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The Legend of Takhti: Ep 3

The Legend of Takhti: Ep 3

Released Monday, 9th September 2024
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The Legend of Takhti: Ep 3

The Legend of Takhti: Ep 3

The Legend of Takhti: Ep 3

The Legend of Takhti: Ep 3

Monday, 9th September 2024
Good episode? Give it some love!
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Episode Transcript

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0:00

The World's Best Dance Olam

0:09

Reza Takhti is a hero figure. He's

0:12

an Olympic gold medal winner. And

0:15

in a nation full of wrestlers

0:17

and wrestling fans, he's the most loved

0:19

wrestler of all. It's

0:22

a beautiful, brutal ballet

0:26

with two dance partners

0:28

who are uncooperative but

0:30

to have that person be this

0:33

figurehead and this is your champion, let's

0:35

have him go against their champion and

0:37

see who wins. In

0:51

this intense sporting environment, Takhti

0:53

is certainly a champion. But

0:56

he's more than just a sporting star. Through

0:59

his success in the ring and his behaviour

1:01

outside of it, he's become a figurehead, a

1:04

hero for all Iranians to look up to. But

1:07

he's a hero with political

1:09

allegiance. He openly supports

1:12

the opposition party. He's

1:14

a thorn in the monarchy's side. They've

1:18

been trying to quell the nation's love for him

1:20

for some time. Then, completely

1:23

unexpectedly, the body of this national

1:25

figure is found in a hotel.

1:29

When he was found, there was a notebook by him. Wills

1:31

by an actor is what he wrote. This

1:37

is my will. My

1:39

request is that, first of all, give my wife dowry. Whatever

1:44

it is, I'm not satisfied with it. Secondly, I sold

1:47

my Naramak house a year ago to

1:50

Mr. Iraj Ramazoni, a Benz

1:52

dealer, on Cheragio's house.

1:54

I'm not satisfied with it. The

2:00

car also belongs to him. He's

2:03

noting down his outstanding debts, with

2:05

less neat writing lower down on the same

2:08

page he wrote. I have

2:10

made this decision myself and

2:12

no one is interfering in my work. Later

2:18

there were scrawled notes saying, Say

2:21

goodbye to my dear mother. God,

2:26

I leave my dear son Boback to you. He

2:31

was 37. The

2:33

nation is reading. The

2:40

same question is on everyone's lips. Why?

2:43

Why is he there? And that

2:45

was my question when I first started this

2:47

project. But I'm

2:50

starting to realise that perhaps at

2:52

this distance we can

2:54

never know for certain it's almost

2:56

unsolvable. And

2:58

yet I'm just as fascinated by the

3:01

significance of the life he lived and

3:03

why he lives on in the memories

3:05

and the myths of Iranians far and

3:07

wide even after so long. It's

3:12

so hard to get close to Takhti. Every

3:16

time I think I have him pinned to the

3:18

mat he gets away from me. For

3:22

years I've been pulling at the edges

3:24

trying to find a space between the

3:26

myths and the man himself. Why

3:30

did this man above all others

3:32

became such a legend? And

3:34

what does it tell us about Iran? And

3:37

about its people and about me? I'm

3:41

Rana Rahimpur and from the

3:43

BBC World Service amazing sports

3:45

stories, this is Legend of

3:48

Takhti. Part

3:51

3. Peugeot's Pashlevan.

4:02

As is Islamic custom, Wollam Rizat-Hakdi

4:04

was buried within 24 hours. His

4:08

body laid to rest in the Ibn Babiya

4:10

Cemetery in the south of the city. We

4:16

met Urajah Toba'aki in the last episode.

4:18

He is a professor now and teaches

4:20

the history of the Middle East at

4:22

Leiden University in the Netherlands. But

4:25

back then, as a kid in Tehran, he is

4:27

in the middle of history as it's being made.

4:34

Our tradition is to mark the seventh

4:36

and the fortieth days after someone's death.

4:40

Today is his seventh, as it's known, and

4:42

hundreds of thousands of people are gathering in

4:44

the street. At

4:47

this point, as a young boy,

4:49

Turaj is working for the National

4:51

Front, Iran's undercover opposition party. But

4:54

it's a totalitarian regime. The

4:57

Shah rules with absolute power

4:59

and opposition parties are banned.

5:04

So in this pre-internet world,

5:06

Turaj is like a mini

5:08

undercover communications tool. A

5:11

small boy like him can weave

5:13

through crowds, unsuspected and unseen, handing

5:16

out leaflets and passing on

5:18

information. I

5:21

was very young. I was not

5:23

a teenager at that time. I

5:26

was distributing National Front

5:28

pamphlets in the street of

5:30

Tehran. He has to move quickly. He'll

5:33

be arrested if he's caught. They

5:35

told me, could you just distribute

5:37

these pamphlets, these leaflets in the

5:39

street? I had my share and

5:41

I saw that. This is a

5:43

call for people to go for

5:45

the funeral of Takhdi. The

5:48

date at the time was all

5:50

written. And as Turaj is

5:52

weaving his way through the crowd, passing

5:54

pamphlets to passers-by, the adults

5:57

towering above him are asking the

5:59

same question. And I

6:01

said, we're shocked. I said, really?

6:03

Takhdi died? How come? Everybody

6:06

knew about him in Takhdi's

6:08

association with National Front. So

6:10

National Front was in charge

6:12

of organizing everything. It's

6:17

a sea of people, of men mostly. Takhdi's

6:20

seventh is a vast event. It's

6:23

a public procession and the crowd is

6:25

packed tightly together. Flesh

6:27

against flesh, it's almost impossible to

6:29

pick out individual faces as

6:31

it moves en masse. As

6:34

the hours tick by, the crowd swells.

6:36

Emotions are running high. The

6:46

funeral starts very smoothly. I was

6:49

not there, but they told me.

6:51

It started very smoothly, no problem,

6:53

no confrontation. By the end of

6:55

the funeral, and then there were

6:57

people who started confronting

7:00

the coercive forces and that

7:02

continued up to evening.

7:05

So at the end, there

7:07

was a very, very violent

7:09

confrontation between the demonstrators and

7:11

the police force. It

7:17

is bloody and brutal. Everyone

7:19

in power is caught off guard

7:21

by people's reaction to Takhdi's death.

7:28

Narmay Sohrabhi is a historian of

7:30

the modern Middle East at Brandeis

7:33

University in Massachusetts. The

7:35

state was taken aback by

7:38

the breadth

7:41

of segments of society that believed he

7:44

had been killed by the state or

7:46

that he had been suicided. So

7:50

you see in the Savak documents, which

7:52

is the main source that I've used,

7:55

trying to figure out how to deal with

7:57

this very early on. Kavak

8:00

is the name of Iran's secret

8:02

police and intelligence service, the strong

8:04

arm of the regime. Even

8:08

with the secret police's eyes and

8:10

ears everywhere, the regime

8:12

knows it must tread carefully. And

8:17

they didn't stop

8:20

anything for neither

8:22

the burial nor the 7th nor the 40th, that

8:25

they actually go out and

8:27

try to stop the ceremonies from happening.

8:30

There were no inflammatory bans, but

8:33

they did try to curb the fervor a

8:35

little. They wanted to

8:37

have his body leave

8:40

the morgue in a procession to

8:42

the cemetery. And

8:45

some reports, the reports say that the state

8:47

was like, no, you can't do that. You

8:49

just have to put him in a car

8:51

and just take him. We do know that

8:53

there was no procession per se, like an

8:55

official procession. Student

8:59

activism is nearly as old

9:01

as universities themselves. Here

9:03

in Tehran in 1968, it's young

9:06

people who grabbed the moment. Then,

9:12

between the 7th and the 40th, the

9:14

tone changed. Two

9:18

announcements put out by the

9:20

students of Tehran University. One

9:23

was a call for the 7th, and

9:26

in it, it invites people to come. But

9:30

we noticed that the call

9:32

put out for the 40th

9:35

ceremonies tells people to come. We

9:38

found that to be an important distinction,

9:41

which is that this morning

9:44

ceremony of

9:46

this beloved figure that cannot be stopped

9:49

by the state, that they

9:51

can take this moment and turn it into an opportunity to also

9:54

express political sentiments. So

10:01

by the 40th, the students are

10:03

now urging Iranians, calling on them

10:05

to come to Takhdi's 40th

10:08

and sort of register their voices

10:11

in critique of the government. And

10:14

that's exactly what happened 40th. The

10:18

40th was even bigger than the 7th,

10:21

a huge event on the streets of Tehran.

10:24

Again, there were violent clashes. Half

10:27

a century later, though, you won't find any

10:29

evidence of it. We don't see it

10:31

in the newspapers. And I take that to

10:33

mean that a decision was made, that,

10:36

OK, we treated

10:38

this like the death of a

10:40

public figure as it was, but

10:42

now it's getting out of hand.

10:44

The void left by Takhdi's death

10:46

fills with suspicion and mistrust. It's

10:50

in the course of these mass gatherings that

10:52

the rumor he had been killed, at

10:54

first just a whisper, crystallizes

10:57

to become conventional wisdom. And

11:04

the newspapers after that did sort

11:07

of talk about they had, you

11:09

know, some magazines like the Maine

11:12

Women's Magazine and a bunch of other

11:14

ones interviewed his wife

11:17

and sort of they kept

11:19

the conversation about Takhdi

11:22

having committed suicide in the press. But it

11:24

actually didn't do much to counter the belief

11:26

that people had that he had been killed.

11:32

And from the very first day, they

11:34

said, I mean, because of some difficulties,

11:36

personal difficulties,

11:39

he committed suicide.

11:42

You know, we have got this construction

11:44

of the mass memory in Iran. He

11:49

came one of these martyrs of

11:51

the tyranny of the establishment and

11:54

they said, I mean, he was along

11:56

with others were murdered. Still,

12:03

according to Professor Saeed Taloudri,

12:06

the murder story stuck. And

12:10

the state-sanctioned silence only helped the

12:12

idea take root further. For

12:16

about 10-11 years, Takhti was

12:18

not mentioned in the newspapers,

12:20

journals and news

12:23

coverage of anything related to sports or

12:25

anything related to the country, partly because

12:27

of the censorship, because it was decided,

12:29

I think, in 1968 or towards the

12:31

end of 1968, that

12:36

Takhti should not be mentioned in

12:38

these news organizations or the media

12:40

because it causes more problems and

12:42

more conflicts. So people

12:44

did not talk openly about

12:47

it. So the silence did nothing

12:49

to quell the suspicions of murder. The

12:53

thing is, there is another reason altogether

12:55

for people to cling on to the

12:57

idea that Takhti had been killed. Here's

13:01

Naghmesok Roby. To

13:04

be so popular, Takhti certainly

13:06

was. And to be associated

13:08

with this manly sport, which

13:10

is wrestling. I mean, he's

13:12

an Olympic gold medalist. And

13:14

to be seen as a

13:16

figure of opposition to the

13:19

monarchy. He is the National Front's

13:21

great celebrity poster boy. But then

13:23

to fell yourself. Logically,

13:26

it makes sense that people's minds couldn't

13:28

wrap their heads around it. They couldn't

13:30

wrap their heads around this idea that

13:33

someone with those characteristics would then

13:35

choose to kill himself. And

13:39

the language that some people used

13:43

in their morning ceremonies uses

13:45

the language of masculinity. So

13:47

it is not manly to kill

13:50

yourself. So that's what gives

13:52

me a hint that that issue was

13:55

just not something that people had even

13:58

the language or the tools. to

14:01

think about. I

14:03

don't want to get into whether the feelings that

14:05

people had were correct or not. The fact is that

14:07

they had these feelings. Suicide

14:12

is a sin in Islam. It's like a murder.

14:16

And so if you committed murder,

14:20

he can't have been the exemplary hero

14:23

that everybody thinks he was. So maybe it's

14:26

preferable, easier

14:30

even, to blame the SAVAK

14:35

or the Shah or some faceless

14:37

assassin with a murky agenda. Or

14:40

alternatively, to blame someone much,

14:42

much closer to home. With

14:45

his parents, with Shah Lata Vahkodi,

14:48

when you marry, you're supposed to be a

14:50

family man. You're supposed to be

14:52

more in the

14:54

way in service of your family rather than service

14:57

of society. But could he

14:59

get away from the image that he had created for

15:01

himself? I don't think it was possible. Suicide

15:05

is a sin in Islam. It's a murder.

15:09

It's a crime. It's a crime. I

15:19

am Parvane Hosseini. I was born in Iran in Iran.

15:23

I grew up in Iran. I went to school, to

15:25

college, and started working there

15:27

as a teacher. Parvane

15:29

Hosseini emigrated with her husband

15:31

and son to Arizona where she

15:33

studied Middle Eastern studies. Later,

15:36

she changed track. For some reasons,

15:39

which refers to the social and political events

15:42

in Iran, I became more and

15:45

more kind of like activist. I

15:48

am a women's rights activist Parvane

15:51

has studied what happened to

15:54

Takhti's wife, Shahlotta Vakwali, in the aftermath of the

15:57

war. of

16:00

her husband's death. When they

16:02

heard that Takhdi had

16:04

passed away, at first they

16:07

wanted to find a reason why

16:09

and how. Shakhla was

16:11

just 22 years old, so

16:14

young. She had a few

16:16

months old child. It

16:19

was a secret why Takhdi died, and it

16:21

is still a secret. But at the time,

16:24

for those who thought that

16:26

Takhdi committed suicide, many

16:28

of them thought that

16:30

he committed suicide because

16:33

he was not happy in his

16:35

marriage. Those

16:40

people became very angry with

16:42

Shakhla. It is said

16:45

that even some people attacked at

16:47

his house to find

16:50

Shakhla and trying

16:52

to climb the wall to

16:54

enter. So they

16:57

started writing against

16:59

her, even those

17:02

intellectuals. Rostam

17:08

is the hero of the Shahnameh, the

17:10

epic of kings, a legend that every

17:12

Iranian knows. There is

17:14

a famous poet, Mima Azam, who is

17:16

still famous across the country after all

17:18

these years, who wrote a

17:20

poem after Takhdi's death, praising him as

17:23

the Rostam of his day. But

17:25

he is not so kind about Takhdi's

17:28

wife, Shakhla. In the poem,

17:30

he compares her to the treacherous

17:32

wife of the epic of the

17:34

kings, Sudhabe. In fact, he

17:36

says about Takhdi that when he turns

17:38

his face in bed, he would see

17:41

Sudhabe. So that's a very

17:43

pointed reference when you're talking about

17:45

a young grieving widow. So

17:48

Shakhda kind of like

17:50

crowd into a fence of silence

17:53

after experiencing the loss

17:56

of her husband and

17:58

the subsequent harassment. I

18:00

find it hard to imagine the hell she

18:02

must have been going through. As

18:05

if being widowed with a baby at such

18:07

a young age wasn't enough, the

18:09

poor woman had to face all

18:11

the allegations and accusations from Tachti's

18:14

fans. It's never easy to

18:16

be a woman in Iran, is it? In

18:19

spite of persistent rumours, there's no

18:21

evidence linking his wife, or indeed

18:23

the Shah, with Tachti's death. And

18:26

either way, the answer doesn't change the

18:28

outcome. It's still a

18:30

tragedy. Sa'italo Jooi

18:32

again. When you look

18:35

at the history of heroism, you see that

18:37

the hero is often a victim,

18:40

as much of a victim as a villain. But

18:42

the template of heroism by itself

18:44

is very restrictive and

18:46

in a way suffocating, because you

18:48

always have to keep up this

18:51

ideal, otherwise people criticise

18:53

or undermine whatever you have done

18:55

before. So in one way

18:57

or another, I think the

18:59

image of the hero, the image of the

19:02

person who is modest and great, came

19:04

at great sacrifice for Tachti

19:07

as a family man and as a

19:09

father. Being revered by an

19:11

entire nation must be a heavy weight

19:14

to bear. You have to

19:16

carry the hopes of your country and its nation.

19:18

People have turned him into this ideal

19:21

figure, and for me it doesn't make

19:23

any difference, to be honest, whether he

19:25

killed himself or whether he was killed,

19:28

because what is important that this man

19:30

was cornered toward the end of his

19:32

life. This

19:38

Parle van Figueur, so kind, fair

19:40

and just, was on a vast

19:42

metaphorical plinth. And if you're on

19:45

a plinth, you're exposed. He was

19:47

exposed by his own heroism. And

19:49

his good nature and position seemingly made

19:51

him an easy target. The

19:54

fact that to this day upsets

19:56

the sports journalist Métil Austin Paul.

20:00

extremely generous with everything

20:02

he had. And unfortunately,

20:05

it was very easy to

20:08

defraud him. Take

20:10

the Azalea flower project. This was a

20:12

commercial scheme that he started with a

20:14

friend to bring the plant to Iran.

20:16

The first person who brings

20:19

Azalea flowers to Iran was

20:21

Takhti. He and the friend

20:23

worked together on an

20:25

Azalea project, but his

20:27

friend had caught him. It

20:31

makes me really sad that

20:34

there are numerous reports from

20:36

Salaj, the Shah security

20:38

organization, that even

20:40

Takhti's friends and associates

20:42

reports him most basic

20:45

statements. Such a disgrace

20:47

still irritates me. We

20:50

can't know how Takhti felt about this,

20:52

whether he knew even. But

20:55

the reality is that behind the veneer

20:57

of a legend, life is never what

20:59

it seems. Limited

21:01

freedom, fake friends, those

21:04

around you informing Savak about your

21:06

every move and utterance. And

21:09

on top of all this, the great

21:11

weight of heroic expectations. It's

21:20

impossible to beat in the ring, but if you

21:22

don't let him near it, then how can he

21:24

fight back? Saeed Talodjoy.

21:28

You are not allowed to enter the

21:30

spaces in which you have found yourself,

21:33

you have achieved recognition. That quest of

21:35

recognition was something huge for Takhti. And

21:37

then that recognition came to nothing in

21:40

the 1960s, because he

21:42

could not reap the emotional benefits

21:44

of being loved by the people. So

21:47

that feeling of belonging was

21:49

missing in Takhti's life in the

21:51

1960s. And I think in

21:53

the last three years, particularly in the last two

21:55

years of his life, he was that in that

21:58

moment. Takhty's

22:02

son Bobak recorded an interview with

22:04

Mehti Rostam-Pul a few years ago.

22:08

He's voiced here by an actor. He

22:10

said, This man had found

22:12

a way to communicate with his people. He

22:15

had found a way to make his people

22:17

happy and to do something

22:19

for them. This was very

22:21

important to him. See, we

22:23

are much weaker than we think. It's not

22:25

easy to change the world. Takhty

22:28

did not want to accept this. At

22:31

the end of his life, I imagine that

22:34

he no longer had a way

22:36

between this romantic exchange with his

22:38

people. He could not

22:40

wrestle. He could not make

22:42

a revolution. He could not

22:45

defend Mossadir. He

22:47

had nothing left. And I think this was

22:49

the biggest obstacle in front of him that

22:51

he could not solve. Bobak's

22:54

right. It's not easy to

22:56

change the world. But

22:58

Takhty's memory has survived because,

23:01

in a country where every faction

23:03

has enemies, Takhty's legend rises above

23:06

it all. In

23:11

Iranian politics, there are four camps. There

23:14

are the royalists, the supporters of the

23:16

Shah. There are the

23:19

nationalists, the supporters of Mossadegh. There

23:21

are the leftists, and there are

23:23

the Islamists. For

23:25

the Mossadeghists, he is a hero. For

23:28

the leftists, he is a hero. And

23:31

for the Islamists, he is a hero because he

23:33

was a pious Muslim. And

23:35

Iranian society in the last 40 or

23:38

50 years has

23:40

produced so many hated people that

23:43

destroying the one person who,

23:45

by everybody's reckoning, was exceptionally

23:48

good, would not be a very

23:51

charitable thing to do. On

23:53

examination, the fact of his myth tells

23:55

us as much about the state of

23:57

Iran and its people as about

23:59

the man himself. From everybody I've

24:01

talked to who actually knew him, it appears

24:05

that the gap between the man and

24:07

the myth was quite narrow. And

24:10

that's precisely the secret of his

24:12

popularity. Because

24:15

people always tell me, you know,

24:18

they say a lot about X or a lot about

24:20

Y, but in his case it was true. I

24:30

started making this series three years ago when I

24:32

was 37, exactly the same age

24:35

Takhti was when he died. I

24:38

was trying to figure out what was

24:40

going on in his life and mind,

24:42

a young, attractive athlete loved by almost

24:44

all Iranians. But

24:46

our investigation came to a halt

24:48

in September 2022 when 22-year-old Mahsa

24:51

Amini was killed in the custody

24:53

of Iran's so-called morality police. Angry

24:57

Iranians poured to the streets and

24:59

they started calling for democracy, exactly

25:02

as Takhti and the National Front fought

25:04

for 70 years ago. It's

25:07

a mark of his legacy that a

25:09

number of national athletes joined the last

25:11

protests and that they were immediately compared

25:13

with Takhti, an athlete that

25:15

in the face of dictatorship stood with

25:17

his people. Sometimes

25:19

it feels that Iran's history is on repeat.

25:27

Although football has taken centre stage in

25:29

Iran in the years since Takhti's glory

25:31

days, wrestling is still loved across the

25:33

country. The simplicity of

25:35

it, the power of it, still

25:37

catching the hearts of Iranians. And

25:40

each year, Takhti is remembered in

25:42

a national wrestling competition, the Takhti

25:44

Cup. Here is Tyree McCracken.

25:49

I think when we think of wrestling, it

25:51

goes beyond bloodlust and it's the idea of

25:53

this champion representing our hopes and dreams and

25:55

our pride. And I think it can transcend

25:57

tribalism as well. It's not just about us

25:59

versus the world. It's seeing

26:01

somebody using their body and

26:04

showing that fighting spirit. And

26:06

it makes us feel kind of proud to be

26:08

part of the same species as them. Wrestlers

26:15

themselves still take direct inspiration

26:17

from Takhti. Afsounir

26:19

Roshan Zameer is Iranian, born and lived

26:22

in Iran until she was eight. Her

26:25

parents moved her to America, where she went on

26:27

to represent the US in the Olympics. These

26:30

days, having retired from wrestling, she's a

26:32

coach, a career arc

26:34

that Takhti was notably denied. When

26:36

you walk in the

26:38

middle of that wrestling mat, when you

26:40

walk into that circle, it's

26:43

a battle. You have

26:45

to have confidence in yourself. You have

26:47

to know that you

26:49

have trained and you have prepared.

26:52

And what you gain through

26:54

that amazing sport of wrestling,

26:56

you can apply to life.

26:59

Because life is a fight. Life

27:01

is a journey where you have

27:03

to be prepared and have those

27:05

tools and fight in order

27:07

to win. Takhti was

27:09

the first Iranian male wrestler to win

27:11

a medal on the international stage. And

27:15

Afsounir was the first Iranian woman to do

27:17

so. That

27:20

invisible thread connects the two of them.

27:22

His legacy shapes hers. I

27:25

grew up idolizing and learning about

27:27

Roland Razzal Takhti. And then when

27:29

I became a wrestler, I

27:33

wanted to kind of emulate

27:35

him. And, you know, he

27:37

wrestled a Russian and

27:40

had heard that the

27:42

Russian had a knee injury, wrestled

27:44

the right way and wanted to

27:47

win and not go after the injured

27:49

leg and instead attack the

27:51

opposite leg. And I remember being in

27:53

a wrestling match and I was almost

27:55

in a similar situation. I was wrestling

27:57

against the Japanese girl and she had.

28:00

an injured right leg. And I remember thinking,

28:02

well, it would be really easy to take

28:04

her down and go after that injured leg.

28:06

And in back of my mind, I remember

28:09

Tachti and I remember that story. And I

28:11

thought, you know, for me to be a

28:13

champion, because that's who Tachti was to me,

28:16

the ultimate champion. I

28:18

remember wrestling that match and

28:20

not going after the injured leg, attacking

28:22

the opposite leg and wanting to give

28:25

it my best and

28:27

not only wrestle to be

28:29

the best wrestler that I can be and be

28:32

a champion, but do it the right way. That

28:38

was a lesson we've all learned from Gollam

28:40

Reza Tachti. The Tachti I

28:43

grew up with, a man who'd been

28:45

dead for decades, was a rich tapestry

28:47

of stories, many, perhaps even

28:49

most of them true, that had built

28:51

into a compelling myth. We've

28:56

talked a lot in this series about

28:58

what that heroic ideal means and what

29:00

Tachti, or the legend of Tachti,

29:02

seemed to embody. The

29:06

process of creating this series has been

29:08

a profound odyssey for me, a

29:11

wrestling match with history and myth. I

29:14

left Iran in 2008 to work for

29:16

the BBC in pursuit of freedom for

29:18

my people. I

29:21

can't help but feel an uncanny

29:23

resonance with Gollam Reza Tachti. He

29:26

feels lonely inside his country and in

29:29

the last decade and a half, I

29:31

have felt very lonely outside that

29:33

country. This

29:39

sense of isolation from kin and

29:41

people echoes my own as

29:43

I navigate the distance and

29:46

the age for belonging. The

29:49

journey of making this series bridges the

29:51

gap between past and present. And

29:54

it has inspired me to grapple with

29:57

the complexities of my own isolation, which...

30:00

which mirrors his in some strange

30:02

way. Through

30:07

the lens of isolation, his anmine, this

30:10

enigmatic hero has evolved into

30:12

a far more relatable figure,

30:16

reminding us that even with the distance

30:18

of six decades, the threads

30:20

of connection can weave a

30:22

remarkably strong bond. I

30:28

now understand far better how this

30:30

man inspired us Iranians so deeply.

30:33

The truth is, I don't need the answer for why he died.

30:36

It's enough to know how he

30:38

lived and to know that his

30:40

legend lives on. The

30:43

story of the

30:45

BBC World

30:47

Service This

30:53

three-part season of Amazing Sports Stories

30:55

is a story glass production for

30:57

the BBC World Service. This

31:00

is episode three of three. If

31:04

you're enjoying this story, please follow

31:06

or subscribe all episodes

31:09

of Amazing Sports Stories automatically.

31:12

And please rate and review, it really

31:14

does help spread the word. The

31:20

series is presented by me, Rana

31:22

Raheem Pur, with actors Sharif Doraani

31:24

and Ash Golde. It's produced

31:27

by Lucy Greenwell with song fires on it. The

31:30

sound designer is David Crackels and Prabjit

31:32

Bains and Anno Doble are the story

31:34

editors. For story glass,

31:36

the executive producer is Alex Hollands.

31:40

For the BBC World Service, the senior

31:42

podcast producer is Prabjit Bains. The

31:45

sports commissioning editor is Anno Doble and

31:48

the podcast commissioning editor is John Manel. If

31:54

you're suffering distress or despair and need support,

31:57

you could speak to a health professional and

32:00

organization in your country that offers support.

32:03

Details of help available in many

32:05

countries can be found in Befrienders

32:07

worldwide, www.befrenders.org.

32:12

In the UK, a list

32:14

of organizations that can help

32:17

is available at bbc.co.uk/action line.

32:35

Hi, I'm Sam, one of

32:37

the producers of this three-part

32:39

season of Amazing Sports Stories.

32:42

I hope you enjoyed listening to this

32:44

episode. We have also made a

32:46

version of the story in Persian, so

32:49

if you'd like to listen to that too, or

32:51

know someone who you think would like to

32:53

hear it, it's called

32:55

Mostanad, Ousureyeh Takhti. And

32:58

you can find it by searching

33:00

for Mostanad, Ousureyeh Takhti, wherever

33:02

you get your BBC Persian podcasts. We've

33:05

put a link in the show notes. This

33:12

is the story of the events of

33:14

the 22nd of March 2016, of

33:17

the devastating effect of a bomb

33:19

attack, of how basketball

33:22

player Sebastian Bellin survived

33:24

the attack, and

33:26

the important part sport played in

33:28

keeping him alive that day, and

33:31

how he reclaimed his life through

33:34

sports, next time on

33:36

Amazing Sports Stories. Just

33:39

win the day.

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