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Showing posts with the label My father and Ali

The Greatest Last Punch

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Salman Siddiqui talks about his father Hamid Siddiqui's meeting with the late boxing legend Muhammad Ali. My late father Hamid Siddiqui with Muhammad Ali prior to his press conference in Kuwait in Jan. 1972. It is January 1972 and Muhammad Ali, the legend, is replacing a Cross chain pendant around the neck of an Indian woman with a small Quran one in Kuwait. “Mary Lobo is now a Muslim,” the Kuwait city-based Daily News, for which my late father then worked as a journalist, splashed on its main page as it reported on Ali’s visit to the tiny oil-rich gulf state. News clip from Daily News, Kuwait, dated Jan. 11, 1972. The daily also prominently displayed a picture of a beaming all-smiles Lobo along with Ali, who was dressed in a white half-sleeve shirt sporting a massive yet stylish tie, during a small conversion ceremony held at a fancy hotel. 46 years later, as the world mourns the loss of The Greatest, my family rummaged through my father Hamid Siddiqui’s long forgot