Nowruz Pirouz

Happy new year! No, I'm not late, it is the spring equinox and in Central Asia this means the beginning of the solar year. It makes sense! It always struck me as odd to celebrate the new year in the dead of winter. Between December and January nothing new really happens. You normally just keep wading through the desolation of dark days, with more dark days ahead, slightly hangover from social drinking, after being held hostage by your family over Christmas.

All is left on December 31 is a bunch of poorly thought-out Christmas cards, sticky fingers and the left-over mince pies: they seat, stale and listless, inside the cupboard until, on an impulse, you grab and shove them in your mouth. Instant regret.

March 21st has a total different ring to it. You have already noticed the days getting longer and now nights are officially shorter. The mornings are still cold, but the mist is quickly dispelled by that unmistakably spring-hued sunshine. Gardens, even the more neglected and overgrown, never looked so lovely: white daisies and dandelions are sprinkled over the luscious thick grass. I remember when I was a lonely adolescent, I’d celebrate the equinox by spending my afternoon, after school, in some park, lying on my back, watching the white clouds sailing slowly across the sky. A feel of hope would spread around my chest, a new tender leaf between my teeth.

Sprouts are one of the seven things that cannot be missing on the Haft-Seen (literally “seven Ss”) table, the typical arrangement that you’ll find in any Iranian house on this day: there are seven items, whose names begin with an S and that symbolise renewal, rebirth and fertility. When my Iranian friends introduced me to Nowruz, the Zoroastrian new year that pre-dates any Christian and Islamic celebrations of about 2 millennia, I instantly understood it. I have been celebrating it for decades without knowing.