"Awaken, the morning Nowruz breeze is showering the garden with flowers" —Saadi
I’m the daughter of one Catholic and one Muslim and the granddaughter of both Catholics and Muslims, all non practising. My Italian grandma keeps the holy card of a former pope on her corridor console and my Iranian grandma invokes ‘khodah’ a lot in our spare conversations, and that’s as far as my religious inheritance goes. Truthfully, I did go through two distinct Catholic phases when I was younger and for relatively long stretches of time I took up praying at bedtime. “Dear God, please bring peace to all, rid the world of wars and evils, and let me wake up just a little thinner tomorrow”, followed by an Ave Maria and one Padre Nostro. Meanwhile, at school, I really was interested in learning about world religions, but all I got was harassment over pork sausages —which, being myself a native of Abruzzo, an Italian region famous for its pork recipes, it’s truly an unfathomable controversy— and burqas. Go tell them.
Religious beliefs aside, I never really cared for any of the festivities on either side, to which my relatives would adhere to mainly as traditional cultural practices. For instance, I did not despair when last Christmas, by gentle concession of the pandemic, I was spared the usual celebrations and got to spend the day lounging on my sofa in the company of the latest Preciado, a moment of true religious ecstasy.
However, for some obscure reason, I’ve been obsessed with Nowruz for as long as I can remember. The Gregorian calendar forces me to celebrate the New Year on the 1st of January each year, but my spiritual resurrection happens exclusively on the day of the Spring Equinox. Originally a Zoroastrian rite, Nowruz means ‘new day,’ and ushers the beginning of a new season, when days are getting longer and flowers are blossoming once again. In preparation for Nowruz, Iranians and communities across Central Asia perform a series of rituals intended to ease the arrival of new energy by deep cleaning, getting rid of old, broken things and letting the purifying power of fire hold onto ills from the past year.
When I was younger my parents used to throw large parties in the countryside to celebrate Chahar Shanbeh Soori, the jumping fire ritual held the last Wednesday of the year, and fairly large Nowruz dinners consisting of Sabzi Polo Mahi, rice mixed with herbs and fish, and Kuku Sabzi, a veggies frittata. We’d often celebrate with a fellow mixed family who, even more diligently than us, always set the Haft Sin table —a spread of seven items whose names begin with the letter S in Farsi. The appeal of Nowruz for me lies in its emphasis on the deep connection we share with the nonhuman world. As nature awakens, so a fresh sense of hope bestows upon us propulsive force to start anew after a frosty winter. May we all find health and community, and remember that, no matter how testing the cold seasons of life can be, spring is always around the corner.
Thank you for reading! If you like the newsletter, you can forward it to a friend who may enjoy it or share it on social media.
You can subscribe by tapping on this cute lilac button:
Beautiful! Norooz Mobarak <3