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 “Muhammad Ali wanted everything to conform with Muslim tradition and be consistent with Muslim law, and about seven years ago my friend, the Muslim scholar Timothy Gianotti, and I met at the Ali home in Louisville for two days with Lonnie and the legal team and Muhammad, who at that point had difficulty talking but was definitely still in command of his mental faculties. I wrote him a couple poems that he really liked. (Shakir read them at the memorial service. Example: “If reindeer could box he would have whooped Donner and Blitzen, if presidents could fight he would have whooped Richard Nixon.” — Ed.) If there was something he wanted to communicate and couldn’t say it, he was able to write. Actually, we went to dinner and he drew me a picture with a marker on a cloth napkin of a chain of snow-capped mountains.

“We knew from the media that Ali had been hospitalized, but he had been hospitalized several times over the last few years — pneumonia, this or that. We figured he’d get out and be going home soon. But we got the call that he wasn’t going to make it. OK, now this is no longer a plan. This isn’t just something on paper. I’m in Oakland, and when he did pass, I was able to get on the first flight to Phoenix and go to the hospital and spend the last hours with Ali and his family. He was still alive, via life support, for about five hours after I got there. My role was just to comfort Ali and surround him with encouragements, to read the Quran, comfort the family. It was a serene and spiritual environment for his transition from this world to the next.

“I was right there at his bedside when he passed. In fact, it was during the call to prayer that he passed. That’s the first thing a baby hears when they’re born. Traditionally, the father makes that call in the right ear, and then a very similar call in the left ear. Those should be the first things a child hears when they come into the world. And that was the last thing Ali heard leaving the world. After he passed, the family wanted me to stay with the body. He’s lying in the bed, and I was always on the right side, so for a lot of that time I’m standing and just holding his left hand — the hand of the famous Ali jab.

“When we left the hospital, we kind of faked the media out, to avoid a circus. The hearse left from a delivery ramp, a back door. I was in the back of the hearse with the body bag, chanting some Muslim prayers. The funeral home in Phoenix was in a more suburban part of the city, with access to plants and wild flowers and the mountains.

“We made sure that in each of the cities where Ali spent a significant amount of time — Louisville, the Phoenix area, Atlanta, the farm in Michigan — that there were teams of people available for the washing and shrouding of the body. The person who washed the body in Phoenix was probably the most experienced body washer in America. He had prepared over 900 bodies for burial. He was a master.

“First we washed the parts of the body that one would before praying — the face and then the arms up to the elbows, then the hair, then the ears, then the feet. Then we washed the rest by pouring water under a set of sheets covering the body, the water running from a hand-held spout like you’d use to water flowers. We scrubbed the body down with a wash cloth, from head to toe. You do that three times, the third time with perfumed water. We shrouded the body in three full-length, sheet-like white cloths.

“On the plane from Phoenix to Louisville, due to a change in the schedule, there was talk about having a private funeral. I just remember pushing emphatically for that not to happen, that it had to be a funeral that was open to the public, large enough to accommodate a large amount of folks. People deserved an opportunity to send the Champ off in an appropriate way. We were able to get the North Hall at the Fairgrounds for the funeral prayer, the Jenazah.

“He was in the hole of the plane, and when the container came down the conveyor, covered in the tapestry with Quran verses, I remember reflecting on the great journey that Muhammad Ali had taken. And yet, in doing everything he did, he maintained what Kipling says in his poem: ‘You can walk with kings and not lose the common touch.’

“The procession through the city is one of the most memorable and moving experiences of my life. Old folks, black folks, white folks, rich folks, poor folks. This isn’t something human beings accomplish on their own accord. There’s something more powerful at work here. Ali was used by God to do some extraordinary things in this world. Ali opened people’s hearts in a way that nobody else on the face of this earth has been able to do, especially in the 20th century. Even in death, to be so alive in people’s hearts — those are the signs of sainthood. The saint lives on in the hearts of the believers.

“I’d been out to the cemetery before the burial to make sure the grave was properly aligned, to make sure it was perpendicular to the direction of Mecca. The preferred practice is that the body is directly put in the ground, lying on the right side to face Mecca, but we arranged all of that in the coffin. Once we were graveside, we made sure all attendees had an opportunity to throw dirt onto the coffin. We said our prayers, and bid farewell to certainly the greatest figure ever to come out of Louisville, Kentucky.”