Chapter 23

The wrestlers struggle to survive in Venezuela and all but Ardeshir are able to contact their families.  Reza learns Hassan’s fate and Nimtaj faces sorrows she can no longer bear.   Desperate to leave Venezuela, the wrestlers approach the only embassy that will give them a plane ticket—Iran.

1. Home
2. Escape
3. Trust

1. Make a list of the news they learn when they call home.
2. Analyze Ardeshir’s emotional states in this point in the story.
3. Discuss the logic behind the plan to leave Venezuela.
4. Does Nimtaj’s death reflect her life?
5. How do Reza’s instincts as a wrestler save his life?

Write a half to full page eulogy for Nimtaj. 

1. Ardeshir lifted his face to the ceiling and spoke to the dripping sky. “I can’t call home Reza.  You know that.”  “Just to say you’re okay.  Just to say…”  “To say what?  That I’ve disgraced my family so that I could…eat steak bones from trash cans!”
2. “And…”  He leaned closer to Ardeshir.  “And you are of pahlavan.”  Reza reached into his pocket and then took Ardeshir’s hand.  He pressed Ardeshir’s gold medal into his clammy palm, and whispered, “That’s how you live….And that’s how you’ll die.”  One by one, Ardeshir’s fingers closed around his gold medal.  
3. “Maybe we should have gone home,” Reza said.   “We don’t have one anymore.”

A static character remains the same.  A dynamic character changes.  Characterization (thoughts, actions, dialogue, response of others and appearance) is the method which the author uses to create a static or dynamic character. 

Choose four characters: two static and two dynamic.  Support your choices by using specific examples of characterization from any point in the story. 

Against the dramatic landscape of world altering events, Reza’s heroric journey unfolds.