Part 9 (1/2)

By the time of his recruitment trip to Boston, Malcolm had made his decision to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca. The chance for spiritual purification at this juncture of great change and uncertainty seemed too important to pa.s.s up. It was likely during his time in Boston that Malcolm visited Ella and asked her to loan him the money, some thirteen hundred dollars, that he would need to make the pilgrimage. Despite all the trouble they had given each other since he had moved in with her as a teenager, she agreed.

On March 26, Martin Luther King, Jr., was on Capitol Hill with plans to discuss the stalled 1964 civil rights bill with Senators Hubert Humphrey, Jacob Javits, and others. The moment caught King at a difficult time, when even close aides like James Bevel were warning that ”people are losing faith . . . in the nonviolent movement.” When King moved to a conference room off the Senate floor to discuss developments with the press, Malcolm, who was also visiting that day, slipped in to listen. After the conference, the men left through separate doors, but as King was walking along the crowded Senate gallery observing the filibuster of pro-segregationist senators, he encountered Malcolm and several aides. Malcolm probably was not eager for an informal encounter, much less a staged photograph. It was James 67X who had cleverly set up the entire affair, pus.h.i.+ng his boss around a marble column until he and King suddenly stood facing each other. A photographer in the gallery took a photo of them shaking hands, which would come to symbolize the two great streams of black consciousness that flourished in the 1960s and beyond. It was the only time the two men ever met.

Yet the handshake also marked a transition for Malcolm, crystallizing as it did a movement away from the revolutionary rhetoric that defined ”Message to the Gra.s.sroots” toward something akin to what King had worked his entire adult life to achieve: improvement in the black condition through changing the American system. Three days after the meeting, Malcolm gave a speech at the Audubon Ballroom before six hundred people that served as a foundation for a more famous address he would give a week later. Though the announced topic, ”The Ballot or the Bullet,” seemed incendiary, at its core the speech actually contained a far more conventional message, one that had defined the civil rights movement as far back as 1962: the importance of voting rights. In the speech, Malcolm emphasized that all Harlemites, and by extension blacks everywhere, had to register as voters. Gone was the old Nation of Islam claim that partic.i.p.ation in the system could have little effect. Now Malcolm called for a united black front that would seek to wrest control of blacks' economic and political future. ”Unity is the right religion,” he insisted. ”Black people must forget their differences and discuss the points on which they can agree.” He also questioned the ability of the civil rights movement to compensate blacks for ”three hundred ten years of unpaid slave labor.” What was most significant was his s.h.i.+ft from the use of violence to achieve blacks' objectives to the exercising of the electoral franchise. By embracing the ballot, he was implicitly rejecting violence, even if this was at times difficult to discern in the heat of his rhetoric.

The next day he sat down for an interview with the Militant Militant, the newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party. For decades, the SWP had promoted revolutionary black nationalism. Leon Trotsky himself had believed that Negro Americans would be the vanguard for the inevitable socialist revolution in the United States. Malcolm's separation from the Nation of Islam and his endors.e.m.e.nt of voter registration and ma.s.s protest by African Americans seemed to Trotskyists a move toward socialism.

By the time Malcolm arrived at the Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland on April 3 to address a major public rally hosted by the local CORE chapter, he had refined ”The Ballot or the Bullet” into a formidable piece of oratory. Much of the Cleveland CORE group had embraced Malcolm as a movement leader, and a crowd of between two and three thousand people, including many whites, packed the church. The format of the evening's program was a dialogue between Malcolm and his old friend Louis Lomax. Lomax spoke first, presenting a pro-integrationist civil rights message that won respectful applause from the audience. Malcolm's talk drew from his recent Audubon addresses, yet ultimately cohered into something greater, a fierce commentary on the lay of the land. On the one hand, the speech caught the mood of black America as it slowly s.h.i.+fted from a belief in the efficacy of nonviolence into a general state of dissatisfaction and impatience with the civil rights movement. In early 1964, as SNCC and CORE began to take more militant positions, the atmosphere of race politics grew heavier with the possibility of violence; indeed, within six months race riots would break out in black neighborhoods throughout the Northeast. ”Now we have the type of black man on the scene in America today,” Malcolm told the crowd, ”who just doesn't intend to turn the other cheek any longer.” In raising the specter of the ”bullet,” he acknowledged that it would take great effort to pull the country from the path to catastrophe. Yet in discussing the ”ballot,” he held out hope that such a change was possible.

The first part of Malcolm's lecture made an appeal for black unity despite ideological quarrels. ”If we have differences,” Malcolm argued, ”let us differ in the closet; when we come out in front, let us not have anything to argue about until we get finished arguing with the man.” This sentiment directly contradicted the ”Message to the Gra.s.sroots,” which had ridiculed King and other civil rights activists. For Malcolm, a precondition for unity was finding a secular basis for common ground, which is why he also strove to decouple his ident.i.ty as a Muslim cleric from his political engagements. ”Just as Adam Clayton Powell is a Christian minister,” Malcolm observed, he himself was a Muslim minister who was committed to black liberation ”by whatever means necessary.” Malcolm then pivoted to denounce both major political parties as well as the U.S. power structure, which continued to deny most blacks a real chance at voting. Malcolm had come to see the vote as a necessary tool if black Americans were to take control of the inst.i.tutions in their communities. He reminded his audience of the power that a black voting bloc could have in a divided country, claiming that ”it was the black man's vote” that secured the Kennedy-Johnson ticket victory in the previous presidential election. But he impressed on the crowd that of voting or violence, the United States was sure to get at least one. The writing was on the wall, with young black boys in Jacksonville throwing Molotov c.o.c.ktails in the streets. ”It'll be Molotov c.o.c.ktails this month, hand grenades next month, something else next month,” he a.s.sured the crowd. ”It'll be ballots, or it'll be bullets.” Yet as ominous as this message sounded, it still represented a step back from the brink of inevitable violence suggested in ”Message to the Gra.s.sroots.” The ballot offered a way out: Malcolm was suggesting that if the federal government guaranteed full voting rights for African Americans nationwide, it could avoid a b.l.o.o.d.y conflagration. What was also significant about the address was what was now missing: no longer did Malcolm claim that Elijah Muhammad possessed the best program addressing blacks' interests.

The small cadre of Trotskyists at the Cory Methodist Church were thrilled with Malcolm's presentation, which seemed to confirm their own theory that revolutionary black nationalism could be the spark for igniting a socialist revolution in the United States. The Militant Militant's coverage of the Cleveland event highlighted approvingly Malcolm's castigation of ”the Democratic party; the con game they call the filibuster,' and the 'white political crooks' who keep the black man from control of his own community.” At times in the talk, Malcolm appeared to move away from a race-based a.n.a.lysis toward a cla.s.s perspective. ”I am not antiwhite,” Malcolm insisted. ”I am antiexploitation, antioppression.” The Militant Militant mentioned Malcolm's support for the creation of a black nationalist party and his call for a ”black nationalist convention by August [1964], with delegates from all over the country.” mentioned Malcolm's support for the creation of a black nationalist party and his call for a ”black nationalist convention by August [1964], with delegates from all over the country.”

Malcolm's lecture was tape recorded, and soon thousands of record copies were being distributed. Second only to ”Message to the Gra.s.sroots,” ”The Ballot or the Bullet” would become one of Malcolm's most widely quoted talks. The FBI monitored the lecture, and appeared to recognize Malcolm's new appeal to a growing number of whites. The Bureau focused on two of his central arguments: that the civil rights bill being filibustered before the Senate either would not be pa.s.sed or, if signed by President Johnson, would not be implemented; and that African Americans should initiate gun clubs. ”It is lawful for anyone to own a rifle or a shotgun and it is everyone's right to protect themselves from anyone who stands in their way to prevent them from obtaining what is rightfully theirs,” Malcolm was reported to have said.

By the beginning of April 1964, Malcolm eagerly looked forward to leaving the country; several days after the Cleveland speech, he purchased a plane ticket to travel throughout the Middle East and Africa, with tentative stops including Lagos, Accra, Algiers, Cairo, Jeddah, and Khartoum. If the trip promised spiritual restoration, it also offered a practical respite, giving him at least a month away from his increasingly combative relations.h.i.+p with the Nation and its representatives. The break was much needed. After his March 9 split, he had spent the rest of the month watching tensions escalate. Elijah Muhammad had pressured two of Malcolm's brothers, Philbert and Wilfred, ministers of the mosques in Lansing and Detroit respectively, to publicly denounce him as a hypocrite and a traitor. Worse, the Nation soon took aim at Malcolm's refuge. The day after Handlers Times Times article appeared announcing the split, Captain Joseph had turned up at the Elmhurst home demanding the Mosque's incorporation papers and other valuables, which Malcolm reluctantly turned over. On the last day of March, attorney Joseph Williams, on behalf of Mosque No. 7 secretary Maceo X Owens, filed papers in Queens County demanding the eviction of Malcolm and his family from the house. Outraged, Malcolm secured Harlem civil rights attorney Percy Sutton to oppose the suit, but the squabbling soon left him drained and dispirited. His heart was not in the fight. As April unfolded, he seemed disconnected from these legal proceedings, and he focused on the journey that lay ahead. article appeared announcing the split, Captain Joseph had turned up at the Elmhurst home demanding the Mosque's incorporation papers and other valuables, which Malcolm reluctantly turned over. On the last day of March, attorney Joseph Williams, on behalf of Mosque No. 7 secretary Maceo X Owens, filed papers in Queens County demanding the eviction of Malcolm and his family from the house. Outraged, Malcolm secured Harlem civil rights attorney Percy Sutton to oppose the suit, but the squabbling soon left him drained and dispirited. His heart was not in the fight. As April unfolded, he seemed disconnected from these legal proceedings, and he focused on the journey that lay ahead.

A little more than a week before his scheduled departure, the MMI held an evening forum at the Audubon, featuring Malcolm and North Carolina civil rights leader Willie Mae Mallory. Mallory's partic.i.p.ation directly a.s.sociated Malcolm with the incendiary exile Robert Williams, author of Negroes with Guns Negroes with Guns and an early proponent of black armed self-defense. Malcolm insisted that the Black Freedom Movement had to refocus from a quest for ”civil rights” to a demand for ”human rights,” as defined by international law. Again, he stressed the necessity of the vote. The New York FBI office estimated the audience at five hundred. ”He cited past lynchings of Negroes in America in accusing the government of genocide,” it reported. and an early proponent of black armed self-defense. Malcolm insisted that the Black Freedom Movement had to refocus from a quest for ”civil rights” to a demand for ”human rights,” as defined by international law. Again, he stressed the necessity of the vote. The New York FBI office estimated the audience at five hundred. ”He cited past lynchings of Negroes in America in accusing the government of genocide,” it reported.

On April 8, at New York's Palm Gardens, Malcolm delivered a lecture that sharply broke with the NOI mold. The public lecture had been sponsored by the Militant Labor Forum, the nonpartisan outreach group of the SWP. In theory he was speaking to an eclectic group of nonaligned activists, independent Marxists, and black nationalists, but in reality it was a mostly Marxist audience with many of Malcolm's core followers also in attendance.

Malcolm was also preparing his a.s.sociates for his extended leave, authorizing James 67X to serve as the MMIs acting chairman and to answer all communications and correspondence. Despite all the last-minute arrangements that needed his attention, he agreed to fly to Detroit once again to address a GOAL (Group on Advanced Leaders.h.i.+p) rally. The speech would pressure his already tight schedule, but he recognized that Detroit offered a fertile ground for the message he had been cultivating in ”The Ballot or the Bullet.” In the years since he had delivered his monthlong series of sermons at Mosque No. 1 in 1957, the city had continued to develop as a national center for black working-cla.s.s militancy. Black members.h.i.+p in the city's chapter of the United Auto Workers union had exploded, and as in many other Midwestern cities, the heavy industrial base and de facto segregation produced a ma.s.s of militant workers living in impoverished, rundown ghettos. Already the seeds had been planted for the violent discontent that would seize the city by the end of the decade. Malcolm had registered the broad impact of Detroit in his ”Message to the Gra.s.sroots” address in November 1963, but now his renewed emphasis on cla.s.s exploitation and the plight of the black working cla.s.s made for an even more natural fit with the mood of the city's black community. As he sought a larger national const.i.tuency, he could ill afford to pa.s.s up a high-profile speaking engagement before such a promising audience.

GOAL booked the King Solomon Baptist Church in the Northwest Gold-berg neighborhood for Malcolm's speech, but when the church leaders discovered that Malcolm would be the featured speaker, an ad hoc coalition of black ministers tried in vain to block his appearance. Despite their efforts, more than two thousand people came out to listen. Drawing on many ideas from the speeches in New York and Cleveland, Malcolm offered perhaps the most refined version of ”Ballot” he would ever give; the audio recording that has survived of this speech shows Malcolm at the height of his powers as an orator. In this version, he moved the section on black nationalism front and center, giving one of the most trenchant exegesis of this political philosophy ever set down. Speaking in the urgent tones and pulsing rhythms of a jazz musician, Malcolm told the crowd that he was ”a black nationalist freedom fighter.” Again he urged his supporters ”to leave their religion at home in the closet,” because the goal was to unite all African Americans regardless of their religious views behind the politics of black nationalism. As in his Cleveland address, Malcolm placed great importance on blacks' electoral empowerment. ”[If] Negroes voted together,” he insisted, ”they could turn every election, as the white vote is usually divided.”

Beneath the rhetoric, there was a glaring inconsistency in his logic. Malcolm was encouraging African Americans to vote, even to throw their weight behind either major party; yet simultaneously he accused both major parties of racism, incapable of delivering fairness to blacks. ”I'm one of the twenty-two million victims of the Democrats-the Republicans-of Americanism,” he declared. The African American who habitually voted for the Democrats ”is not only a chump but a traitor to his race.” Malcolm, in effect, was promoting electoralism but in practical terms gave blacks no effective means to exercise their power. Who were they supposed to vote for if no one on the ballot could bring any real relief?

Home from Detroit the morning of April 13, Malcolm barely had time to bid his wife and followers good-bye before catching a flight to Cairo that evening. He flew under the name Malik el-Shabazz. When Malcolm disembarked in Cairo the following night, he noticed several dark-complexioned airline staff at the terminal; they would have ”fit right into Harlem,” he noted in his diary.

During the next two days in Cairo, Malcolm relished life as a tourist, as he had in 1959. Free from the ever present worries about the Nation, his fragile housing status, and the pressures of organization building, he allowed himself to evaporate into a state of rest, though the journey ahead would present its own challenges. On Thursday, April 16, he happened to meet and befriend a group of hajjis about to set off on their pilgrimage to Mecca. Since that was also his intended destination, they agreed to accompany each other to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the official center of embarkation for the hajj. Malcolm knew that to enter the Holy City of Mecca he would have to establish his religious credentials as an orthodox Muslim before the tribunal known as the ”Hajj Court.” Arriving late Friday, a day when the Hajj Court was closed, Malcolm secured a bed in a dormitory housing hundreds of international hajjis. Throughout most of the following day, he was unsuccessful in securing a firm date and time for his Hajj Court appearance. The failure put him in a difficult position. To be considered official, the hajj must be completed within a set range of dates, beginning on the eighth day of the Dhu al-Hijjah, the twelfth month of the Islamic calendar; in 1964, this fell on April 20. To delay much longer in Jeddah would mean missing the start, which would technically make his completion of the rituals an umrah umrah instead of an official hajj, as had happened with Elijah Muhammad's pilgrimage years earlier. Frustrated, Malcolm then remembered something that might be of help. While he had prepared for his trip, Dr. Shawarbi had given him a book, instead of an official hajj, as had happened with Elijah Muhammad's pilgrimage years earlier. Frustrated, Malcolm then remembered something that might be of help. While he had prepared for his trip, Dr. Shawarbi had given him a book, The Eternal Message of Muhammad The Eternal Message of Muhammad by Abd al-Rahman Azzam. Inside, Shawarbi had written the name and telephone number of the authors son, who lived in Jeddah. Malcolm asked someone to dial the number for him, and shortly afterward Dr. Omar Azzam showed up at Malcolm's dormitory. Within minutes Malcolm's personal items were packed and the two men were driven to the residence of Azzam's father. The elder Azzam allowed Malcolm to stay in his own well-appointed suite at the Jeddah Palace hotel. That night, Malcolm dined with the Azzams, explaining his situation, and they agreed to a.s.sist him in securing permission to partic.i.p.ate in the hajj. by Abd al-Rahman Azzam. Inside, Shawarbi had written the name and telephone number of the authors son, who lived in Jeddah. Malcolm asked someone to dial the number for him, and shortly afterward Dr. Omar Azzam showed up at Malcolm's dormitory. Within minutes Malcolm's personal items were packed and the two men were driven to the residence of Azzam's father. The elder Azzam allowed Malcolm to stay in his own well-appointed suite at the Jeddah Palace hotel. That night, Malcolm dined with the Azzams, explaining his situation, and they agreed to a.s.sist him in securing permission to partic.i.p.ate in the hajj.

The next day, Malcolm, accompanied by Abd al-Rahman Azzam, stood before Sheikh Muhammad Harkon of the Hajj Court, humbly pet.i.tioning the body to allow him access to Mecca. Malcolm had already been introduced to Sheikh Harkon during his 1959 visit and had even enjoyed tea in the judge's home, yet to gain approval he would have to convince him that he had left behind the heretical ideas of the Nation of Islam. Azzam spoke on his behalf, a.s.suring the sheikh that Malcolm was a widely known and respected Muslim in the United States and that he was a sincere proponent of Islam. What proved to be even more persuasive was the supportive intervention of Muhammad Abdul Azziz Maged, the deputy chief of protocol to Saudi prince Muhammad Faisal. Malcolm's acquaintances.h.i.+p with the Azzams had tipped him into royal circles, as Abd al-Rahman's daughter was married to Prince Faisal's son. Maged's endors.e.m.e.nt of Malcolm meant the case was immediately approved, and soon Prince Faisal himself sent word to Malcolm that he had ”decreed that I be a guest of the state.”

Malcolm's undertaking of the hajj marked his formal entrance into the community of orthodox Islam, placing him in a tradition of pilgrims that stretched back thirteen hundred years, linking him with fellow sojourners of every nationality, ethnicity, and cla.s.s background imaginable. As the hajj is one of Islam's five pillars, all Muslims are obligated to complete it if able to do so; the essence of this pilgrimage ritual is a representation of episodes from the lives of Abraham (also Ibrahim), Hagar, and Ishmael (also Ismail). The most dramatic event is the tawaf tawaf, in which thousands of pilgrims circ.u.mambulate the Kaaba, the ritual site that symbolizes the spiritual center of the Islamic faith. As they circle the Kaaba, pilgrims attempt to touch or kiss it as a sign indicating the renewal of their covenant with Allah. The hajj also includes the say say, the running of pilgrims between two small hills, replaying Hagars desperate search for water for her son, Ismail; drinking water from the well of Zamzam; prayer on the plains of Arafat; and then walking to the valley of Mina to replay Ibrahim's ordeal of nearly sacrificing his son Ismail. The hajj purges all previous sins of the pilgrim, and often coincides with major changes in an individual Muslim's life, such as marriage or retirement. To Malcolm, his departure from the Nation of Islam was an ideal moment for spiritual reexamination and renewal, fitting well with the purpose of the hajj.

As the beneficiary of Saudi nepotism, Malcolm was given his own private car, which allowed him to cover much of the 120-mile hajj route without worry of falling behind. He was up well before dawn on Tuesday, April 21, and after morning prayers and breakfast he was off to Mount Arafat. The sight before him on the road to Arafat moved him deeply, as he watched thousands of pilgrims of many races jostle and b.u.mp their way along, some walking, others packed into buses or riding camels or donkeys. He had not thought possible the egalitarianism he was now witnessing. ”Islam brings together in unity all colors and cla.s.ses,” he observed in his diary. ”Everyone shares what he has, those who have share with those who have not, those who know teach those who don't know.” The common faith shared by all partic.i.p.ants appeared to eradicate cla.s.s divisions, at least as Malcolm could perceive them.

The next morning, Malcolm and other pilgrims awoke around two a.m. and traveled to Mina, where they each ”cast seven stones at the devil,” a white monument. They then traveled to Mecca, where Malcolm did two rounds of circling the Kaaba seven times each; he attempted but was never able to touch the sacred site. ”One look at the fervor of those crowded around it made me see it was hopeless to try,” he wrote. Again he was struck by the tremendous diversity of the hajjis. During the hajj rituals, ”everyone was in white, the two-piece horum, with right shoulder bare,” he observed. At the end of the hajj, ”everyone is wearing their own national colors (costumes) and it is really a beauty to behold. It seems every nation and form of culture on earth is represented here. . . .

Yet as much as Malcolm saw race and cla.s.s distinctions dissolved in the uniting experience of the hajj, his own pilgrimage was anything but representative. The diplomatic difficulties that had almost kept him from the hajj had been sliced through by accommodating white Arabs with connections to the Saudi royal family, and he himself had been made a guest of state. Then, on one of the last days of the hajj, he joined a caravan led by ”his excellency, Crown Prince Faisal . . . which included dignitaries from all over the world.” Across the hall from Malcolm's hotel room was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, a cousin of Ya.s.ser Arafat's. In his diary, Malcolm observed that Husseini ”seems well loved. He's well up on world affairs and even the latest events in America.” Then, without a hint of irony, Malcolm added that the Grand Mufti ”referred to New York as Jew York.”

Still, the powerful sight of thousands of people of different nationalities and ethnicities praying in unison to the same G.o.d deeply moved Malcolm, as he struggled to reconcile the few remaining fragments of NOI dogma he still believed in with the universalism he saw embodied in the hajj. Like many tourists, Malcolm purchased dozens of postcards and sent them to acquaintances back home. These letters revealed the profound s.h.i.+ft in his att.i.tudes about white people. Writing to Alex Haley on April 25, Malcolm confessed, ”I began to perceive that 'white man,' as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it describes att.i.tudes and actions.” In the Muslim world he had witnessed individuals who in the United States would be cla.s.sified as white but who ”were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been.” Malcolm was quick to credit Islam with the power to transform whites into nonracists. This revelation reinforced Malcolm's newfound decision to separate himself completely from the Nation of Islam, not simply from its leaders.h.i.+p, but from its theology.

If Malcolm found much to rejoice over in his travels through the Middle East, he also wished for a more active role for Islam on the world stage. Here the seeds of his role as a kind of evangelist for true Islam were planted, but he saw in the Arabs' unwillingness to proselytize a problem that could hinder the religion's spread. ”The Arabs are poor at public relations,” he wrote. ”They say insha Allah [if G.o.d wills it] and then wait; and while they are waiting the world pa.s.ses them by.” Malcolm hoped that one day Muslims would understand ”the necessity of modernizing the methods to propagate Islam, and project an image that the mind of the modern world can understand.” But his thoughts of returning home with a new knowledge of the religious rituals filled him with genuine pride and excitement. ”America's Black Muslims would fit right into the best of the earth's Muslim[s] anywhere in the world if they would first be encouraged to learn the true prayer ritual and how to say their prayers in Arabic,” he wrote.

Upon his arrival in Jeddah, Malcolm encountered an ”outspoken” African, a cabinet minister of Nigerian prime minister Ahmadu Bello. The minister informed Malcolm about recent civil disobedience demonstrations by blacks at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and recounted his own unhappy experiences with American racism. ”He had suffered many indignities that he could now describe with intense pa.s.sion, but could not understand why Negroes had not established some degree of business economic independence,” Malcolm observed.

Malcolm then flew to Medina, Saudi Arabia, on April 25, and en route he continued to make detailed notes in his travel diary. He was convinced that on the pilgrimage ”everyone forgets Self and turns to G.o.d and out of this submission to the One G.o.d comes a brotherhood in which all are equals.” He embraced an inner peace he had not known since the years he was incarcerated in Ma.s.sachusetts. ”There is no greater serenity of mind,” Malcolm reflected, ”than when one can shut the hectic noise and pace of the materialistic outside world, and seek inner peace within oneself.” Later that evening Malcolm wrote, ”The very essences of the Islam religion in teaching the Oneness of G.o.d, gives the Believer genuine, voluntary obligations towards his fellow man (all of whom are One Human Family, brothers and sisters to each other) . . . the True Believer recognizes the Oneness of all Humanity.”

Returning to Jeddah the next day, he toured the local bazaar and purchased an attractive head scarf for Betty. His eyes were drawn to a beautiful necklace, but he could not afford it. Although Malcolm had prepared to depart Saudi Arabia for a quick visit to Beirut, Lebanon, Prince Faisal contacted him at his hotel, requesting to meet him at about noon the next day. Malcolm delayed his trip, and when the two men met, the prince explained ”that he had no ulterior motive in the excellent hospitality I had received . . . than the true hospitality shown all Muslims by all Muslims.” Faisal also questioned Malcolm about the theological beliefs of the Nation of Islam, suggesting that ”from what he had been reading, written by Egyptian writers, they had the wrong Islam”-in other words, their understanding and rituals were alien to orthodox Islam, beyond the boundaries of the community of the faithful. After his experience at Mecca and the hajj, Malcolm could not contest or deny this. In taking the necessary steps to become a true Muslim he had regained the certainty that had abandoned him with each new revelation of Elijah Muhammad's perfidy or infidelity. He could also now see the role Islam would play not just in his spiritual life, but in his work. As Malcolm reflected on his hajj experiences, he concluded that ”our success in America will involve two circles, Black Nationalism and Islam.” Nationalism was necessary to connect African Americans with Africa, he reasoned. ”And Islam will link us spiritually to Africa, Arabia and Asia.”

Malcolm flew from Jeddah's crowded airport and arrived in Beirut in the middle of the night of April 29; he secured a room at the Palm Beach Hotel upon the advice of his cab driver from the airport. Part of his agenda in Beirut was to become acquainted with Lebanon's Muslim Brotherhood organization, which was dedicated to directing the tenets of Islam to political ends. The Brotherhood was originally established in Egypt in 1928, and it spread to other Arab countries, including Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Sudan, during and after World War II. Advocating national independence against European colonialists, social reform, charity, and political change in harmony with Islamic practices, by the 1950s it had developed a strong base among middle-cla.s.s professionals, many workers and intellectuals. In Egypt, the most prominent theoretician in this regard was Sayyid Qutb, who advocated the expansive use of jihad.

Malcolm's attraction to the Brotherhood was probably due to its Islamic foundations, grounding real-world politics in a spiritual basis. Ironically, it was exactly the opposite position he had reached in the United States, having concluded that he would need to keep separate his religious and political groups. In Beirut, he visited the home of Dr. Malik Badri, a professor at American University, whom he had previously met in Sudan in 1959. Badri informed Malcolm that he was scheduled to give a lecture the following day. Later that evening Malcolm met with a group of Sudanese students, who ”were well informed on the Black Muslims,” Malcolm wrote, ”and asked many questions on it and the American race problem in general.”

On April 30, after a lunch at the home of Dr. Badri, Malcolm gave a talk at the Sudanese Cultural Center in Beirut. The local Beirut Daily Star Daily Star covered the speech, printing a front-page article about it the next day. The covered the speech, printing a front-page article about it the next day. The New York Times New York Times also briefly reported on Malcolm's lecture, characterizing it largely as an attack on King. According to the also briefly reported on Malcolm's lecture, characterizing it largely as an attack on King. According to the Times Times, Malcolm ”told students at the Sudanese Cultural Center that Negroes in the United States had made no practical gains toward achieving civil rights.” He also declared that ”only a minority of Negroes believed in nonviolence.”

That evening, Malcolm mentioned in his diary that he visited ”the offices of the Muslim brothers”-that is, the Brotherhood. Early the next morning, as Malcolm made his way to fly to Cairo, Dr. Malik ”and others of the M. B. [Muslim Brotherhood] gave me a very touching send-off.” Arriving in Cairo the next morning, he met up with his local contact, Hussein el-Borai, an Egyptian diplomat who had accompanied Malcolm around Cairo in 1959 and would play the same role during Malcolm's 1964 visit. The two men traveled by train to nearby Alexandria, reaching the ancient seaport city in the evening.

Malcolm spent several days as a tourist in Alexandria, where he soon discovered that photographs taken of himself with heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali had been widely circulated in the Egyptian press; consequently Malcolm was treated like a VIP, he noted, being besieged by autograph seekers. ”Just saying I was an American Muslim who just returned from hajj was enough,” Malcolm wrote in his diary. ”Then mentioning Clay caused a real 'landslide.' ” Most of Malcolm's day was spent at Alexandria's harbor, ”trying to unravel red tape and get imported items through customs.” After a late afternoon nap, that evening he returned to Cairo, and over several days reacquainted himself with local Muslim contacts, most of whom he had previously met in the United States or on his 1959 trip. Malcolm also kept encountering Egyptians who refused to believe that he could possibly be both an American and a Muslim. One waiter dismissed his a.s.sertions, telling el-Borai that Malcolm ”was probably from Habachi (Abyssinia).”

On Tuesday morning, May 5, the nineteen-year-old son of Dr. Shawarbi, Muhammad Shawarbi, came by Malcolm's hotel to accompany him around the city and later out to the airport to catch a flight to Lagos, Nigeria. After some delays, on May 6 he arrived in Lagos. A Nigerian official at the airport recognized Malcolm and escorted him to the Federal Palace hotel.

For the next few days Malcolm visited Nigeria, but due to his limited schedule he essentially toured only two major cities, Lagos and Ibadan. Unlike in Cairo, his arrival in Nigeria amid a sea of black faces informed him that he had landed in the center of the long historical struggle that had increasingly found expression in his rhetoric back in Harlem. Yet the situation on the ground hardly matched the idealization promised by his speeches. Here in West Africa he found a land battered by the effects of fierce internecine political battles; the political promises made when Nigeria had gained its independence in 1960 had not been fulfilled, and two years after Malcolm's trip the country would descend into a nightmare of military dictators.h.i.+p from which it would not emerge for decades.