Takhti Viewed by Commonalities

The following are views of some Tehranians about world champion Gholamreza Takhti, after 47 years of his death.
It was a cold day of January 7, 1968, when the news spread in the city. It spread by word of mouth like rumors but it was not a rumor this time. Takhti was found dead in Atlantic Hotel of Tehran.
Some 47 years later, Takhti is yet alive to the people. Not only his name is on the streets but also his memory is present in the daily life of people like Ali.
“My father was a friend of Takhti. I myself saw Takhti in our shop many times”, Ali said. Ali owns a small jewelry shop in Tehran bazar. He was 23 when Takhti died.
“Takhti was humble and honest. He was not arrogant because of his medals. He was popular”, he said.
Ali, like many others, still believes Takhti’s death was suspicious, accusing SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence agency at that time.
Zari Amiri, Atlantic Hotel employee, was the first one who found Takhti dead. “When I went to his room at 8 p.m., he was alive and asked me some paper and a pen, but when I took him breakfast next morning I found him dead with a swollen and black and blue face”, she said to the reporters.
The news captured the city very soon. His death was announced a suicide by the officials, what many people disbelieved then and do not believe yet.
“Even Habibolleh Bolour, a wrestling tutor and Takhti’s friend, disbelieved the suicide story. He believed Takhti was the symbol of Iran’s sport”, Ali said.
Ali’s words reminded me of Jalal Al-e-Ahmad who said “not even one of all those people present in the funeral thought of suicide being true for a moment”. He calmed down two years later in the same cemetery, in a suspicious death too.
Mohammad Hossein works in a small coffee house in Sheykh Hadi Street. He is 50, but knows Takhti. “Takhti has died but his memory is alive yet”, he said. He knows many wrestlers from Reza Soukhteh Saraie to Alireza Soleimani, who died two years ago, and Askari Mohammadian, but believes none of them couldn’t replace Takhti.
I heard same words from Haj Ahmad, 80, too. He owns a restaurant in Shahr-e Rey. He has not seen Takhti but remembers his matches.
Although there are some people who know Takhti and have his picture in their work place, but for the younger generation, other sport champions are more attractive, especially soccer champions like Ali Daie.
There is one place which will never forget Takhti, anyway, Ibn Babeveyh cemetery. There, his grave is beside graves of celebrated people like MirzadehEshghi, Foroughi, Nasim-e Shomal, Dehkhoda and others.
In the rainy next evening of 47th anniversary of Takhti’s death, fresh flowers on his grave is a sign of a memorial day being held beside his grave.
“Hi champion,God bless you”, someone has written on the nearby wall of the grave with a green marker pen.
As I was looking at the stone of his grave under that glass case, I saw a man with his one year old child, who put his hand onTakhti’s grave and said, “Hi world champion. How is going on?”

Source: http://www.tarikhirani.ir/fa/files/All/bodyView/872/index.html

By Farzaneh Ebrahimzadeh
Translated by AsgharAboutorabi