An Iranian hermit known as the “world’s dirtiest man” for not taking a shower for more than 50 years has died at the ripe old age of 94, according to official media.
“Amou Haji,” an endearing nickname for an elderly person, died on Sunday in the village of Dejgah in Fars’ southern province of Fars, Irna news agency reported.
Haji, covered in soot and living in a cinder-block shack, was reported by local media not to have bathed with water or soap in more than 60 years. Villagers said he had experienced “emotional setbacks in his youth” that led him to refuse to wash.
The Tehran Times had reported in 2014 that he would survive on roadkill and smoke a pipe that would be “filled with animal excrement”, for he believed that staying clean would “make him ill”.
Videos of him available on the internet show Haji in a dishevelled state, smoking multiple cigarettes all at once. Irna reported that only a few months ago, villagers had convinced him to wash himself for the first time in a long time — it would be his last shower.
A short documentary film titled “The Strange Life of Amou Haji” was made about his life in 2013, according to Iranian media outlets.
Interestingly, after Haji’s death, an Indian man could be given the unofficial title of “dirtiest” in the world.
It was reported in 2009 that one Kailash ‘Kalau’ Singh from a village outside Varanasi in UP had not bathed for more than 30 years, so as to end “all the problems confronting the nation”.
He purportedly said he would favour a “fire bath” over a regular water bath, for the former can potentially “kill all the germs and infections in the body”.