IRAN: Faster than Camels

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Poolad Gurd is 8 ft. 2 in. tall, and his feet are so long (22 in.) that he can find no shoes to fit them. He protects them instead with pieces of automobile tires. The rest of Poolad, an unlettered peasant from Persian Baluchistan, matches his feet. "When I was 15," he told a reporter, "I was a mighty man already. I could race the camels and pass them. Once I lifted a thousand pounds of wheat sacks." All his might, however, has brought Poolad little happiness. "Sometimes," he says, "you wish you were not tall. A man should marry, but girls stare or look frightened when they see me. I am too big and so I have no wife."

Eight years ago Poolad was digging a well at Zahedan, in southeastern Iran. The well caved in. "For two hours," Poolad remembered, "all the mud and dirt crushed down upon me and I stood, back bent, holding it. Something broke inside my back. Since then I walk with a stick. My back and legs hurt very much. I stoop. Before I was hurt, I was taller by four or five inches. I sold my land and my cattle. Now I live on charity, I who ran faster than the camels."

Last week Poolad Gurd was the marvel of Teheran, where a kindly member of Iran's royal family had brought him for an operation to cure his twisted spine. "If the operation is successful," said Poolad's doctor, "he may again be the strongest man in the world." Poolad himself was confident. While awaiting the knife, he lay across three hospital beds placed side by side, flirting with a petite nurse and considering an offer from a U.S. circus.