How do you speak about a legend, especially if that legend is your own father? How do you remember him? You’re afraid that anything you say will be another exaggeration in the sea of exaggerations about the already larger-than-life figure that was Ali Abdoh: the man who created the Iranian football team Persepolis, but also the invincible heavyweight boxer and the solo volleyball player who clobbered American teams so comprehensively that in 1954 Life ran an article about him: “One Man Beats Six at Volleyball. Agile Ali Abdoh Learned How in Tehran.”
Ali was a philosopher of sport. In that same Life article when asked what his secret is for winning, he was nonchalant: “It’s easier to beat a good team than a bad one, because a good team will hit a ball where it should be hit. You can’t predict with bad teams.”
I always had questions for this philosopher. But I was also scared of him—though not the way others were scared of him. He was a tough guy, who in one evening, could weep for the death of a fictional hero on TV and then turn around and take on several men in a fist-fight and pound them within an inch of their lives. In the Amiriyeh district of Tehran, where he grew up, they used to call him Redhead. Decades later you would still run into people from old Amiriyeh who’d tell you how the entire neighborhood was under young Redhead’s protection back then. God help a passerby who so much as cast a wrong glance at the women there.
In 1978 he was exactly fifty years old and had less than two years to live. I was a kid then, in boarding school in England. It was toward the end of the school year, and Iran was in the World Cup for the first time. England had not qualified that year, but Scotland had, which meant World Cup fever was still strong in the British Isles. But I recall none of that really. Neither do I recall the drubbing that Iran received in two games, both against Peru, and against the mighty Netherlands team that would go on to lose in the final for the second consecutive tournament.
I do recall, however, the 1-1 score against Scotland—Iran’s first ever point in a World Cup. When the game began, I was in our dormitory sleeping alongside all those British boys who could be the most faithful of friends or vicious enemies. At some point in the night, the “housemaster” of the building pulled me out of bed to come watch the game. It was an unbelievable act of thoughtfulness on his part toward a boy of thirteen in a British boarding school. After the game was over, he went one step further and called my father so that I could speak with him. He knew that my father was intimately connected to sports in Iran and especially to football. I have no idea where my father was at the time. The details of the circumstances have become blurrier with each passing year. But the details of our conversation have stayed with me.
I wasn’t sure what to say at first. This was an uncomfortable situation, and I recall standing bolt upright the whole time to talk to my father. But I was also a kid, and I was excited that Iran had managed a draw with the Scots. So I asked what was really on my mind, “Do you think we might win the World Cup one day?”
I had never put such a question to my father. I never had the chance to be so innocent with him, so kid-like. He was Ali Abdoh, after all; you didn’t take up his time with trivialities.
A pause followed my question like a deafening siren. I immediately regretted asking it, though I wasn’t entirely clear why.
Finally, my father spoke: “No, we won’t win the World Cup.”
It didn’t sound like an admonition or irritation at being asked a silly question. He had simply answered me after thinking seriously about it. Suddenly, proud of myself for having had the courage to ask this question, I pressed on, “You mean, we’ll never, ever win the World Cup?”
There was a brief pause this time. My father repeated, “No, we’ll never win.”
To this day I cannot figure out why he was so candid at that moment. Whatever it was, I was exhilarated not just by the answer he had offered but by what it meant: my father and I were at last chatting like two friends. At the same time, the prospect of Iran never winning the World Cup was like a kick in the head. If my father—who understood sports better than anyone—said we’d never win, then there had to be some truth to it.
Now I was afraid of pushing my luck, but something drove me to press further. I asked, “Why won’t we ever win the World Cup?”
This time there was no pause at all. It was as if it were a question Ali Abdoh himself had considered a thousand times and now he was ready to impart his wisdom to me. He said, “Because we don’t know how to play as a team.”
I stood rooted to the spot and tried to let this answer sink in. What did he mean? Did he mean that our national football team didn’t know how to play as a team? Or did he mean we Iranians, as a people,didn’t know how to play as a team? There was such sobriety in the way he said those words that it felt like he was testing me, challenging me to stand my ground and find the courage to ask him yet another question.
And the question was there, at the tip of my tongue. But I took too long to ask it and instead I heard him utter the words “I love you, son” in English into that phone line. He had never said those words to me quite in that way, and I knew he meant it. But his saying it just then, in the same somber tone with which he had answered my questions, somehow made me lose my resolve to ask anything further and all I could muster now was a mumble that I loved him too.
Or, maybe, I didn’t ask that final question because I already knew what his answer would be. I imagine our exchange would have ended with something like this:
Me: “Is this why you always play solo when you play volleyball—because you never trust the other players to make a good team?”
Ali: “Yes. That is why I always play alone.”