by Hana Ali
“Do you think he does it because he wants to be loved by everyone?”
“No, not at all. He really loves helping people. He enjoys making people happy . . .”
Dad walked back into the room. “You two still at it?”
“Veronica, do you ever think about going back to school, to study medicine?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“I have been talking to her about it,” said Dad.
“Wait a minute,” said Marilyn. “Are you saying you would be supportive of her going to school?”
“Yeah. I don’t want her sitting around waiting for me, with her life going by. I want her to be busy and not be dependent on me. I would be the happiest man in the world if she went back to college.”
“Wait a minute,” said Marilyn, “you were afraid of this interview—how can you imagine you could handle her being involved with her own life?”
“I’m not worried about men; I want her to go back to school to be a doctor.”
“I’m very shocked—I asked that question assuming I’d get the opposite answer.”
“I’m thinking about it,” said Mom. “But the children are still very young, and our lives are not settled. I know how much time school takes and how serious you have to be with your studies.”
“I would be so happy if I could see her in the morning and say, ‘Give me a kiss,’ and she would say, ‘Ali, I’m busy. I have to jump in the car and go to school.’”
“I can’t believe this,” said Marilyn. “Knowing you, I would think you would only want her on standby.”
“When I first met her, I was like that. I didn’t want her to go to school or anywhere. But now that I know her and know that she really loves me, she can go anywhere in the world. I wouldn’t even worry about it . . . She is much smarter than me. She was top in her school.”
“Veronica, do you think he really means any of this?”
“He means it about my studying to become a doctor. Going anywhere in the world without him is something else.”
“If I die, I want her to be self-supporting. A good doctor can make two to three hundred thousand a year,” said Dad.
“I think he is really looking forward to picking me up at school,” said Mom. “He would really be proud.”
“Can you imagine him at your graduation? When do you think you might make a decision about a return to college?”
“It would have to be after he decides how much longer he is going to fight. We travel so much that last year we were only home one month.”
“Why do you think he is so anxious for you to do something?”
“He has just become like that in the last few months . . . He wants me to be happy. He knows I want to do something; I think that’s why. Because before, he didn’t want me to do anything. He also knows that if I had stayed in school, by the time I reached twenty-five I would have been a doctor. That is just two years away.”
“Ali, do you feel guilty that she didn’t go to medical school?”
“No, I just want her to go now.”
Dad leaves for a while again, and Mom and Marilyn continue to talk.
“About the movie that I saw today. Whose idea was it for you to have a cameo role?”
“It was the producer’s idea. He actually offered me the part of Muhammad’s wife, but I knew I wasn’t right for it, and I also knew I didn’t have any training to be a good actress.”
“Do you think he would have let you take the role of the wife? It was such a prominent one in the movie.”
“I don’t know. He said he didn’t mind, but he also knew I didn’t want it. If I did, he might have felt very differently. I was not right for the part, even physically. I knew it.”
“Do you feel you know your husband?”
“I feel I do, but sometimes he can even puzzle me. Occasionally he throws me. I certainly did not expect him to encourage me to go back to school. It’s funny, in the beginning I wanted to go back and he didn’t; now he is encouraging and I am not so sure because of the children. I know I’m going to do something . . . I just have to find something I am interested in, and know I have the time for it.”
“What do you think people misunderstand about you?”
“Well, you said it today, when you were talking to Muhammad. People must think, I wonder why he won’t let her do interviews . . . He must be hiding something. That is one reason I would want to do an interview, to dispel that impression. Also, the press so distorted his divorce, and since we don’t talk about things like that, no one will ever know the real truth.”
“You feel the public thinks you broke up his marriage, and you feel you didn’t. Does that trouble you much?”
“I have a sense of what is really important. Even big things that don’t actually affect our daily lives are not important. For instance, the stories in the papers don’t really have any bearing on how we live. The main thing is that God knows the truth and that is what counts. I am a substantial person.”
“How is Ali as a father?”
“You wouldn’t believe it; he is so good. He is wonderful with the children.”
“What do you think is your greatest strength of character?”
“Sometimes I think something is wrong with me because things don’t worry me or get me down like I think they should. Even with all this publicity from his divorce, it didn’t affect me as I think it could have someone else. I think about why I am like that, and I think it’s because I have an inner self-worth . . . Being married to him has strengthened that feeling.”
My father reentered the room.
“We are almost finished,” said Marilyn. “Veronica,” she continued, “what do you consider a weakness?”
“Oh—I have to think . . .”
“The fact that you need all this time is the answer,” said Marilyn.
“Well, I think I am weak with the children. I don’t discipline well enough. They often see me smiling when I’m trying to be firm.”
“You want some sensational answer to that question. You are not going to get that,” said Dad. “She doesn’t have any weaknesses. A poem to my wife, Veronica Ali, by Muhammad Ali: I told her to go to college and get some knowledge. Stay there until you are through. If they can make penicillin out of moldy BREAD, they sure can make something out of you.”
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” asked Marilyn.
“I’m only kidding,” said my father. “She is a beautiful woman. Not just her looks. You can’t find anyone like her.”
29
There was a letter wedged between the last two pages of Mom’s copy of the interview, addressed to my father from Marilyn Funt. The letter wasn’t dated, but judging by her comment about President Reagan, and what she wrote, it had to have been written sometime between 1981 and 1984. After my father lost his last fight in December 1981 and his first Parkinson’s diagnosis was made public, there were stories in the press about him not feeling well and how abnormally exhausted he had been before the fight. She could have written it then. But if it was the latter, five years after she had interviewed my mother, things had changed by then between my parents.
Dear Muhammad Ali,
It so really hurt me to learn that you are sick. As I continue to tell friends and associates, I have never met a star who treats the people around him as decently as you do. If you remember I spent a whole day with you when I was interviewing Veronica. I know you will beat this. You are “The Greatest,” and always will be . . . ! Please don’t back Reagan . . . Even if you do, I still love you and I’m rooting for you to get well!
Marilyn Funt
By 1983, Mom and Dad were probably sleeping in separate bedrooms. And Dad had written his first letter to my mother. In 1984, she told him she wanted the divorce. Then on June 26, 1985, my mother’s lawyer released a statement to the press:
USA TODAY LOS ANGELES: Three-time heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali is down for the count for the third time in marriage—he and wife Veronica f
iled Tuesday for divorce. Ali, 43, and the 29-year-old were married for eight years. They have two children, Hana Yasmeen, 9, and Laila, 8. Ali retired in 1981.
“An amicable agreement on the major issues has already been worked out,” said Frederick J. Glassman, the lawyer representing my mother. She had prepared a statement that read: “The decision to dissolve the marriage was mutually agreed upon . . . Both parties maintain the utmost admiration, love, and respect for each other, and their deep friendship remains intact.”
Mom told me she was trying to save my father any embarrassment. She made no mention of his infidelities and let the world believe that they had both decided to file for divorce.
But his love letters to her told a different story.
* * *
A few months after Marilyn Funt’s interview in 1979, we officially moved into the house on Fremont Place. One of my favorite things was calling my father over the telephone intercom. I was only three years old, but it’s the first thing I actually remember learning how to do. Probably from watching the adults around me. The house was so large, everyone called each other rather than running up and down one or two flights of stairs just to ask a question or deliver a message.
Every morning I picked up the telephone in my bedroom, which my mother had installed for emergencies, pushed a button, and my father would answer from his office downstairs.
“Daddy! What are you doing, Daddy?”
I’m sure Marilyn Funt would have been intrigued by all of the tape recordings my father made, eavesdropping on conversations, or talking to me and countless acquaintances, friends, celebrities and family.
Especially the one of him talking to my mother on December 29, 1979.
My father spoke into the recorder: “This is December 29, 1979, in the Los Angeles home, at 10:30 p.m. I’m talking to Veronica on the telephone intercom . . .”
He clicked over to connect the line, picking up the recording in the middle of my mother’s sentence: “Frankie [the housekeeper] borrowed $500, then she borrowed $200. Now her television went out, so I let her borrow a TV. Now she just asked to borrow some more money and she said, ‘Whenever I want to borrow money, I come to you. I don’t believe in going behind somebody’s back, asking their husband.’”
“Who said that—Frankie?” Dad asked.
“Yes . . .”
“Is she saying that somebody else does it?”
“No, that’s all she said, but the other day she told me that when she used to work for another lady, the woman’s husband kept bothering her. She said, ‘If anybody’s husband bothers me, I’ll come tell or I just won’t work anymore.’”
“Why did she say that?”
“She was just talking about the people she used to work for. The husband was flirting with her, and she told the wife that she wasn’t going to work for her anymore unless the husband wasn’t there.”
“Do you think that all people who have houses and helpers have problems with them?”
“I don’t know. I bet you that no one in their right mind tells the help that they don’t have to listen to the wife, and that they’re the big authority.”
“No, I never said that.”
“You said that to Doris, in the Chicago house.”
“No. Something happened one day, I can’t remember what it was, but she had a problem and I told her she should come to me about it. It wasn’t anything to do with housework.”
“Well, she shouldn’t go to you about anything,” Mom scolded him. “Even if it has nothing to do with her housework.”
“Do you think you’re going to keep Janet [the babysitter]?” He was changing the subject.
“Eventually I’m going to find somebody else,” Mom said. “Because, when the kids get a little older, they’re going to need somebody who has good sense and can teach them something. Janet’s nice and I like her, but sometimes she’s sloppy and her English is bad . . . Do you have that tape on?”
“No,” Dad fibbed. “Do you want me to get the tape?”
“No, I was just wondering if you had the tape on because one day she might pick it up and listen to us talking about her. Especially if she sees her name written on it. ‘Talking about Janet.’”
“She doesn’t meddle in our business,” he said.
“That’s what I’m saying. She’s nice.”
“If an emergency came up, does she know how to call 911?” he asked.
“Well, she would, but, you know, you wonder. I’ve told her I’ve got all the emergency numbers on the phone, and I had my father put locks on Hana’s and Laila’s doors, so if someone got into the house they wouldn’t be able to get into their rooms. And I have her keep my gun in her room when we are gone.”
“I’ll take her out one day and teach her how to shoot it,” he said.
“You aren’t ever going to take Janet anywhere.” Her voice was slightly raised. “Don’t ever take Janet anyplace—not you!”
“What?” he stuttered. “Take her where?”
“You were about to say that you’re going to take her to the shooting range and let her practice shooting.”
“No, not me,” he recanted. “You should go somewhere and take her.”
“I’m going to do that, just for myself. I’m going to go learn how to shoot again.”
Laughing, he asked, “Why can’t I take her?”
“Because you don’t do things like that! Doris [the Chicago housekeeper] didn’t start acting up until you drove her to the hospital with her daughter when she got shot in the head with the BB gun. You just shouldn’t be out with a woman, that’s all. You should just keep away from them, and don’t give me any excuse because too many times before I trusted you with people like that and something happened. So now, if I get suspicious, I’ll just say forget it and get rid of them.”
“You think I might be hittin’ on Janet?”
“I don’t know what you might do—you’re always talking and flirting . . .”
“That’s terrible,” he said.
“Listen, do you think I’d have her in the house if I thought you would? I just know there’s a chance.”
“The girl that takes care of my children?” He sighed innocently.
“Muhammad, I would have never thought you would have messed with Tammy [a previous babysitter]. I would have never thought that.”
“Allah is my witness, I never—”
“Muhammad,” she interrupted, “don’t you say Allah, because you already told me you did!”
“But I didn’t, though . . .” he fibbed.
“You did too, at the farm. You got mad and finally admitted it to me.”
“I just said that because you made me mad—”
“You did not.”
“You just said I got mad, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, because Tammy was blaming the baby on you, and she was going everywhere with us and telling people that she was pregnant. Crazy girl. And she used to talk like a crazy person too, going around telling people you were her master.”
“She was crazy, wasn’t she?”
“And another time I came home and you had a lady sitting on your lap.”
“Where?”
“In Chicago, and then another time you were in the bus with that woman in the bathroom. Anyway, I’m just telling you . . . If I thought you would bother Janet, I would have never hired her, and just to make sure, just don’t take her anywhere.”
Joking, he said, “I’ll tell you the truth. I talked to Janet last week. She likes me. She’s my woman now . . .”
My mother was annoyed. “Ooooh, I’m just telling you . . .”
He laughed.
“And don’t tell them to come to you or anything like that because if I get suspicious I’ll just get rid of them, and Janet’s all right, I don’t want to fire her, but she does have faults.”
“How’s everyone else acting, how’s Edith [the cook]?”
“She’s fine, and Carol is okay too. She just doesn’t wear her [maid’s] uni
form. She said it makes her feel like a slave, so I told her I’d find her some pants.”
“What’s the uniform look like?”
“It’s the standard uniform. It’s pretty. It’s black and it has lace on the collar and on the sleeves, and a white apron.”
“Okay, well, I won’t say anything to that girl anymore. If she comes in here talking about money, I’m going to tell her to go see you.”
“Okay. Well, you can speak to them, just don’t say things like, ‘If you don’t like something, come see me,’ like you’re over me. You’re supposed to discuss it with me.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t make any sense. You won’t get any respect out of them.”
“I know—that’s what was wrong with all the Chicago crew. You know what they’d tell me? ‘I was here before you.’ That’s what all their attitudes were.”
“Don’t let it upset you,” he said. “It’s all over now.”
“I’m just saying, don’t start that around here.”
“Okay, I won’t. I’ll talk to you later.”
30
I was beginning to see my father through my mother’s eyes. She had devoted so much of her life to him that in some ways she had lost herself in him. It’s no wonder she eventually felt the need to break away.
Mom had a lot to deal with in the years she was married to my father. As I’ve mentioned, women were always chasing after him, and some even tried to pin their children on him. One lady claimed Dad had fathered her newborn child, which he would have eagerly accepted as his own for no other reason than he loved being a father. But judging from the birth date of the child in question, Mom figured out that, while not improbable, it was impossible. It would’ve had to have been conceived during the period they were on a month-long tour of Europe.
“I knew there was no way it was his,” said Mom.
The blood test also proved it. But its results didn’t stop the offspring of women who had allegedly spent the night with my father from copying our baby photos offline and passing them off as their own. I can’t say that I blame them. I can understand how a person without a father would want to believe that they were the long-lost love child of Muhammad Ali.
