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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