my mind. The rest of my mind was filled with a parade of a thousand and one different scenes
from the past twelve years... scenes in the Muslim mosques... scenes with Mr. Muhammad..
. scenes with Mr. Muhammad's family... scenes with Muslims, individually, as my audiences,
and at our social gatherings... and scenes with the white man in audiences, and the press.
I walked, I talked, I functioned. At the Cassius Clay fight camp, I told the various sportswriters
repeatedly what I gradually had come to know within myself was a lie-that I would be reinstated
within ninety days. But I could not yet let myself psychologically face what I knew: that already the
Nation of Islam and I were physically divorced. Do you understand what I mean? A judge's
signature on a piece of paper can grant to a couple a physical divorce-but for either of them, or
maybe for both of them, if they have been a very close marriage team, to actually become
psychologically divorced from each other might take years.
But in the physical divorce, I could not evade the obvious strategy and plotting coming out of
Chicago to eliminate me from the Nation of Islam... if not from this world. And I felt that I
perceived the anatomy of the plotting.
Any Muslim would have known that my "chickens coming home to roost" statement had been
only an excuse to put into action the plan for getting me out. And step one had been already
taken: the Muslims were given the impression that I had rebelled against Mr. Muhammad. I could
now anticipate step two: I would remain "suspended" (and later I would be "isolated") indefinitely.
Step three would be either to provoke some Muslim ignorant of the truth to take it upon himself to
kill me as a "religious duty"-or to "isolate" me so that I would gradually disappear from the public
scene.
The only person who knew was my wife. I never would have dreamed that I would ever depend
so much upon any woman for strength as I now leaned upon Betty. There was no exchange
between us; Betty said nothing, being the caliber of wife that she is, with the depth of
understanding that she has-but I could feel the envelopment of her comfort. I knew that she was
as faithful a servant of Allah as I was, and I knew that whatever happened, she was with me.
The death talk was not my fear. Every second of my twelve years with Mr. Muhammad, I had
been ready to lay down my life for him. The thing to meworse than death was the betrayal. I could
conceive death. I couldn't conceive betrayal-not of the loyalty which I had given to the Nation of
Islam, and to Mr. Muhammad. During the previous twelve years, if Mr. Muhammad had committed
any civil crime punishable by death, I would have said and tried to prove that I did it-to save himand
I would have gone to the electric chair, as Mr. Muhammad's servant.
There as Cassius Clay's guest in Miami, I tried desperately to push my mind off my troubles and
onto the Nation's troubles. I still struggled to persuade myself that Mr. Muhammad had been
fulfilling prophecy. Because I actually had believed that if Mr. Muhammad was not God, then he
surely stood next to God.
What began to break my faith was that, try as I might, I couldn't hide, I couldn't evade, that Mr.
Muhammad, instead of facing what he had done before his followers, as a human weakness or
as fulfillment of prophecy-which I sincerely believe that Muslims would have understood, or at
least they would have accepted-Mr. Muhammad had, instead, been willing to hide, to cover up
what he had done.
That was my major blow.
That was how I first began to realize that I had believed in Mr. Muhammad more than he believed
in himself.
And that was how, after twelve years of never thinking for as much as five minutes about myself, I
became able finally to muster the nerve, and the strength, to start facing the facts, to think for
myself.
Briefly I left Florida to return Betty and the children to our Long Island home. I learned that the
Chicago Muslim officials were further displeased with mebecause of the newspaper reports of me
in the Cassius Clay camp. They felt that Cassius hadn't a prayer of a chance to win. They felt the
Nation would be embarrassed through my linking the Muslim image with him. (I don't know if the
champion today cares to remember that most newspapers in America were represented at the
pre-fight camp-except Muhammad Speaks. Even though Cassius was a Muslim brother, the