The family’s reactions are not unlike those you or I would have looking at old home movies Everyone sighs and their mouths are at

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Published: July 17, 2010

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The family’s reactions are not unlike those you or I would have looking at old home movies Everyone sighs, and their mouths are at tender angles. “Oh, look at Bundini,” Mrs Clay says; and “Hey, there’s Otis,” Rahaman offers.And then it’s just Ali and me. On the TV, it’s early 1964 and he’s framed on the left by Jim Jacobs and on the right by Drew “Bundini” Brown. “They both dead now,” he says, an acute awareness of his own mortality in his tone.For a time, he continues to stare at the old Ali on the screen, but eventually he loses interest.

“Did my mom go upstairs? Do you know?” he asks, his voice carrying no farther than mine would if I had my hand over my mouth.”Yeah. I think she’s probably asleep.”He nods, stands, and leaves the room, presumably to check on her When he comes back he’s moving heavily His shoulder hits the side of the door to the kitchen He goes in and comes out with two fistfuls of cookies Crumbs are all over his mouth He sits by me on the sofa Our knees are touching Usually, when a man gets this close, I pull away. When he’s through eating, he yawns, closes his eyes, and seems to fall asleep.”Champ, you want me to leave?” I say “Am I keeping you up?” He slowly opens his eyes. The pores on his face suddenly look huge, his features elongated, distorted. He rubs his face the way I rub mine when I haven’t shaved in a week.”No, stay,” he says. His tone is gentle.”You’d let me know if I was staying too late?”He hesitates slightly before he answers. “I go to bed at eleven,” he says.With the volume turned this low on the TV, you hear the videotape’s steady whir “Can I ask a serious question?” I say.

He nods OK.”Does it bother you that you’re a great man not being allowed to be great?”"Wh-wh-what you mean, `not allowed to be great’?” he says, his voice hardly finding its way out of his body.”I mean .. let me think about what I mean … I mean the things you seem to care most about, the things you enjoy doing best, the things the rest of us think of as being Muhammad Ali, those are precisely the things that have been taken from you. It doesn’t seem fair.”"You don’t question God,” he says, his voice rattling in his throat.”OK, I respect that, but … Aw, man, I don’t have any business talking to you about this.”"No, no, go on,” he says.”It just bothers me,” I tell him. I’m thinking about the obvious ironies, thinking about Ali continuing to invent, and be invented by, his own mythology. About how he used to talk easier, maybe better, than anybody in the world.

About how he sometimes still thinks with speed and dazzle, but it often takes serious effort for him to communicate even with people close to him. About how he may have been the world’s best athlete – when just walking, he used to move with the grace of a cat turning a corner; now, at night, he stumbles around the house. About how it’s his left hand – the same hand from which once slid that great Ali snakelick of a jab – that shakes almost continuously. The seeming precision with which things have been excised from Ali’s life sort of spooks me.”I know why this has happened,” Ali says.

“God is showing me, and showing you” – he points his shaking index finger at me – “that I’m just a man, just like everybody else.”We sit a long quiet time then and watch his flickering image on the television screen. Then I say again, “Champ, I think it’s time for me to go,” and make an effort to stand.”No, stay You my man,” he says, and pats my leg. He has always been this way, always wanted to be around people. And I take his accolade as one of the greatest compliments of my life.”I’ll tell you a secret,” he says, and leans close “I’m gowna make a comeback.”"What?” I say. I think he’s joking, yet something in his tone makes me uncertain.


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