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. They might kill me. 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
devoured his being. Maybe I should leave right now…but then Saam could never get
out… 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 hissed. “Traitor.”
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. His toned arms
shot into a boxer’s stance and struck two lightening left hooks to knock out the imaginary
opponent. Across the frayed wrestling tarp, Reza’s calloused feet scissored with split
second pulses. “Everyone thinks Muhammad Ali will be our champion,” he said and
then raised his voice to secure his father’s attention. “That’s what all the kids at school
are saying!”
“Kids at school don’t always think,” Abbas replied as he rubbed his whiskers and
brought his gaze just above his young son. The puzzle of wrestling mats squirmed with
dozens of young men sweating through work-outs in the stifling gym. Sighing he
mumbled, “They just repeat what they’re told.”
Finishing a flurry of upper-cuts, Reza danced from side to side and rolled his head
to empty new sweat down his back. 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 paused his shadow boxing to follow his father’s gaze across the low brick building
that covered roughly the size of an airplane hanger. In the center, streams of sun
struggled through the dirty windows to compete with the humming bulbs that hung
patternless from low beams. The center mats hosted the live drills, the far side
congregated with gymnasts, their bars and mats, and on the nearside where Reza stood
with his father lay the lumpy strips of warm-up mats.
Reza breathed in the body fumes that his youth still prevented him from
producing and threw a few more punches. He swaggered with the symphony of vicious
grunts and savage thuds that harmonized with the barking of coaches and the yelping of
athletes Upper cut, upper cut, jab, jab. I could beat that Joe. I’d given some up top then
come low and
“Reza! You’re a boxer now?” Abbas said. His thick index finger pointed to the
mat. “Finish your workouts!” He paused, folded his arms and suppressed a smile. “Or
you’ll miss the fight.”
 Mid-way through a sit-up, Reza stopped. “What do you mean miss the fight?
How can I watch the fight? Farid’s TV is broken. Did Uncle fix it?”
Abbas pounded his fist into his palm. “You owe me fifty sit-ups!”
The young warrior trained with an exertion that only wrestling can demand. His 8
year-old body pulsed on the mats dotted in puddles of sweat and stained with drops of
blood. Abbas said fifty sit-ups, but Reza stopped at seventy-seven—when he could no
longer lift his head. He flipped onto his stomach and arched his chest; the sweat in his
eyes blurred the figure of Abbas who walked toward the wrestlers practicing one-on-one
live drills. Reza stood, waited for the burn of vomit to leave his throat and jogged after
his father. A smile graced his face. He loved live drills.
Reza watched a few wrestlers pretend to be suddenly finished and move toward
the edges of the gym to do push-ups. Cowards. Just leave. Don’t waste my time.
A nine year-old wrestler, Kaveh, disengaged himself from his current opponent
and began to roll his head from side to side and shake his arms. He glared at Reza and
walked toward an empty mat.
“You’ve got five kilos on Reza,” Abbas said as he pointed to Kaveh’s thicker
frame.
Reza hustled to catch up to his father. “I can take him Baba!” He shot a fierce
look to Kaveh who had already stood in the center circle and returned the glare.
“Then do it,” Abbas said. He took his place to the side of the mat.
Stepping into the center, Reza brushed back the thick locks of black hair sticking
to his forehead and licked the rim of sweat beading above bare upperlip.
Kaveh set his legs diagonally, bent his torso at the hips and brushed his hands
through the air like a praying mantis. His eyes locked on Reza’s, but Reza didn’t return
the stare. Instead, he glanced at the twitching of Kaveh’s toes, the tightening of his jaw
and the uneven rhythmic movement of his chest. Moving slightly forward, he took in the
air that hung with Kaveh’s acidic breath. Reza then looked in Kaveh’s eyes, but Kaveh
looked away.
Like no other athlete, instinct becomes a wrestler’s fiercest weapon. Each
movement, each twitch, each flicker in an opponent’s expression feeds into the warrior.
From his first moment on the mats, Reza drew from an instinct born into the select few.
Seeming to read his opponent’s very thoughts, he simultaneously deflected moves as his
foe attempted them. Boring into his opponent’s soul, he respected the courage or
pounced on the fear. In one blink, Reza knew truth from lies. With a tenacious strength
that would define him, it became his nature to risk beyond his reach.
“That’s it! Finish him!” Abbas said as he circled the two wrestlers, the expert eye
seeking weakness, possibilities. Reza’s father taught him to ignore pain and banish
doubt. ‘He has the eye of the tiger’ he would tell his friends, but not so Reza could hear.
Kaveh drove his head into Reza’s gut, but Reza absorbed the blow and reached
for Kaveh’s ankles.
“Grab his shins!” Abbas commanded.
The young limbs bent around each like vine tendrils slick with fresh rain. The
muscles struggled to seize a hold before being ripped into a new position and struggling
to grasp again. Reza’s legs seemed to operate separately from his arms and they wrapped
around Kaveh’s head and drove it to the burlap surface. Abbas slapped his hand on to the
mat to indicate end of the period and Reza released his victim.
Kaveh rolled to his side and 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.
Two more practice periods. Two more pins for Reza. He took a quick lap around
the map, shaking his arms and rolling his head before he returned to the center.
“Step up,” Reza said.
“No way. You find someone else,” Kaveh replied. He walked around several
entangled wrestlers before leaning against the scuffed wall to pinch his bleeding nose.
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.
Despite this victory, the Ali vs. Frasier match invaded his mind.
He pulled his elbows in tight and struck out in another flurry against air. “He’ll
be champion,” Reza said. He looked to his father for validation. “He’ll stand in the ring
a champion or be carried off a corpse.” He dropped his head. “But I’ll hear about his
victory at school tomorrow…unless Farid’s TV is fixed.”
Abbas placed two hardened hands on the top of Reza’s shoulders and steered him
toward the older wrestlers. The intense lines sketched into Abbas’s face masked his
gentle eyes. A slight man of perfect proportions, he carried every movement with
balance and purpose. Thick eyebrows hid a thinning hairline and his smile, although
rare, could set everything right with the world.
“Unless,” Abbas said, with the slightest catch in his rough tone, “Farid comes to
our house.”
Comes to “Our house? Baba! You…we…a TV! Really!?” His eyes smiled. His
cheeks smiled. His ears smiled. Every cell in his body joined in the joy only an eight-
year old can experience upon hearing his dearest wish came true. We have a TV!
Continually looking to the tiny 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! !
He stepped into the center and faced his next foe, an older and larger boy. In
seconds, Reza 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
Abedi? 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 yanked Reza up by his arm. “Focus! You can not hesitate! Ever!”
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. Reza jogged toward her.
She better be ready this time.
 “Baba got us a TV and he said it’s time to go!” Reza called to her.
Soraya slightly turned her head. She 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.”
“Soraya! 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 Soraya. “Baba! She’s being impossible.”
“Soraya,” 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. “Soraya,
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 Soraya. 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 into 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!”
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.
Soon, 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. “Soraya,” 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…”
“Soraya, 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 stubborn 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.” He reached under Reza’s arms. “Here, let’s get
you up.”
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.”
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 Abedi’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 endured powerful blows no human should survive.
Reza strained to take in the American faces of those in the crowd at Madison Square
Garden; 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
hear the announcer.
Sitting next to his eight year-old cousin Farid, who had just scrambled in since his
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 even closer 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. Reza reached to the screen and pretended to touch
them. True warriors.
But he drew his hand back as Frazier lashed out with a punishing left hook to
Mohammad Ali's exposed jaw. Muhammad Ali dissolved to the mat, his legs flopped in
the air while his arms crashed to his sides. The referee leaned over the pulverized mass,
“1…2…”.
And then, like the final burst of black smoke from a smoldering inferno,
Mohammad Ali rose to his feet.
Mostafa cheered and the others joined in. Reza hopped on his good leg and
yelled, “Baba! Did you see that? He won’t stay down! He won’t stay down!”
“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 of hesitation 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 warriors staggered to their corners. The referee took the
card from the judges to announce who would be the champion. 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.

A few hours later, 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?” 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
night 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 in America, you get all the best foods and all the best
training ‘till you’re huge.” Farid laughed a little. “And then all the skinny ones 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.