'Dad's (MUHAMMAD ALI) Not Angry At The World Any More'
SOURCE: Telegraph.co.uk, UK
WWWeb: http://tinyurl.com/3zrzk

(Filed: 24/11/2004)

Rasheda Ali talks to Michael Shelden about life as the daughter of
one of the world's most famous boxers – and how they are both
learning to cope with his Parkinson's disease

In his prime, Muhammad Ali used to proclaim, with immodest
exuberance, that he was "extra pretty". Sitting across from his
daughter, Rasheda, I am reminded of his words and decide that here is
one Ali for whom the phrase is no exaggeration.

As we talk over tea at one of the swankier casinos in Las Vegas,
where she lives, passers-by stop to stare and scratch their heads,
their puzzled looks suggesting they can't quite place the willowy
beauty with the long silky hair, but assume she must be a celebrity.

But unlike her father in his youth, Rasheda - who was born in the
Seventies to the second of Ali's four wives - is unassuming, soft-
spoken and not even a touch pugnacious. She is brainy rather than
brash, with a good university education and a mind so full of
curiosity that she has made herself something of an expert on
Parkinson's disease - the cruel affliction of her father's old age.
She has just written a book explaining it to children, called I'll
Hold Your Hand So You Won't Fall (www.meritpublishing.com).

"It's been 20 years since my dad showed the first symptoms of the
disease. I've had so many questions about it and have wanted to
understand what was happening to him.

"It's progressive, so the illness will get worse. And if you're
dealing with it as a family, what do you tell children? How do you
explain to them why granddad has tremors or trouble speaking?"

As a young mother with two small boys - Biaggio, six, and Nico, four -
 she found herself struggling to find good answers to such questions.
She started quizzing her father's doctors and began doing research on
her own.

"I found out so much and was relieved to learn that the disease isn't
necessarily inherited. And when my boys would play with their Poppy
and ask why he didn't laugh or why his hands shook, I could finally
answer them. That's what led me to create a guide for children so
they can understand why their loved ones behave in a certain way.

"One thing I didn't have an answer for was whether boxing had
anything to do with my dad's Parkinson's. No one really knows why one
person gets it and another doesn't, but I now doubt that boxing plays
any part in it. I haven't been able to find a single case of another
important boxer with the disease. As far as I know, my dad's the only
one."

Even in illness, "The Greatest" remains a singular figure. Now 62, he
lives quietly at a farm on the site of his old training camp in
Michigan. Rasheda sees him often, but it's only in recent years that
she has come to know him well.

"When I was little, he was still boxing and travelling the world. I
didn't see him very much. But now we're close and spend time talking
to each other like brother and sister."

She was brought up in a small town in Illinois, living with her
mother's parents and going to the local state schools. Her father was
a glamorous figure whom she saw occasionally and adored, but who
remained larger than life and mostly out of reach. He was "Daddy on
TV", she says with a laugh.

In a voice that has the characteristic Ali lilt, she adds, "I knew he
was cool. I just wasn't sure why."

It's just as well she was out of the picture for so many of the last
stormy years of her father's career. He began losing fights and his
10-year marriage to her mother - Belinda Boyd - suffered a nasty
break-up.

Back in Illinois, Rasheda and her brothers and sisters were
blissfully unaware of the chaos.

"I grew up in a normal way - it was very middle class - and most
people treated me like an ordinary person. It was only later, when I
was away at college, that I found being my dad's daughter could be a
problem with some people - especially boys, who would treat me
differently as soon as they found out who I was."

To avoid the problem, she began making a point of not revealing who
her father was. The man who is now her husband - Las Vegas chef Bob
Walsh - knew her for a year before he discovered, by accident, that
she was Muhammad Ali's daughter.

"I liked knowing that Bob accepted me for who I am and not who my
father is. When he found out the truth, he was surprised but, by that
point, it didn't change things.

"One time, I punched Bob playfully and he pretended to be hurt and
said: 'You hit me like Muhammad Ali, not Rasheda Ali.' I thought then
that he knew, but he didn't."

In her zeal to understand her father's illness, she seems to have
become more at ease with his fame and with the long, controversial
story of his life. She wants to know everything she can about him and
has spent hours at his side, talking to him about the past. It has
left her with more sympathy for the angry young boxer who couldn't
give her enough of his time back then because he was too busy
fighting, in and out of the ring.

"I now understand his anger," she says. "A lot of it was in response
to the racism of that time. America wanted to send him into the army
to fight in Vietnam, but he thought, why should I fight those people
over there when I can't even sit down and eat at restaurants in my
own country?

"This was the Sixties. He had to ask himself: 'Who's my real enemy?
The Viet Cong or the establishment in America?' "

She concedes that his anger led him to overreact, turning on other
black Americans who didn't agree with him and calling them "Uncle
Toms". She says that he particularly regrets not doing more to help
when his old friend Malcolm X ran foul of the black separatists in
the Nation of Islam. But she thinks some of Malcolm's spirit has
touched her father in his old age.

"Malcolm went through a transformation at the end of his life. He
didn't die a militant. He died as a man of peace. Sometimes, to find
peace, you have to get through a lot of anger.

"My dad was very angry for years, but I think he has now found some
of the same peace that Malcolm found. He has his regrets, but he's
not angry at the world any more."

He has even managed to patch up things with Belinda, who now lives in
the same small town in Illinois where Rasheda grew up. All is
forgiven on both sides, their daughter says, and Ali himself seems to
have found happiness at last with his fourth wife - Lonnie - whom he
married in 1986.

Religion has helped to change the man, Rasheda believes. Both father
and daughter consider themselves devout Muslims, but both are careful
to keep their distance from any radical sects. No doubt her broad
interpretation of the faith would not please some fundamentalists,
but she calls herself a "good Muslim", prays five times a day and
worships regularly at mosques.

"The fundamentalists misrepresent the religion. I've visited some
mosques where I wasn't welcome, but I think that's more a question of
cultural differences instead of religious ones. I love my religion,
but I don't throw it at people. I try to respect everyone."

Perhaps because of her strong spiritual faith, she is hopeful that a
cure will one day be found for Parkinson's, and that no one will have
to suffer what her father has endured over the past two decades.

"I think some good has out of it, because it's made our family
stronger, and it's given my father a mission. He is fighting for a
cure now that may not help him, but will save others. It's not the
boxer Ali that I have come to admire so much, but the fighter for
humanitarian causes.

"That's what people respond to now. I see them come up to my father
on the street and thank him for all that he's done in his life to
help others, going all the way back to his stand against the war in
the Sixties. He went against the grain then and stood up for things
that people still care about today."

The old wounds over racism have not quite healed, but the world has
changed so much since Ali's fiery denunciations of white oppression
that he now finds himself the grandfather of two boys who look more
like their Italian-Irish father than their mother. And, of course,
the old lion adores the boys, who - thanks to their mother's patient
teachings - understand Parkinson's much better than most adults.

"It's a strange disease because it affects each individual in such
different ways. Some people have tremors first and slurred speech
later. It's always seemed ironic to me that the first change in my
father came with his speech. Talking to people and entertaining them
with words was such a big part of his life."

How difficult is it to carry on a conversation with him now?

"Not that difficult. With my dad, it's not just words that matter.
Sometimes, all I have to do is look in his eyes and I understand
exactly what he wants to say."

Reference Links:

Muhammad Ali [official site]
http://www.ali.com/

Muhammad Ali
Goat - Greatest Of All Time. A Tribute to Muhammad Ali.
http://tinyurl.com/3zrzk

Laila Ali Official Site
Daughter of Mohammed Ali.
http://www.LailaAli.us

Muhammad Ali Center - Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky
http://www.alicenter.org/heart/about.shtml

SOURCE: Telegraph.co.uk, UK
WWWeb: http://tinyurl.com/3zrzk

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