At Home with Muhammad Ali

by Hana Ali

  “You have a unique image and position in this world . . . you’re not just a fighter. You’re bigger than that.”

  “You’re right. I’ll think about it. I haven’t made my mind up yet.”

  The concerns of his friends and family had nothing to do with their belief in him. After all, Daddy was a magical man. He made people believe in miracles. As boxing historian Bert Sugar once said, “If God didn’t create him, somebody would have invented him.” Daddy was like Superman; he triumphed over obstacles, fought injustice, and persevered when he was down. But, as my father and the world would soon be reminded, even Superman has a weakness.

  Time was also my father’s kryptonite. It waits for no man. Not even the world’s greatest champion attempting his last climb.

  “I was just wondering,” he said one evening to his manager. “Just to see what your thoughts are. I believe so, I just want to see what you believe. Do you think that if we take four months of eating right and training—I can get a doctor, exercise, get a dietitian, form a good camp—you think we can come back dancing?”

  “Yes, I believe we can. If you do everything you said, I believe it.”

  But Daddy’s speech was failing. His movements and reflexes were noticeably slower. Occasionally, he lost his balance walking. In the beginning, they were subtle changes, noticeable but presumed to be explainable by fatigue, jet lag, or minor brain damage.

  “Muhammad,” said my grandmother over breakfast in 1979. “Speak into the recorder, honey. You’re slurring your words.”

  “I know.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t know why, but when I play back the tapes, I can’t always hear myself good.”

  “It’s because you’re talking too fast. You just have to slow down . . .”

  If only she’d been right.

  In 1984, two years after his last fight, my father admitted himself into the Mayo Clinic for testing and was told he had Parkinson’s syndrome. As time passed, the symptoms progressed and, in 1986, he was officially diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

  “We’re all going to lose things in life,” he said to a roomful of reporters. “You can lose a fight, or you can lose a debate, or you can just lose in life, period. We’re going to lose our health, lose our mothers, lose our fathers; whatever it is, we’ve got to keep going . . .”

  At four or five years old, I remember tugging on the babysitter’s coattail after Daddy stumbled or slurred his words. “What’s wrong with my daddy?” I’d ask, peering up through worried eyes. I needed an answer, any explanation. It was the not knowing—not understanding—that tortured me.

  “Nothing’s wrong with your father, Hana,” the babysitter answered with care. “He’s just tired.”

  “Then why does he talk that way?”

  “It’s because of how much he coughed when he was young,” she fibbed, unsure of what to say. I wanted to believe her. For months I walked around trying not to cough. It’s funny how the very young believe little untruths so explicitly.

  Regardless of the countless attempts to ease my troubled mind, I sensed something was wrong with my father and I worried about him all the time. But the world kept turning and the phone calls kept coming.

  “Hey, Champ,” said one of his managers on another recording. “I was talking to Don King before he left town. He told me to tell you he had gotten eight million for you, so far, and he’s working on ten.”

  “Eight million—for what?”

  “You and Larry Holmes—if you want it.”

  “Tell him to go to the press. He and Holmes can challenge me.”

  “I told him you wanted it to look like they were challenging you. He liked that idea.”

  “Hold on, Jerry,” he said. “Hana and Laila are cuttin’ up. You all stop it! I’m talkin’!”

  “Look, everybody realizes you’re still the king, and the big talk now is what are you really going to do . . .”

  There was an enduring pause.

  “Man, I went to see a training camp today and—God is my witness—it’s ten times better than Deer Lake! Fifty-five acres of rolling hills with twenty-five log cabins encircled, all brand-new. It has a big stable with horses, a heated swimming pool, a large tennis court on top of a hill, and a huge kitchen that seats a hundred people. All the cooking utensils and stoves are there, with old English furniture. I’m telling you, there’s nothing in the world like it. It’s beautiful. I’ll fight just for that! Then, when I’m through fighting, it will be a Triple Crown World Headquarters for ALL fighters . . .”

  If only I could go back and warn him. “Don’t do it, Daddy,” I’d plead. “It doesn’t end well for you this time.” But I was just a little girl who ate popsicles, unable to alter the course of time. Unable to change her father’s mind. Unable to save him from himself.

  Shakespeare said he wrote to be immortal, but books can be lost and words can be erased. Athletes compete to challenge themselves and set records, but records can be broken and new paths are blazed. With so many variables, how can anyone be sure that they’ve made an impact? So, he was lured back—to that old familiar place, where he once shined as a beacon of light and hope. The place where he could prove to himself and to the world he was capable of miracles, capable of defying the odds—capable of achieving the impossible.

  Atop a steep winding dirt drive, nestled among pine forests and rolling fields, Fighter’s Heaven in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, sits on a modest stretch of land.

  Encircled with small, rustic log cabins and huge imposing rocks that bear the names of old boxing greats—Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Sonny Liston, Archie Moore, Kid Gavilan, Jersey Joe Walcott, Rocky Marciano, and his favorite, Sugar Ray Robinson—this is where my father retreated to train for a fight. Where he rose in the dawn, putting on his gray jogging suit, lacing up his old black boots, and breathing in the fresh mountain air.

  Amid the echo of victories long past and the melody of morning birds, he set out on his enduring run through the woods and fields—up Agony Hill, into the glory of the rising sun.

  “I’m starting to run again,” he said on a recording. “I ran three miles today. You know something: it’s part of life. It makes you feel better. You think, eat, sleep . . . I mean, just like you have to breathe, it’s something you have to do. You can’t just get fat, lay around, and not work your body; your mind will go too. If you want to enjoy this life on earth as a human, you have to jog or do something.”

  At the crack of dawn, the calls came flooding in. Everyone wanted to know if it was true.

  “Muhammad,” said an old friend, “incidentally, there’s a story in today’s Post that you’re going up to Deer Lake to start training again . . . It’s an item in Jerry Izenberg’s column—I’ll read it to you . . . It says: ‘This is the one that should really shake you. Yesterday morning a longtime and rarely written about member of the Muhammad Ali retinue, a man named James Anderson, was dispatched at Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, with orders to burn the gas and turn on the electricity and put the camp in order because guess who is coming home to the great woods . . . The comeback of which so many have spoken, and so few have known, may indeed be on its way. Ali is being drawn to Deer Lake the way a kamikaze pilot used to home in on the deck of an American carrier . . .’”

  © Howard Bingham

  But how could he have known what would happen? He was like the sun: the same light that illuminates the sky blinds those who over-gaze. It was no more his fault than it was the fault of the sun, when his dream inflamed. “People listen to me because I’m champ of the world,” he once said. “That’s why I keep fighting—so I can keep doing God’s work. I’m on a divine mission. I was born to do what I’m doing. I’ll be told when to retire.”

  And he was. It was time that finally got his attention—when his mind told his legs to shuffle, but they didn’t. It was time who reared its face when he threw his infamous right-hand lead but missed. And it was time who whispered, “It’s over now,” after his sixty-first and final fight—when he reac
hed down into the well, and the well was empty.

  “I’m going downhill,” he said one evening after the fight. “Eventually we all undergo losses and go downhill. I’m no exception . . .” But it was a lesson that had to be learned in the ring: under the pearly lights that had shone upon him since the age of twelve.

  But before the Holmes fight he was still the champion of the world—he still believed.

  “If I make a comeback, the theme will be . . . just think, champion four times! FOUR TIMES! You all thought three was somethin’, you all thought I was through, but I’m going to show you HOW GREAT I AM!

  “To be the four-time champion, I’m going to come back! I’m free! I’ve been free all my life. I say what I want to say, I go where I want to go. But I’ll tell you this . . . I’ve thought about it. They say records are made to be broken—Jesse Owens’s record was broken, Babe Ruth’s record was broken—everybody’s records are broken. For a man to break my record now, he’ll have to be four-time champion. It might be possible, but I just know . . . ain’t no man gonna win the world title FIVE TIMES!

  “So that’s why I’m back! I want to be immortal! I want to be greater than great! I want to be a real Superman! My manager doesn’t want me back, my brother, my mother, my father—my wife’s crying—but my name’s going down in history, not theirs. My name!

  “Get ready! Get ready! Tell them all—I’M BACK!”

  * * *

  Standing firm in his office, Dad told Mom and Tim, “You’ve got two hours to try to talk me out of leaving to go train for the Holmes fight.” Once my father issued a challenge to anyone, you knew who would win.

  Early the next morning Dad was trying to sneak out of the house before Laila and I woke up. It was too late. The sound of him trying not to make a sound had already awakened me. I could hear him walking around downstairs in his office. I crawled out of bed and tiptoed over to the staircase. That’s when I spotted the luggage. My heart sank. I knew what this meant.

  “Daddy is leaving!”

  The melodrama he was trying to avoid was about to unfold. I raced down the steps, as though it were the end of the world, shouting, “I want to go with you, Daddy!” When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I ran into his office, dove into his arms, and hugged him with all my might. “Please take me with you, Daddy!”

  That was when he softly told me, “You have to stay home, Hana. But you and Laila are flying up to my training camp with your mother in four days—four tomorrows.” I pushed him away, crying. He walked over to the corner of the room where I lay sobbing on the floor, picked me up, and carried me back over to the sofa. As I sat there, on his lap, he wiped my tears.

  © Howard Bingham

  “Hana, I’m your daddy, but I am also Muhammad Ali, the champion of the world. People look up to me. I inspire them. So I have to go to Deer Lake to train for a fight that will help me stay a champion. I’m not just your daddy, Hana . . . I’m also a daddy to the world.”

  I jumped out of his arms, sobbing as I made my way down the hall into the living room. “Hana . . . I have to go soon,” he called after me. “But I’ll send for you. Give me a kiss goodbye.” He walked over and tried to pick me up again. I crossed my arms, pouting, and shouted, “You’re not my daddy. You’re Muhammad Ali!”

  It’s strange, the things you remember—the moments in time burned into your heart forever.

  11

  My father traveled often, but most of my memories are of him at home. I remember playing on his office floor when he was working at his desk or when he was on the telephone. No matter what was going on, his door was always open. Even when he was busy, he made time for us. My memories are rich because of it.

  I remember my father eating with us every night he was home, occasionally finishing my vegetables for me so I could have a popsicle after dinner. I remember him letting Laila and me stay up late watching television and playing dress-up. He watched lovingly as we circled around him in our mother’s oversized clothes. I remember him telling me stories until I fell asleep at night and waking me up with kisses every morning. I remember him trying to braid my hair before school and walking me into my first-grade classroom with two uneven ponytails. I looked like Pippi Longstocking, one of my favorite television characters.

  I didn’t mind my crooked ponytails; I was proud to wear the braids Dad gave me. Every morning, after the babysitter neatly combed my hair, I snuck out of my room, messed it up again, then ran down to my father’s office and asked him to braid it. He always tried.

  In first and second grade, I remember him bringing me Pioneer Chicken and strawberry soda for lunch almost every day. I can still see him standing in the doorway of my classroom, holding my lunch in one hand and his tape recorder in the other. He’d ask my teacher and classmates all sorts of questions about me—the kind of student I was and what boy I had a crush on.

  I remember waking up in the hospital when I was nine years old after falling off the jungle gym at school and hitting my head. My head was so hard I probably caused more damage to the ground than it did to me.

  I also remember opening my eyes to find my father’s round, loving face beaming down at me. He never left. Day and night, he was there. He watched television with me and charmed the nurses into bringing me extra orange ice cream cups, the same ones they served with dinner. We both loved sweets. Sometimes we’d eat our dessert first.

  “We can’t do this all the time, Hana,” he’d say. “Or we’ll get worms in our bellies.”

  I can still picture my father sitting in the corner of my hospital room, shuffling through the lined yellow pages in his briefcase, as I watched cartoons and colored in bed.

  At night, I remember resting my head on his chest, listening to the sound of his beating heart, as he told his favorite story, a Sufi tale about a slave named Omar that he shared many times over the years. By the end, he was always in tears. “You’ve taught me a great lesson, Omar . . . I may be the king, but it is you who has a king’s heart.”

  And when my parents were traveling the world, I remember presents and postcards coming in the mail from England, Switzerland, Ireland, etc. The notes my mother sent are in a wooden box on my nightstand. There was only one written by my father’s hand. It read, in part, “Dear Hana, I love you so much. You are so sweet and beautiful, just like your mother.” But it was lost some time ago.

  The card was pinned on my bedroom wall for years. I even brought it with me to Boston when I left for college. I read it often, especially when I was feeling nostalgic, until it was stolen from my locker during Thanksgiving break, along with a box of other tokens and keepsakes.

  I was upset for a while. Then I realized my father’s words had served their purpose the moment I read them. The postcard brought me joy and filled my heart with love every time I laid eyes on it. And it still does when I think about it today. I am grateful he took the time to write to me.

  More than anything, I remember my father making me feel like I was the most special little girl in the world. Like Pippi Longstocking, I was wild, free, and unpredictable. My father never clipped my wings—he let me be a little girl. He was, and always will be, the most wonderful thing in the world to me.

  * * *

  I picked up where I’d left off with the articles. Solo, 1980: “Muhammad Ali’s wife talks about the champ fans don’t know. A real softy.” I was four years old; Laila was three. I paused before continuing, knowing 1980 was a difficult year for my father—the beginning of the end of his boxing career. I exhaled as I read the opening line: “In the wake of his humiliating defeat at the hands of Larry Holmes—Ali’s 24-year-old wife, Veronica, has broken her silence . . .” In a candid interview, Mom talked about her hope that Dad would retire for good and revealed a side of him most people didn’t know.

  “I often thought of how surprised people would be if they saw Muhammad at home. He is warm and affectionate, quiet, serious, and soft-spoken. And he makes me feel special. He is terribly soft with our daughters, Hana
and Laila. He likes to get up at dawn and take them off for a walk alone. He loves them to climb into our bed in the morning . . . When he is training for a fight and we have separate rooms, he’d keep them in bed with him all night if he had his way. But he has to be talked out of it because he needs rest.”

  I read my mother’s words with a heavy heart, and I asked myself hard questions: When did she know she was leaving him? Did it happen all at once, like a blinding flash of clarity? Or bit by bit, like the changing of the seasons? I guess it doesn’t matter now; either way, their love story ended the same: with us moving to a new house without my father.

  “Muhammad is so good and gentle with all his children,” she continued, “that, when I look at him in the ring, it’s like watching a stranger. I have an odd feeling of detachment. It’s hard to believe the man I know, so soft and kind, is in there beating up another person.”

  As I read, I began to see certain images. I began to remember Fighter’s Heaven, Dad’s home away from home. Nestled among pine forest and rolling fields, on top of a dirt drive up a wooded hill there rests a sign nailed to the trunk of an old oak tree: “Welcome to Ali’s Camp.”

  He built a boxing gym in the center of the property. And placed a series of log cabins and mess halls around it—eighteen stand-alone buildings in total.

  Rising at 5 a.m., my father rang the bell that woke his eleven-man crew, including Howard Bingham, Drew “Bundini” Brown, Angelo Dundee, Jimmy Ellis, Gene Kilroy, Lana Shabazz, James Anderson. Breakfast at 8 a.m. followed by a four-mile run through the woods and fields.

  I saw the small white mosque my father had built at the entrance of his camp. I saw the large boulders, made from lumps of coal, on which Papa Cash painted the names of those boxing greats, past and present. Many well-known visitors, such as Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, and Andy Warhol, would sit on the rocks or around the camp’s giant firepit, listening to Dad brag and boast and recite his speeches and poems. But you didn’t have to be famous to visit Fighter’s Heaven. Deer Lake was open to all who cared to stop by. Dad would take off an entire afternoon from training to laugh and show off his magic tricks. My father was happiest spending time telling stories, and his favorite visitors were children.