d lost his keys and didn’t want to wake anyone, knocking on the door. He’ll scoop me up in his arms and give me a big bear hug—no one hugged like my father.
When he sits me down in the kitchen chair and pours a glass of milk, he’ll notice the fretful look in my eyes and tell me not to worry—that he’s fine. That God always watches over him and me because I’m his daughter. But it’s too late. The distress is already etched in my heart. In the months to come, my mother will drop me off at my first counseling session. At six years old, my overwhelming anxiety about my father’s well-being worried them both. Especially by my ninth birthday, knowing what was coming: the end of their marriage.
Once it was the four of us, with all our laughter and adventures; then, one day, we were moving to a new house and Daddy wasn’t coming.
5
It was the sound of my mother’s gasp that brought me back. I turned as she slowly rose to her feet. “What is it?” I asked. She didn’t respond. She stood there, leaning against the storage room wall, as if to release a weighty burden. Tears streaming slowly down her cheeks, she pressed a handful of pages hard against her chest. Then she walked out of the storage unit and disappeared down the hall.
I stood in the doorway and called her name a few times, but I didn’t go after her. Laila might have. She always needed to help resolve a situation—bring closure to it immediately. But I knew better. I learned early in life; our mother preferred to cry alone.
Some things don’t bear much telling. I think my mother knew this—how words have a way of flattening the deepest emotions. I piled a stack of my findings, along with old newspaper and magazine articles, into an empty box and prepared to leave. It was getting late; Mom had been gone for half an hour. I was about to go looking for her.
I was closing the storage door when she reappeared. I held the audiotape—my most precious discovery—in my hand. I could see she’d been crying. Puffy eyes, red nose, her shaky expression as she struggled to regain her composure.
“What’s wrong, Mom?” I asked.
She said nothing.
Again, I asked, “Mom? What’s the matter?”
She double-checked the lock, then slowly turned to face me. “I always thought he never fought for me.” And she handed me a thick manila envelope full of letters.
April 28, 1983
Dear Veronica, Love Always
When I bow before Allah, I think of him and his relation to little me. I become aware that God has created this vast universe for the benefit of us. My mind is filled with respect towards the great power that has been responsible for the universe. By me now praying every day in devotion and submission, something has developed in me. And now I am coming closer to God. I am more conscious of the fact that I should not commit sins. By praying five times a day, I see this, and it is helping me to be a better person. You will like me, and even love me, now. (Smile)
If you give me one more chance, I love you so much, and it hurts me so much now that I cannot sleep with you. I am so sorry for the way I used to treat you. If you don’t forgive, I pray that God will.
I write to you because it is hard to talk to you. I am having a hard time being without you. I guess this is the weakness of the human mind. The Quran teaches that the righteous parents and children will be reunited in heaven. Me, you, Hana, and Laila, in the hereafter. I want to continue to have a good acquaintance with you there. The prayer has been prescribed to k
eep in constant memory of God. That’s why I pray five times a day. I wish you would pray with me sometimes, before you leave me. God can do anything if we ask his help . . .
Love, Muhammad
I was seized by a sudden urge to cry as I imagined my father sitting behind his desk at Fremont Place, imagined light falling through the clouds and in through the window as he poured his heart onto the page. How could this have happened? How could these letters have remained undiscovered for so long? I read the yellowing pages cautiously, overwhelmed with conflicting emotions: curiosity, amazement, gratitude, sorrow, and anger.
How could my mom have overlooked his letters? The note written across the envelope was addressed to her: Veronica, Muhammad left these behind—Marge.
Why didn’t she open it, or at least deliver the envelope back to him? There were plenty of opportunities. Dad visited regularly after the divorce. If she had opened the envelope, said something to him, maybe he would have told her that he left them there for her. Maybe she would have read them in time. Maybe she would have given him another chance.
A dozen what-ifs and maybes ran through my mind. Mostly, I wondered if he was waiting for her to say something—for a sign that she had received them, read them. Or maybe he had given up hope long ago, when the house on Fremont sold.
I had just discovered my father’s letters, and already they haunted me. My dad wore his heart on his sleeve. Love was his first language—he spoke it well from the letter’s first words to its closing declaration, in which he expressed his humility, his heart open, vulnerable, and bare on the page. His pleas for another chance, his promise to be a better husband; his perpetual sadness to be losing his wife and family; his poetic attempts to recapture her heart; his ultimate awareness and acceptance that the marriage was over.
In total, there were twenty-eight pages—twenty-eight pages spanning three years, immortalizing his enduring hope and unwavering love. His thoughts pinned to the page like butterflies stunned out of magnificent flight, forever engraved on the folios of time.
Dear Veronica,
As your husband, I applaud and affirm all that you are, even if not always all that you do . . . I have found that you are your own person . . . I want you to have the freedom that you want . . . I am all for you, in all ways, and I am with you, always. Living with you or not, though we may be continents apart, as you put in your words, about us being two different people. Never will I leave you. Nor do you, in any way, have to earn my love. You have these, everything I have, because you are you and because, after living with you, I have found that Veronica is such a wonderful, special someone to know. For what it’s worth, I still love you.
My mother has always been a quiet, graceful being. As a child, I never threw myself into her arms to hug her the way I did with my father. She reminded me of a delicate flower, soft and fragile. I would hug her as if her petals might bruise. But that afternoon at the storage facility I couldn’t help myself. I threw my arms around her, and she hugged me back. I had never seen her rendered so helpless.
I held the audiotape I had discovered in my hand. I looked at it, wondering how it had escaped my father’s collection—my collection. Its inscription intrigued me: For my Veronica, 1976, the year I was born. He must have given it to her then, I thought. Because the briefcase of recordings he gave to me began in 1978.
I remembered how hearing his long-ago voice, speaking to my future self, made me feel. “Hana, you were a sweet little girl. You are so beautiful . . .” His tender declarations, the love in his words, “I just kiss your little jaws all the time. I always squeeze you and hug you—and I love you . . .”
He captured the moments we shared, the play and laughter—an everlasting wave of affection, floating through every room in the house. Preserved on micro tape cassettes and in my heart with the infallible memory of his love.
God knows what’s on this tape, I thought, slipping it into my back pocket. Mom’s had enough for one afternoon. I’ll give it to her tomorrow.
6
I went straight home from the storage. I wanted answers about the love letters. But my mother was too befuddled for an interrogation. I’d have to do a little of my own research, revisiting times long past. If the day had taught me anything, it was that history has a unique way of telling its own story, of revealing its mysteries when it wants to. I placed the envelope of letters on my nightstand. Mom let me bring them home so I could finish reading them.
I played my favorite classical music, “Clair de Lune,” went to relax in a hot bath, and let the melancholy soak away. I heard my fiancé, Kevin, come home. It was just after 6 p.m., so he was coming from one of his training sessions at the gym and would be heading back out for his 7 p.m. jog soon. In a few months I was marrying a mixed-martial-arts fighter who had a lot of wonderful qualities that reminded me of my father.
“How did it go with your mom?” he asked. “At the storage.”
“You won’t believe what we found,” I said. “A stack of love letters my father wrote my mother thirty years ago, that she never knew about.”
“Really? That’s crazy. How did that happen?”
“That’s what I want to know. I’m trying to decide if I’m going to ask Dad about them.”
He walked into the bathroom to change into his jogging suit. “Do you want to talk about it? I can go to the gym later.”
“Not right now, honey,” I said. “I feel emotionally drained.”
“Okay, babe, I’m heading back out. I’ll be home in an hour. Call if you need me.”
“Okay, honey. Love you.”
Kevin kissed me goodbye. Then, with a heavy heart, I put on my bathrobe and went to the kitchen to make some ginger-mint tea. I was usually a decaf coffee drinker, but after a recent trip to London, tea was my new favorite thing. I took my drink into the living room and bundled up beneath a blanket in a cozy armchair. I wasn’t ready to read any more of my father’s love letters—to be reminded of his pain—so I picked up one of the old newspaper clippings I’d found, from the Midnight Globe. It featured one of my parents’ first interviews together, its yellowing pages carrying the faint scent of dust and mildew. I noted the date: July 1, 1978. I’m two years old. Dad’s training for his third championship—the fight against Leon Spinks that he’ll win, becoming the first man in history to gain the heavyweight title three times. I welcome the memory. When I read the first line—“They met four years ago in Salt Lake City . . .”—the ghosts begin to stir.
* * *
When my mother packed her bags for Salt Lake City, she had no idea her life would change forever, that her name and face would headline newspapers around the world—that she’d have a secret wedding ceremony under the African moon with the most famous man on earth.
It was 1974. Nixon was on the verge of resigning, the Dolphins won the Super Bowl, and George Foreman was the new World Heavyweight Champion. My mother, an eighteen-year-old pre-med student moonlighting as a cheerleader, was waiting with a group of girls wearing colorful bikinis to escort my father down the aisle for a charity exposition bout. Dad began their courtship by giving Mom and the other girls one of his stern lectures about clothing, or her lack of it: “I told her she shouldn’t be walking around half nude. She was so tall and pretty. I was scared of her beneath it all. Oh, I was scared all right. But I knew that she was just what I was looking for. I don’t know what she was thinking about me.”
Mom obligingly told the reporter, “What he said made sense to me. A lot of us didn’t want to wear swimsuits in front of everyone. We wanted to wear some nice dress or trousers. So, when he gave us that lecture, he was telling me what I already wanted to do.”
I knew the lecture well. He’d given it to me once when I was twelve. My father had a unique way of expressing himself. He liked to paint vibrant pictures with his words and plant seeds of wisdom that would sprout throughout our lifetimes. He took all the knowledge, love, and faith he received from the world and cultivated us with it.
The
day my parents met. Salt Lake City, 1974.
© Guy Crowder
“Everything that God made valuable in the world is covered, protected, and hard to get to. Where do you find diamonds? Deep in the ground covered by the earth. Where do you find pearls? Deep in the bottom of the ocean covered and protected in a beautiful shell. Where do you find gold? Way down in the mine, covered under layers of rock. Where do you find oil? Deep in the ground beneath the earth. You have to work hard to get to it, and half the time you don’t strike.” His brows would furrow. “Your body is sacred. You’re far more precious than gold, diamonds, and pearls. You should be covered too.”
It was the first and last time I wore a short skirt. I imagine the speech had a similar effect on my mother; she went to her room and put on a dress.
After leaving Salt Lake City, my father flew to Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), to fight a much younger—much stronger—George Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle,” perhaps the most important, most infamous bout of his career.
Mom slipped him a note the night before the fight: Win or lose, I love you. He later told her, “You helped me win.”
“So, what happened after the fight?” the reporter asked my father, referring to his blossoming affair with my mother.
“We stayed in contact.”
“Stayed in contact!” Mom exploded with laughter. “He wouldn’t let me go home for six months.”
“All right, it’s true,” he admitted, joining her laughter affectionately. “I had to brainwash her. I knew if she went back to college she’d find another fellow. I didn’t want that. I knew if I kept her with me she wouldn’t want another fellow. And that’s what happened . . .” He told the reporter how proud he was of her and how intelligent she was—how he can talk to her about anything. He can—and does—go on and on about her. “In these four years, she has never used profanity, she doesn’t want to go to nightclubs, or parties. Not like most beautiful women, they want to show off. She doesn’t, not at all. She doesn’t want to go out without me, and that’s good.” He said this proudly, adding, “Me and Veronica don’t argue. We never fall out.”
