In No Mood for Norouz
I really don’t feel like Iranian new year or Norouz this year. With both parents gone and the children absent, Norouz seems like an exercise in syrupy orientalism. For the first time ever, for me, the thought of setting a haft sin is oppressive. All those Ss no one really knows what they stand for. How many times I’ve explained them not really being sure! I hate explaining Iranian traditions I have to pretend I hold dear. Thank god the kids are grown up and understand nuance now so they can understand my very complicated relationship with Iran.
All those years, exhausting years, trying to make the kids feel Iranian. It is such a hard thing to do, haft sin and Pokemon can’t compete. Poor Iranian parents, like myself, feel constantly inadequate and have spent a lifetime trying to make the kids feel as Iranian as we do, something that is thankfully impossible. Let them breathe the air free of constant nostalgia for the motherland or for some notion of her! They have an entire globe to save, let them run free and forge their own identities.
Dusty old senjed out of the cupboard makes me want to cry. It has served all the haft sin tables (norouz table with symbols of spring) since Ahmadinejad first came to office. That is how we count our years by the reigns of dictators one after another to no end. Has anyone ever seen what in heavens we use that senjed for other than on the haftsin table? Or samanoo, that looks like a sick dog’s poop after a couple of days left out on the table, wtf is that for? Did people actually eat this stuff at some point in our glorious history? The thing about Norouz is that it is so old, which is a good thing perhaps. But I understand people find Islam a readier common denominator for no other reason than it is a couple of thousands of years younger. And consider the entrepreneurial genius who came up with the idea of esfand: “here, burn these it will ward off the evil eye and keep all maladies at bay.” Sure, it will. Look how it saved a nation from diaspora!
As a kid, the only part of Norouz we really loved was getting eidi, or norouz gift which was usually gold coin or cash. That part, the best part, that made not only kids but also poorer relatives and servants happy, has conveniently been eliminated by the elders of the diaspora in my town. I’m not sure about other places around the globe but here only the phony accoutrements of the ancient festival remain. The other part of Norouz that we liked as kids was the food, the incredible sweets especially. And that, is now actual not metaphoric poison for yours truly. If you told me when I was a little girl in Tehran would you skip a Norouz without eidi or sweets, I would say, of course!
Maybe it’s the poisonous atmosphere of this place with hardened hearts beating to the rhythm of foreign pacemakers. I long to go somewhere where the average age is not twenty years above my own, when you reach your fifties you can’t afford such luxury. The dying start scaring you because you finally see what is meant by ‘fear of death’. I understood fear really only when my kids were born and I understood the fear of death only when my parents were both gone. Maybe it is not death that we fear it is old age. One hardly sees any kids in this place. I need to get back to the US and campaign for Bernie Sanders, he alone, gives me hope this spring.
