Iranian Roots;

American Wings

Triumph of
Pahlavan

Written by: Kristin Orloff

 “There are only two
things
we can give to our
children---

One is roots
And
The other is wings…”
This book is dedicated to
Nimtaj

And to every mother who

raised a warrior
 Prologue

Genesis 32:22-32
So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw
that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was
wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is
daybreak."
But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
The man asked him, "What is your name?"
"Jacob," he answered.
Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have
struggled with God and with men and have overcome."

Reza would not know this story. He would live it.

 Chapter One
August 1982
Venezuela

Oh God. Please don’t let them hear me. I’ll be locked up. I’ll never get the
chance to escape. I’m court-martialed. I’m dead. Shot. Right here. Tonight. Reza looked
up the flight of cement stairs. His shoe touched the first step. If the guard doesn’t hear
me… A chill shook his being. I should leave right now…but then Saam… In a fog,
Reza’s trembling legs moved up the first three flights of grey in the vacant stairwell. He
forced air in and out of his lungs as he rounded the corner for the final steps. Stopping.
Listening. Praying. Breathe. Breathe. Please let the guard be gone, or asleep, or….
Reza’s hand touched the steel doorknob and he slowly turned it. The door
squeaked open and he squeezed his eyes. Not a screeching door. Please, no more
sounds. He took two steps and closed the door behind him. Step. Step. Step. Just as he
turned to the barrack’s hallway, an AK-47 pushed against his gut.
“Stop right there!”
“Yes sir.”
“I should shoot you,” the guard spat. “You’re medal means hitchi to me.”
Silence.
He raised the black barrel to Reza’s face. He tapped on the trigger. “Report to
The Mullah at 6 a.m.”
Reza locked his eyes with the guard’s. “Yes sir.” He trudged down the silent aisle
of sleeping men and crawled onto his mattress.
In the suffocating darkness, he winced as his metal bunk rattled and shook. I have
to stay calm. He clenched his gold medal hidden under the pillow. They’re going to kill
me at 6 a.m.
 March 8, 1971
Kermonshah, Iran

“Muhammad Ali’s going to pulverize Frasier tonight,” Reza said. “That’s what all
the kids at school are saying. They all think Muhammad Ali will be the champion.”
“Kids at school don’t always think,” Abbas replied. He rubbed his whiskers and
looked at his son. “They just repeat what they’re told.”
Well I think Muhammad Ali is going to destroy that Joe Frasier. How can
anybody named Joe even be a fighter? Let alone a ghahreman. He looked around the
gym Salon Sar Pooshide where his young friends wrestled on a thick puzzle of cotton
mats covered with a single burlap tarp. On this unforgiving surface, they worked until
their young muscles ached and glistening skin bled.
“Reza! What are you looking at? You’re not done with your workout and you’ll
miss the fight,” Abbas said.
“Baba, what do you mean miss the fight? How ‘m I going to watch the fight?
Farid’s TV is broken. Did Uncle fix it?” Reza asked.
Abbas pointed to the mat. “You have fifty push-ups before live drills! And,” he
continued with the slightest catch in his rough tone, “Farid will have to come to our
house.”
Reza’s smile broke through his face. “Our house? Baba! You…we…a TV!
Really!?”
“You have a workout to finish. Focus now!” Abbas replied.
The rest of Reza’s workout comprised of live drills. Even at eight years-old, the
young warriors trained with an exertion that only wrestling demands; the live drills
generating puddles of sweat and blood to dot the dirty mats.
Abbas leaned into the wrestlers. “Reza, that’s a good, but I need speed with your
moves! Go after Kaveh! Stop hesitating!”
Like no other athlete, instinct becomes a wrestler’s fiercest weapon. Each
movement, each twitch, each flicker in an opponent’s face feeds into the warrior. From
the first moment he squared against an opponent, Reza drew from an instinct born into
the select few. He knew Kaveh’s next move before Kaveh himself knew and Reza’s
tenacious nature took full advantage of every opportunity.
“That’s it Reza! Finish him!” Abbas said as he circled the two wrestlers. His
expert eye seeking weakness, possibilities.
Kaveh drove his head into Reza’s gut. Reza blocked his right shoulder and head
with his left knee and grabbed Kaveh’s left hip with his right hand.
“Don’t reach around and let him roll you!” Abbas commanded.
Pulling and lifting Kaveh’s left hip over his knee, Reza tilted his shoulders to the
mat and finished him with a reverse half Nelson.
He wiped blood from his split lip. “Come on Reza!” Kaveh said. “It’s just a drill.”
“Exactly,” Reza responded. “That’s why you’re only bleeding. Let’s go. Stand
up.” Coward.
“No way. You find someone else,” he said and walked to the other side of the
gym.
Reza looked to Abbas but he waved to let him go. Then Abbas pointed to the area
where the older and stronger wrestlers worked out and where Reza usually liked to train.
But today, the Ali vs. Frasier match invaded his mind.

Continually looking to the tiny round clock on the dirty gym wall, he marked
time. We actually have a TV and I’m here. I’m going to miss the fight! !
Reza could not concentrate. He found his face smashed to the mat where blood
trickled from his nose and formed a tiny puddle directly in front of his eye. Damn. He
caught me in the reversal.
“Reza! You should’ve seen that coming! Get up! Do it again!” Abbas said.
Shaking his arms and hoping from side to side to realign his muscles, Reza glared
at the wrestler nearly twice his size. “Let’s go!” Reza said. He did not wipe away the
blood.
His opponent rolled his head around thick neck. “Ready to be pinned again
Azadi? Where do you want to bleed from this time?”
Reza responded by stepping into the center of the mat. And glancing at the clock.
The next thing he saw up close—the puddle of his own blood.
 Abbas rushed onto the mat and yanked Reza up by his arm. “You must
concentrate! Focus! Do not let me catch you hesitating!”
Three more live drills produced slightly better results for Reza and Abbas nodded
his head. “Better,” Abbas said. “Now, go get your sister.”
Reza bolted to the far side of the gym where his sister Soraya, ten months his
senior, completed a perfect dismount from the balance beam. She better be ready this
time.
“Baba got us a TV and he said it’s time to go!” Reza said.
Soroya had the exquisite markings of a fawn and eyes that spoke before she did.
Clipped in a perfect knot on top of her head, her silken black hair seemed to provide
ballast as she jumped and spun. She faced him with pouted lips. “Baba didn’t say that.
You did, and” she said as she hopped back on the beam, “I’m not finished.”
“Do you always have to be impossible? Just this once, can you cooperate?”
Soroya’s lean, muscular body completed several back flips before she landed
again in a perfect dismount. “No.”
“Soroya! If we miss the fight because of you, I swear, I’ll…”
Behind Reza, Soraya could see Abbas walking their direction. Raising her voice,
she continued, “It’s not fair that we have to go home just because you want to see some
stupid Americans fight. I have a competition next weekend and I have to practice!”
This time, she did not return to the beam. She waited for her father. Reza turned
around, held up his arms, and pointed to Soroya. “Baba! She’s being impossible.”
“Soroya,” Abbas said, “we’re going home now. But, Reza’ll escort you back here
early tomorrow so you can get in the rest of your routine.” She grinned at Reza and
pranced off to put on her warm ups. Reza didn’t say a word.
She returned in her loose fitting pants, long shirt, and unclipped hair. It poured
down her back like a piece of night accenting the brilliance of her eyes and sculpted
shape of her face. She paraded toward the door, when Abbas stopped her. “Soroya,
where’s your roosari?”
Her shoulders dropped. “I left my headscarf at home Baba.”
“Then you shouldn’t have left the house. Reza, why did you bring your sister
here this morning with her hair uncovered?”
 “I’m sorry Baba.” He shot his meanest look to his sister who looked away. She’s
impossible.
“No more Soroya. You’re almost ten and you must cover every time you leave
the house. Every time,” Abbas said.
“Baleh Baba.”
Abbas brought his hand to his face, the course skin making a scratching sound
against his uneven beard. “Tonight, we should be okay, but this will be the last time.”
Abbas pointed to the door and the three headed to the fading sunlight for their
walk home.

Anxiety mounted as time neared for the fight to begin. Reza’s mother, Nimtaj,
calmed the brood while Abbas desperately tinkered with wires and knobs. Sitting on the
faded Persian rug under the framed portrait of The Shah, the chunky TV looked more like
a roadside oddity than furniture. This deep brown magical box not only looked out of
place, it refused to work.
Reza lived the excitement of the much-anticipated Mohammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier
rematch. He heard stories about the two American warriors at school; stories he wanted
to unfold before his eyes. But no matter how many times Abbas clicked the two knobs or
bent the silver antennas, only grey and white static crackled behind thick glass.
“It’ll work, just hold on. Just need to find the station,” Abbas said.
Reza’s three younger siblings gathered on the rug in an unnatural cluster rather
than sitting in the usual circle assembled for family meals. The two little sisters, four-
year old Farah and two year-old Pari, stood curiously in front of the mysterious box
wondering if seeing their reflection might mean they could somehow go inside. The
slightly older six-year old brother Houshang, sat on the floor and moved in a side-to-side
symphony with Farah and Pari trying to catch his reflection too. Fuzzy lines, diagonal
patterns, and a lot of static greeted them.
“It’s the antenna. It has to be,” Abbas said to address the questions of the oldest
son Amir. “Is it on the roof right? Did you follow directions?”
 “Directions? Baba, TVs don’t have directions,” Amir said. “You plug ‘em in and
turn ‘em on. That’s how they work. Ours must be a broken one.” The kids gasped—
broken meant forever in a family with little means to support so many.
“It’s the antenna wires? I’ll go on the roof Baba! Let me fix it!” Reza begged
his father.
“How can you know anything about these TVs? You’ll just fall and hurt yourself.
Again,” Abbas answered without looking up. “Amir, you go.”
“No, no, he won’t know what to do!” Deciding his father’s silence implied
permission, Reza ran out the door and scurried up the ladder to the flat, brown roof.
He squinted in the setting sun across the multitude of one story brick buildings
watching his neighbors bending their antennas and shouting to waiting families below,
“Now?!” They would ask. “Can you see anything now?”
Working to connect the antenna wires, Reza’s mind reeled in fear. We’re going to
miss it! No one can get it. These stupid TVs never work like they’re supposed to. How
can anyone see what is happening a world away, a world called America? Baba wasted
his money.
Voices called up, “Reza, start bending the antenna! Zood bash! Hurry!”
Reza bent this way and that, twisting the wires and calling down to the faces
peering up to him. His younger brother and sisters darting in and out, calling to Baba,
calling to Reza.
“More left. More right. Up, no down, no back the other way.”
The older brothers, twenty-one year-old Amir and fifteen year-old Mostafa,
climbed the ladder to stand on the roof alongside Reza. While Mostafa smiled at other
families struggling with their antenna, Amir moved in to Reza. “Of course you don’t
know what you’re doing, but you came up here anyway! That’s why Baba wanted to
send me. Here, give me the wire and move.” He reached around Reza.
“No, I can do it. I can do it! Don’t push me. Stop it!”
Reza’s foot slipped on the loose rocks at the edge of the roof and Mostafa grabbed
his arm and pulled him back. Before Reza could speak, Amir blasted, “Be careful! You
know we can’t take you to the hospital. Ahhg! I’ve dropped the wire because of you!”
 “I’ll get it,” Reza said stepping back toward the roof’s edge. The black wire
dangled from the window. “I can reach it.” I’ve got to see this fight.
“No, you can’t. You’re too short. Ugh! If we miss Muhammad Ali crushn’
Frazier…” Turning from Amir’s anger, Reza planned his reach for the wire. Glancing at
the ground below, he estimated the fall should he come up short.
Desperate calls from below, “It’s not coming in! Nothing! Hichi! What
happened? There’s nothing now!” The family frantic. The cable dangling from the
window. Reza lay on his stomach and hung over the edge. Stretching to grab the wire,
he called to Mostafa, “Just hold my legs, I almost got…..”
Mostafa looked over to his brother. “Reza, you’ll fall,” he replied. “Just get up
and we’ll...”
Fingertips barley touching the ends, “I almost got it, just one more…” Reza said.
Reaching, stretching, pushing himself over the edge, his brothers turned to the
sound of small rocks crunching beneath his rolling body. “Reza! No!” they cried out.
Tumbling, Reza swung his arms in a desperate circling motion as if trying to take
flight. He flipped himself in a brief moment of balance and landed feet first in a cloud of
dust. He collapsed in a defeated heap, held his foot and tried not to cry.
Amir shook his head while Mostafa headed toward the ladder. Hearing the thud,
Abbas rushed outside, but Amir cornered his attention to complete the wire connection.
The entire family cheered for the American boxers who appeared in a faded, wrinkled
picture.
Namtaj also glanced out the open window and seeing Reza, placed a large iron
pot on her stove to boil water. “Soroya,” she said, “can you get me the jar of herbs for
Reza? He’s fallen, again.”
“Again? He needs to learn Naneh. Just let him sit…”
“Soroya, get the herbs.” Nimtaj said.
Only Houshang circled the modest house in an earnest search for his brother.
Going past the fountain in the front yard, through the stone kitchen in the back, and down
the alley, he found Reza leaning against the mud covered brick wall.
“Rezz!”
“I’m okay. I’m fine.” He reached to him for balance. “Just help me up.”
 “Rez, I’ll get Naneh. You’re hurt.” Houshang turned to run back into the house.
Reza grabbed his arm. “No! Get over here! I’m fine. I’m alright.” He steadied
himself on Houshang’s shoulder.
Leaning at the end of the alley, Mostafa shook his head at his impossible younger
brother. An impressive few beard sprouts, twisting in the mountain breezes, gave his
face the look of a young wizard. Only a few years older then Reza, he stood almost a
foot taller and carried the wisdom of a thousand generations. He calmly approached the
two and ordered Reza to sit.
Houshang protested. “Pick ‘em up Mostafa! Help him! Zood bash! He’ll miss
the big fight.”
Mostafa leaned over Reza’s swelling foot, and moved it side to side. “You’ll
walk, but I’d give up flying for a while. Here, let’s get you inside.”
A man’s shadow crossed the figures. “He should get up himself. He fell when I
said to be careful,” Amir said. His large frame and naturally dark features felt emphasized
in the shadows. Houshang ducked behind Mostafa.
Reza looked down in shame, but Mostafa had already hoisted him to his feet. He
whispered, “sometimes you’ll fall,” and brushed dirt from Reza’s back. “But you always
get up. You have no sharmandeh when you get up.”
The three brothers came into the home, hardly noticed by the family engaged in
the only piece of furniture in the room—the miraculous box. Nimtaj and Reza’s two
older sisters, nineteen year-old Rasha and seventeen year-old Meri, brought the deeg of
steaming herbs to Reza. With his sheepish grin, he stood to place his swollen ankle in the
brew. Smelling the rising steam, Nimtaj patted Reza’s head and walked out the back
door to her kitchen to prepare this evening’s meal—showing no interest in this new
distraction crackling in their home.
The throbbing pain was soon blotted out by the images of two enormous warriors
smashing fists into swollen faces while throngs of Americans cheered. Reza gasped as
Frazier absorbed a blow from Ali that would have killed a horse and howled in
amazement when Frazier got up. The Azadi’s joined all of Iran in shouting for
Mohammad Ali, their hero. They cheered his name as he raged on—an unstoppable
force of nature.
 “Look Baba!” Houshang said. “He’s like an ox! He could lift the whole house!”
Farah’s pudgy face nodded in agreement. “Maybe two houses!” she added.
The Iranian commentator fumbled through the translation of boxing terms with
his voice crackling in and out with both surreal emotion and poor reception. Reza,
watching Mohammad Ali, marveled at how something so powerful could be also be so
quick. These are Americans, Reza thought, from a land that might as well have been the
moon.
Mohammad Ali and Frazier willfully endured what no human should survive.
Reza strained to take in the American faces of those in the crowd; those people whom he
figured just wandered in off the street to take in a good fight. He pulled his swollen red
leg from the pot so he could get closer to the screen and maybe hear the announcer.
Sitting next to his eight year-old cousin Farid, who had just scrambled in since his
family’s TV couldn’t be fixed, Reza whispered, “Muhammad Ali’s got this guy beat.
He’s just waiting for the right moment to knock him out!” Farid nodded in agreement
and continued to take notes on the pad of paper he always carried with him.
Reza scooted close to the screen. It was the 14th round; Muhammad Ali drawing
on some mysterious inner strength, punished Frazier with endless bloody blows. Now
entering the 15th and final round, both fighters staggered with exhaustion. The screaming
fans melted away and two ancient warriors, faced one another in their broken bodies,
locked in their own universe. These are true warriors.
And then it happened.
Frazier lashed out with another one of his famous left hooks and landed it
perfectly on Mohammad Ali's exposed jaw. Reza cried out when Muhammad Ali
dissolved to the mat, flat on his back with his powerful legs flopping humiliatingly in the
air. The referee leaned over the pulverized mass, “1…2…”. Then, he rose.
Mostafa cheered and the others joined in. Reza hopping on his good leg, yelled,
“Baba! Did you see that? Baba, he won’t stay down! Even after that punch!”
“Ahh, Reza, it’s what I always tell you—getting up is what it takes to be
Champion.” Abbas paused and shook his head. “But, that one moment cost him this
victory.”
 “Baba’s right. One mistake and he’s won’t be the ghahreman. It’s over.” Amir
confirmed.
Reza looked at up at Abbas and he nodded in agreement.
“But he got up,” Mostafa said. “He got up.”
The bell sounded and the weary warriors staggered to their corners. The referee
took the card from the judges to announce who would be the champion, the ghahreman.
The crowd took a collective breath as the referee declared, “Joe Frazier is the new heavy
weight champion of the world.”
Reza looked down and rubbed his swollen ankle.

The warm evening found Reza and Farid lying on the rooftop under the sparkling,
ancient sky. The other siblings chose to rest inside tonight with Abbas and Nimtaj
retiring to their traditional separate sleeping quarters. Reza’s stockier build seemed to
punctuate Farid’s slender frame as they gazed into the vast wonderment in the decorated
darkness above them.
Farid, born only a few months after Reza, had an insatiable curiosity and sharp
mind for details. He reviewed the notes he took during the fight and concluded that
Mohammad Ali really should have been the ghahreman.
“And you know boxing all of a sudden? How is that anything like soccer?” Reza
asked.
“It’s actually more of an ancient Greek sport, like your wrestling. You land a
punch, you get a point.” Farid pointed to a page in his notebook. “Mohammad Ali had
more.”
“Maybe it’s different in America,” Reza answered. “I mean, can you believe they
were so huge? So, so fearless. I wonder if all Americans are like that.”
Farid and Reza first reasoned all Americans must be fearless, huge and strong like
oxen. But, after a few minutes of silent pondering, Farid shook his head and declared, “I
saw lots of skinny Americans in the crowd too.”
Reza agreed, “lots of skinny ones.” Images of the mighty warriors were still crisp
in his mind. Reza felt their desire, their sweat, and their force. “So, it must be the big
Americans are bred to fight. They are the true pahlavan.” He gazed off into his sky.
“They know matches are battles.”
Farid pulled the woven blanket closer to his chin to offset the evening’s chill. “So,
if you want to be a champion fighter in America, you get all the best foods and all the
best training ‘till you’re huge.” Farid laughed a little, “and then the skinny ones all stand
around and cheer while you get beat like a goat with a club.”
Reza pounded his fist into his hand, mimicking the action he had seen Abbas use
many times when making a point. “But a goat can’t fight back. It has no chance. It’s just
always a goat. American warriors, if they are true pahlavan,…they fight back.”
Now entranced in his dreams of America, Reza continued to babble about what it
must be like to live there. “Since Europe has no dirt, America must not have dirt either. I
think I’d like to go to America instead. I’ll find Mohammad Ali and tell him he really
won and not to be disappointed. At least, he should be proud he got up.”
Silence followed Reza’s statement, so he figured Farid had fallen asleep. He
adjusted his pillow one last time and closed his eyes to remember his pahlavan
exchanging blow after blow. In the darkness, Farid’s voice cut into Reza’s dreams. “But
America’s too expensive…and we don’t know how to get there…your family is here…
you’re Iranian, Reza, Iranians live in Iran.”
Reza stared into the brilliant path of the Milky Way. “Iran is just one part of the
whole world.”
A world that for now lay buried somewhere behind a thick wall of black and
white glass.