Nowruz — the Iranian New Year — is one of the biggest holidays for Iranians, usually celebrated with large parties and family gatherings. It’s an ancient holiday with pre‑Islamic roots that unites Iranians across religious lines in Iran and throughout the diaspora.
This year, organizers faced a difficult choice. Jasmine Nourisamie, a president of the Persian Cultural Society at New York University, had to decide how to mark a joyous holiday amid widespread grief and anxiety. “All of us as Iranians in the diaspora are connected to someone who has either been killed, imprisoned, tortured, raped, disappeared — we all know someone, and it was very much a period of mourning, and it still is,” she said.
After the mass killing of protesters by the Iranian regime in January, many on social media urged that Nowruz celebrations be toned down; numerous organizations canceled events. Nourisamie’s group ultimately held an event, but replaced a typical celebration with a vigil, offering a space to gather, speak and mourn. “Usually Nowruz is all colorful dresses and bright pastel colors,” she said. “This year, everybody was wearing black.”
People are processing this moment in different ways. For some, that means quiet spaces and stillness; for others, there is power in joyous community. “I think a lot of people look at the dance floor as sort of a frivolous place where you just come in to ‘party.’ But the way we look at the space of the dance floor is really a place of resistance,” said Arya Ghavamian, a creator of Disco Tehran, a dance party that celebrates the music of Iran. “Having lived in Iran, we have always faced this censorship of just being silenced. And my thought is that — why be silent against this darkness? When everything is pushing us to be silent — why stay silent and be silent?”
Ghavamian noted that Nowruz has been observed through Iran’s highs and lows. “If everything disappears, this memory that flows through history with all of us, with our ancestry and our existence and all of that, that is home. For me personally, Nowruz is home,” he said.
In a Brooklyn apartment, Nozlee Samadzadeh assembled a haft sin, the traditional Nowruz table with symbolic objects. Her display included purple hyacinths, fruit, a well‑worn book and a mirror on a white cloth with silver embroidery. But she acknowledged that some rituals weren’t possible this year. “It’s very traditional to call your family at the moment of the year passing, and right now it’s just not possible to make calls into Iran,” she said.
A near‑total internet blackout in Iran meant many people could not reach loved ones; at any moment someone might not know if an aunt or cousin was safe or if a recent airstrike had hit a family home. Samadzadeh relied on a long chain of relatives — a literal game of telephone — to get word from her grandmother.
This Nowruz had many calls that didn’t go through. Still, families kept calling, communities mourned together, and friends gathered — some in silence, some on the dance floor.
