Poetry fills Tehran streets as Iranians adapt Nowruz rituals to Corona restrictions
Nowruz is the most important holiday in Iran, a time when families gather together, neighbors visit and share food, and friends throw parties and wish each other well in the year to come.
Nowruz marks the first day of Spring, and its most popular rituals involve gathering in large groups. The last Tuesday before the New Year, crowds light big bonfires in the streets and party through the night with their neighbors, cooking up big vats of ash reshte soup to share. They jump over bonfires in an ancient ritual meant to bring health in the year to come. The New Year itself is welcomed with a feast of white fish and herbed rice. In the days that follow, extended families visit each other’s houses. 13 days after Nowruz, families take picnics to parks to welcome the spring weather.
The spread of coronavirus has made many of these traditions impossible. Campaigns to stop the outbreak urge Iranians to stay home and not visit family or hold parties. Iran’s largest cellphone company changed the name of its network on mobile phones to read: “Khane Bemanim,” “Let’s stay home.” Most families are spending the two-week holiday, when Iranians usually travel around the country, stuck at home.
Iranians are finding innovative new ways to mark the Nowruz holiday under the restrictions Coronavirus has imposed. Instead of bonfires, some lit small candles in their homes and jumped over them while reciting the traditional poem –
Sorkhiye to az man, Zardiye man az to – “Let your redness (health) be mine, and let my yellowness (sickness) be yours!” – a poem which has taken on extra meaning in the days of COVID-19.
Reading poetry is a national pastime in Iran. In the weeks leading up to Nowruz, sitting in quarantine, Iranians read poetry to each other through voice messages to friends and relatives. Sharing lyrical beauty from a distance has become a way to be together during the holidays without physically being together. Tehran-based artist Golrokh Nafisi has made a collection of drawings based on the experience of sharing poetry with friends – and how it all started.
“As we enter the fourth week of quarantine, news of familiar names who have fallen dead arrive, as well as news of friends who have fallen ill and recovered,” she explained in an interview. “One by one, different lands and languages have joined the caravan of quarantine that we are in. Coronavirus has become a global pandemic. All of us, the greatest ‘all of us’ imaginable, are now caught in a war with an invisible virus.
“On one hand, it feels like everything is in a constant state of flux; on the other hand, it feels like this is the fourth week of the fourth decade that we’ve lived under quarantine. Repetitive safety protocols we’ve memorized to deal with the virus have become part of our body memory. Our perception of time is witnessing an upheaval, as well as our perception of movement and absence: the absence of hands, of bodies, of being close, of hugging.
Left: “Still my patience is as strong as I can wish.”
Right: “Open the knot, My heart says, With the coming spring, The thunder will cry, It will rain, The plains will rise.”
“A hundred springs will come and I won’t go outside, I’m scared you will visit my home and I won’t be there.”
Left: “Open the knot, My heart says, With the coming spring, The thunder will cry, It will rain, The plains will rise.” Right: “What exists now will not remain, and it will not be like this forever.”
Left: “Smile like a flower in springtime.”
Right: “Spring is coming my dear, let the branches dance!”
Left: “It’s a pity for a freedom-desiring heart to be sorrowful at Nowruz,” by Malek ol-Shoara.
Right: “A question for the spring breeze: what happens in the garden that makes the nightingale sing so restlessly?”
“The breeze of a new day and new beginnings blows from the abode of a dear friend.”
“The seductive spring has arrived.”