Pedestrian

It’s near. The streets tell you that, even the sky or that breath of fresh air.

Unlike many celebrations, it is not marked by any particular group, or religion, or belief: only the belief in life, earth and nature. It is the vernal equinox, the first day of spring.

To me, it is not just a holiday, but also our version of shahrol haram (4 months of the lunar calendar when the feuding ancient Arab tribes would cease hostilities). An ancient calendar so precise that it has been able to live on, a people as old as time itself, a glory and a pride in what we were and what we have become. We have fought many battles, won many wars and despite loss, bloodshed, frenzy and chaos, we are here after all. We have survived.

The name Nowruz explains it better than anything else: It’s a “new day” in which everything can start afresh. And just as the earth ends a tiring yearlong journey to start over again, we too can once again hope, and believe that the coming year can be a new start for us as well; one in which past mistakes might not be repeated.

For a country bearing so much inner conflict and turmoil, a time like this shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Nowruz for me is the memory of sitting in front of the greenery we call sabzeh, usually oats or wheat nurtured and fed to grow for the occasion, and impatiently waiting for them to rise. It was a true mystery: Why the plants grew so fast on those TV shows, but so slowly in my grandmother’s garden? The pretty goldfish that also belonged to the holidays were visited every five minutes just in case they suffered a fatal heart attack.

And then there was poetry.

Shakespeare is a gift from heaven. Blake is quite a treat, and Robert Frost one of the best poets who ever lived. But Hafez can never be explained or praised in mere words. He writes leagues and leagues far from limits and boundaries known to man, and would be imposed great injustice if words alone were used to explain him. There’s a whole world in his poems, not one I understand very well or can decipher clearly, but just one that seems way too awesome and extraordinary to leave unexplored.

I can’t recall how many times I remember my grandfather opening the pretty-looking book on the table, and begin reading in whispers as I watched him with much curiosity. Unlike other books he read, this one never seemed to come to an end. One day I decided, like the grown-ups, to ask him to read me a poem for good fortune.

Grandfather said I should first repeat his words. He recited a prayer for the great poet.

– “Why do we say the prayer grandpa?”

– “So that Hafez would go to heaven.”

– “But hasn’t God decided that already?”

– “He might reconsider.”

I was sure he was mistaken. God had already made up his mind. But I obeyed and did my best to repeat grandfather’s words. I knew he was a religious man. What or whom he believed in was a mystery, but I love him more than the whole world put together anyway.

No one is sure when Hafiz first found his way in the hearts of so many Iranians, but one guess is that it all goes back to the time of Sultan Ahmad Ilkani, who ruled over Baghdad and was doubtful about attacking Tabriz. Legend has it that he opened his book of Hafez and came across a poem that ended like this:

Hafiz, your poems invaded Fars and Iraqi ports

It is now the turn of Baghdad and Tabrizi forts

To one familiar with Iranian culture it is no surprise to find out that legend also has it that he did attack … and conquered.

Sometimes life hands down a moment so precious, so overwhelming, you almost glow. On every March 20th or first of Farvardin, the first day of Spring, when the Iranian New Year begins at the exact moment the earth completes a total circle around the sun I will be waiting for such an incident. I will put my Hafez on the haft seen, our table that is set with exactly seven symbolic objects that have origin in the Zoroastrian faith of our ancestors, and wait for that precious moment when the world again shall be reborn.

I will feel the tick of the clock as the time comes nearer and smile across at the person doing the same. There’s no telling what the next 365 days will entail … But for this one particular moment at least, my mind and soul are as free as two wild, unsparing horses running in the most glorious of country sides.