Human Flower Project

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Uneasy Hyacinth – Year 1386

Today’s Persian New Year sprouts festivity and anxiety.

A Tehran flower shop stocked for the Norooz, March 2005

Photo: Mr. Behi, Impatient Pixels

With the equinox,  3:37 a.m. Tehran time, all who claim a Persian heritage mark the New Year with old customs. Youngsters jump ritual fires and elders set the haft seen table, its seven ceremonial objects including sombol – hyacinth flower—the olfactory equivalent of a high-pitched siren.  It’s spring!

Across Iran, the homeland of Norooz, this particular New Year arrives with anxieties: the threat of an international economic crackdown. Golnaz Esfandiari writes for Payvand’s Iran News, “many are concerned that the UN will adopt economic sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.”

One source told the reporter, “People are worried about sanctions and the very bad economic situation in Iran because everything has become expensive. I think the price of fuel will also increase and then the [prices of other things] are going to increase even more. If there will be sanctions and factories will shut down, then it would be horrible.”

Esfandiari adds, ominously, “Some in Iran also say they fear a U.S. attack despite Washington’s denials of any such plans.”

Seems to us that the Norooz, with its many expressions of hope and life, could melt these diplomatic clouds. Even now, representatives of ten countries where the Persian New Year is observed (among them, Afghanistan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan) are working to petition the U.N.’s World Intangible Cultures division for the Norooz to be recognized as part of our shared global heritage. They will gather in Tehran next month to finish their dossier. May this effort flower!

From Flower (2004)

By Shahram Entekhabi

There is a clear sense that Iranians feel misunderstood, even embattled this spring. See this odd video entitled Flower (2004) by Shahram Entekhabi, commentary from an Iranian expatriate living in Germany.

We also pass along a strong essay from Ali Mostofi standing up for the people of Iran. ”Iranians are not to be ‘feared,’” he writes in response to an editorial by William Cox. “You seem to be totally oblivious of the Iranian Spirit that has motivated a peaceful union amongst the Iranian people, and the various ethnic groups for thousand years. It was the very essence of the Iranian Spirit as enshrined in our Holy Book The Zend Avesta, that has keep Iran for so long. Iranian Peace was Cosmological. We were the first to unite the world along Cosmological Principles, and our Empires are a testimony to that. Pax Iranica was based on Nowrooz.”

Haft Seen

Noruz 2007

Oakland, CA, USA

Photo: Cyrus Farivar

Mostofi also stresses “We have close to four million very rich, very well educated Iranians outside Iran, who love Iran, and will not allow their country be plundered by aliens from within or without, because we have not forgotten the Spirit of Nowrooz.”

Indeed, the Persian New Year is being celebrated in many parts of the U.S. today. We attended a glorious occasion in 2003 right here in Austin.

Here are several more fascinating pieces on Norouz

and

No Ruz

and

Nowruz

—many spellings for springtime, a manifold creation.