Muhammad Ali In Fighter’s Heaven

BLUEBIRDS FLY WITH BLUEBIRDS

I ARRIVED IN camp the next afternoon at about 3:00. As I rounded the first cabin, walking slowly toward the courtyard, I could see smoke curling up from the far side of the camp. To the left of Ali’s cabin, past his green Rolls parked in the center of the courtyard, Angelo and Blood were burning garbage in a large wire container. I sat on top of a rock and watched the thick smoke roll down off the hill.

Soon Ali appeared and beckoned us over to join him in the shadow of Coretta’s kitchen.

‘So you’ve been watching the Watergate hearings on T.V.?’ we asked, taking a seat beside him on a long wooden bench.

‘No, not really,’ Ali replied, bending down to pick up some pebbles. ‘They just crooks. I knew that already.’

‘So what have you been doing since I last saw you?’

‘Well, I got some new writings,’ he said. ‘Some beautiful short poems.’ He stood up and, running over to the Rolls, pulled open the rear door. Emerging from the back seat with a sheaf of paper, he danced back grinning to the bench and sat down beside me with the pages in both hands, ready to read. There were some twenty-five pieces of Fighter’s Heaven stationary, with a small picture of Ali at the bottom of each page.

‘These are some one-line things that I think I’m going to put on signs. People can hang them up in the kitchen, they can put them on their walls.’ As Ali gestured, making an imaginary kitchen wall with his left hand, I glanced over his right shoulder at the writing. The pages were covered with poems scrawled on both sides in large, spiderish handwriting. ‘I prefer you don’t read, just listen,’ he suggested politely but firmly, arranging the pile of papers neatly in his lap.

I nodded and sat back as he began to read, looking up confidently to repeat each ‘poem’ a second time slowly, emphatically, before he’d glance down for another line. The first one went:

A worldly loss often turns into spiritual gain. ‘Many people lost Martin Luther King but – I hate to say it – it helped people to get more things they wanted,’ Ali commented. ‘I gave up my title and money for four years, and now I’m bigger than ever and more praised and well-respected and honored. See? Beautiful!’ We nodded as he fished down into his lap for another one-line poem, came up with it, and read:

The man who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life. ‘I take a lot of risks with odds against me,’ Ali explained; ‘predictions, the draft, my religion, my name. I mean, the man who went to the moon didn’t have to come back. Columbus went around the world, and they thought he would fall off. See? The man who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life. Beautiful!’

‘Now here’s a good one,’ he continued. ‘Here’s one of my favorities:

‘Many people lost Martin Luther King but – I hate to say it – it helped people to get more things they wanted,’ Ali commented. ‘I gave up my title and money for four years, and now I’m bigger than ever and more praised and well-respected and honored. See? Beautiful!’

False politeness is like imitation jewelry, and false kisses are like imitation flowers. ‘Ain’t that beautiful?’ he sighed.

The spirit of controversy is fed through argument. ‘And that’s why me and Howard Cosell are a controversy, ’cause we’re always arguing!’

Every moment of your life is more valuable than anything else in the world. ‘All the diamonds in the world, this car, this camp, my title – every moment is more valuable. If you don’t believe it, let me hold my hand over your mouth for three minutes, and you’d die. See? These moments are valuable. Beautiful!’

One cannot be wise and foolish at the same time, for light and darkness cannot do well together.

‘Does that apply to integration, too?’ I asked.

Ali paused. ‘Sure. There are more white women after negroes now than ever. Go to a discotheque in New York and watch what’s happening: everybody sitting with their integrated mate. That ain’t nothing. That’s bad. Bastard children. No intelligent white man or white woman in his or her right mind wants black boys and black girls marrying their sons and daughters, introducing their grandchildren as half-brown, kinky haired negroes. They don’t want that. No black man, no black woman, in his or her right mind, wants any white boys or white girls marrying their beautiful black sons and daughters, introducing their grandchildren as blond haired half-negroes. It’s embarrassing. Every man wants a child to look like himself.

‘The Japanese love their little Japanese children; Eskimos love their little Eskimo children. I love my daughters and my son, and they look like me. I don’t want no blond haired, blue eyed son. That ain’t progress. Spotted up, losing identity …

‘The Chinese love China, the Mexicans love Mexico, the Hindus love India. They love the culture. Who wants to lose themselves through blood-mating? You come back twenty years later, you don’t know who is who. That ain’t progress; that’s fighting God.

‘Bluebirds fly with bluebirds, pigeons like pigeons, eagles like eagles, buzzards like buzzards. All of them are birds, but they have different hangouts. Flies are with flies, you see bees with bees: insects got sense. Now why are negroes and white people in America so right, and all of nature wrong? Blue birds fly with blue birds and red birds with red birds, and if the blue bird get lost with the red bird, he get on out. You see the black ant dragging the other ants to get out of his neighborhood; they even fight.

“You know that old man, that didn’t like niggers five years ago, ain’t changed now. No! You can do anything you want now, down South. I could take a white girl right now, walk her downtown Mississippi, hold her in my hands, and won’t nobody say nothing. That change is too quick.”

‘Everything wants to be with his own kind, except the negroes, who don’t know themselves, and the white people, who are trying to trick the negroes into thinking that 400-year-old enemies are all of a sudden brothers. Old white man in Mississippi, now all of a sudden you can go and get his daughter, take her out and screw her. You know that old man, that didn’t like niggers five years ago, ain’t changed now. No! You can do anything you want now, down South. I could take a white girl right now, walk her downtown Mississippi, hold her in my hands, and won’t nobody say nothing. That change is too quick.

‘But the government sends out pamphlets. They know they gotta … The only way Pharoah could stay alive was to keep the slaves in Egypt. As soon as black people got out of Egypt, then Pharoah was in trouble. As long as black people are in America, she won’t have too many problems; but as soon as they separate, or even start thinking of splitting, there’s going to be a lot of trouble. So the government don’t want this, so they are stopping it through integration. They got fresh air programs down there where they send little black boys from the North to the South and into the white town. And you know that’s phony; it’s hypocritical. What’s a white family in Alabama doing with a little black boy? Here’s the little black boy, eight years old, and the little white girl is twelve, and they’re running around playing. What’s that going to lead up to? That ain’t no good. And the white family’s taking care of the black boy; you know that’s not real. It’s something that’s being pushed by the government.

“See, what’s going to happen is, like a woman’s nine months’ pregnant, and the baby starts kicking, and the baby wants to get out. Well, if they don’t get that baby out, the woman and the baby will die. Well America, she is pregnant with the truth.”

‘See, I got a plan here. When I retire, I’m gonna have black boys from the ghetto come out here. Now that’s good, a summer camp where black children can be with their own kind; none of this forced integration like they have now.

“I respect you. I treat everybody good, integrate. We’re integrating now. But I ain’t going to go drinking with your woman!”

‘See, America’s going to be so plagued with draughts and tornadoes and earthquakes and hurricanes and beef and food, milk and all kinds of shortages, that God is going to force America to let black people go free, separate. See, what’s going to happen is, like a woman’s nine months’ pregnant, and the baby starts kicking, and the baby wants to get out. Well, if they don’t get that baby out, the woman and the baby will die. Well America, she is pregnant with the truth. In 1930, the seed of truth was planted. Allah God, a flesh and blood man, came to America, taught Elijah Muhammad, told him to unite black people, bring them back to Islam, back to their right names, cultures, religion. America’s rule is over; it’s time for us to separate. Now this truth has been planted and it’s growing. The baby, the black man, is now kicking; he wants to be free. America’s paining. And, if she don’t let him go, they’ll both die.

‘But you know, it’s not hate. I don’t hate nobody. I know people. I know where to go, where not to go. I know whose daughter to look at, whose daughter not to look at. I don’t get in no trouble. The man in trouble is the man who don’t know where he is. The man in Vietnam who knows how to find a booby trap is in less trouble than the man who can’t find a booby trap.

‘I respect you. I treat everybody good, integrate. We’re integrating now. But I ain’t going to go drinking with your woman! That’s going too far. Too many pretty black women that I could meet, Chinese or Mexicans or Puerto Ricans or Saudi Arabians or Turks or Algerians or Indonesians. They all dark, all Asiatic. I can marry a Mexican woman, ain’t nobody going to be mad. I can marry an African woman, ain’t nobody gonna be mad. I can marry an Egyptian woman; I been offered all kinds of women in the Moslem world. I can marry a Pakistani woman; they’re beautiful people – complexion, hair … Why do I want to go out of my way chasing after someone when her brother might shoot me or poison me? It’s sick. See, this ain’t no progress. It’s gonna be stopped. Black people are gonna be Muslims soon. They all gonna be with Elijah Muhammad. But the white man, who is the most powerful, will have to kinda get weak. And when they see that he ain’t so big and bad, then they’ll come and follow. The power will be broke. See, the black people are like leeches on a dog’s back, sucking his blood. The dog die, the leech die. So the leech has to find another back to hop on to. See?

‘So if you notice the country, you notice the way the money’s falling. You turn on the news at six o’clock: all bad news. Look at the meat problem, the concrete problem, the war and … See, America’s like a rich person who’s poor, but they have a lot of food in the frigidaire. But all they got is what’s in the frige, and as soon as the frigidaire be empty, that’s real trouble. But she still pretending to be big and powerful, red white and blue. But she’s got just a little left in the frigidaire, and when that’s gone, that’s it.

‘See, America, they haven’t been here but a few years. Look at the history. America’s been here for two hundred years. What’s two hundred years? The Gaza pyramid in Egypt is 7500 years old. I mean, America just got here yesterday. People are intoxicated with narcotics, alcohol, and some with wealth. America’s so intoxicated, she really believes that she’s God. A little airplane gets up there in a thunderstorm, and you can’t fly. In Chicago the other day, there was a rainstorm. The airport wasn’t worth a quarter, the radar wasn’t worth a quarter, the big bad jets … Just a little rain. Now say there is somebody out there who could control that, on earth. Look how powerful that is. A little snow could come – you can’t get in this camp, you can’t get up this hill. A little snow.’