Ghosts of Manila - Mark Kram [75]
But George, it seems, was the least of Ali’s problems in Africa. Because of his long entangled sexual life, the solidity of his marriage was unraveling, and reporters paid little attention. Understandably, for the press was not riveted on the salacious as it is today. Not even the shrill hypocrisy of Ali’s words matched against his actions could inspire the press. His comments, perhaps frivolous, about African women did not even pop an eye. He said he couldn’t be aroused by them because they were too black, that “they could use some white blood on their mammy’s side.” Much was churning behind the scenes in Zaire, all of it having to do with Belinda, the imperturbable, so it seemed, Muslim princess. There was the sudden and then ubiquitous appearance of Veronica Porche, a gliding nineteen-year-old Catholic in a long white dress, without the beads of sweat on her near-white face that clung to lesser mortals; with much poise she moved by Ali’s side like a queenly ocean liner on the night sea of Kinshasa. Who was she? “My babysitter,” Ali said, without the slightest nod to the possibility that she might be dysfunctional to his black-is-best image.
Not so to Belinda (now named Khalilah), who knew that she was under siege. From the outside, she was a wife of perfect obeisance. Privately, she’d have her say to a point, but Ali insisted on servility. Steadily, they became more like brother and sister. She was actively opposed to Ali continuing in the ring, and once had a spat about the subject while sitting in a surrey at Deer Lake before Zaire; she feared for him. Herbert Muhammad, who had arranged her marriage to Ali, knew about this, how easily Ali could be persuaded and how unprofitable it could be. Herbert and Don King, the promoter who did what Herbert told him, introduced Veronica into the mix to checkmate Belinda. Prior to the fight, Belinda scratched Ali’s face in a bitter argument, and from then on she could be seen wearing a Foreman button. Also present, in between Veronica and Belinda, was a young girl (known and accepted by Belinda) who was totally off the screen and is even today; a mystery woman who will later provide a uniquely penetrating look at Ali—Ali the angel, Ali the user.
The archipelago of the Philippines, seventeen hundred islands strung out like an arrowless bow, was America’s first Vietnam, where one-tenth of the population died in what Gore Vidal calls the first “genocide in modern history before Hitler.” After a dustup with Spain in Cuba, America flexed its young imperialistic muscle—not without thought. President William McKinley, urged on by Senator Albert Beveridge, who envisioned the United States as the “trustees of civilization,” spent a whole night pacing the floor only to decide that God had convinced him to free Filipinos, to take them from Spain. Without much intervention from Spain, America in 1900 found itself smack in the middle of a fierce guerrilla insurgency that wanted only independence. The Filipinos, when not docile, were renowned as fighters. America would lose thousands of troops in regular bloodbaths, and the .45 caliber would be invented to stop the Filipinos because ordinary weaponry didn’t discourage them. In the end, the Philippines fell to American colonialism, where garrisoned soldiers and installed bureaucrats referred to the natives as “niggers.”
By 1975, the islands were independent, after having shown uncommon courage by the side of the Americans against the Japanese at Corregidor, Bataan, and all through the action. Manila had been reduced to a semblance of rotten teeth during the war, yet all the moral intensity and reconstruction money went to Japan, a fact that made Filipinos bitter and contributed to the rise of the tough-talking Ferdinand Marcos. He was going to bring an end to American puppetry and quasi-colonialism