This is Deborah Roberts here with another weekly episode of our latest series from 2020 and ABC Audio, Devil in the Desert.

Remember, you can get new episodes early if you follow Devil in the Desert on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

Now, here's the episode.

Music favorite podcast app. Now here's the episode. Back in the 1990s, Brad Zimmer was a gym teacher at Clovis West High School in Fresno,

California. I think organized sports is a great way for kids to learn a lot of life lessons.

Brad has spent three decades teaching hundreds, thousands of kids that sports is about more than

just throwing a ball. But there's only one student that he still asked so many questions about.

Hussein Nayeri.

In 1994, Brad was the wrestling coach at Clovis West, and Hussein was a new kid in his

freshman class.

Hussein had emigrated from Iran a couple of years earlier, and he was a quiet student,

still coming to grips with speaking English instead of Farsi.

Rad noticed how this new student seemed different around the other wrestlers.

The wrestlers are very tight-knit group. They were always together.

They were always doing something silly. And Hussein would

participate, but he kind of always seemed like he was maybe above it. He would kind of laugh.

But he never was kind of all in on the jokes.

It took time for Hussein to settle in socially. But wrestling, now that seemed to make more sense to him.

He worked hard to get better. Other wrestlers got used to seeing Hussein in the gym almost every day.

There's a photo of him in the yearbook from his senior year, just as upper torso poking out from a team

photo.

His eyebrows are dark, serious.

...