Bonfire-jumping and street parties mark the end of the Iranian year
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Version 0 of 1. “Lock the doors and stay inside,” a 30-year-old man told his significant other as the noise of serial explosions echoed against the pavements of Tehran on 19 March. Bright flashes and white smoke regularly illuminated the evening sky, and the distant sound of cheering and laughter was a lone indication that what transpired was not a reenactment of a 1980s Iraqi bomb raid, but an annual celebration marking the last night of the Persian year. In times of war and peace, Iranians set their cities and villages ablaze each spring to symbolically burn away the negatives of the old year. Jumping over a tall fire on “Red Wednesday” (Chaharshanbe Soori) is a Zoroastrian purification rite dating back to the Sassanian Period, but in modern times, this ritual has been augmented by street parties and the prolific use of makeshift pyrotechnics that transform quiet neighborhoods into battle fronts. Deaths, maiming, and third-degree burns are commonplace news items, and almost every family shares the memory of a shattered window pane or a home fire caused by a wayward fire rocket. In the week leading up to the event, it becomes impossible to walk through a park, bazaar or busy square without dodging firecrackers and other combustible paraphernalia, tossed freely under the feet of innocent pedestrians. In Tehran, the main streets become eerily empty as millions of residents leave town for the Nowruz holiday, creating caravans of traffic that snake through the Alborz mountains and toward the Caspian coast, a traditional destination for vacationing city dwellers. Law enforcement officials issue public safety warnings about burglaries, muggings, rapes, and jellyfish sightings in the Persian Gulf. Still, Chaharshanbe Soori has its casualties. This year, four people - including a two-year-old - died in detonation-related accidents, and nearly 400 others were hospitalized. Wary of the perils of going outdoors, many families barricade themselves inside their homes for an evening with their loved ones, and the streets become the dominion of young people. For them, Chaharshanbe Soori is a rare opportunity to publicly release some energy - and hormones - without worrying about the police, who tend to be less attentive to frowned-upon activities like alcohol use and the mingling of unmarried boys and girls. Such a scene unfolded on the dead-end side of a residential alley in central Tehran, where groups of young revelers encircled open fires, deploying their arsenals of homemade and store-bought explosives to a Persian rap beat, blasted from the sound system of a low-set Pride pickup truck. Girls wrapped in stoplight-red scarves squealed as they lept over the fire, letting the flames lick their leggings. The boys took a more blaze tack, casually walking straight through the flames and burning holes in their denim. The conversation turned to tales of Chaharshanbe Sooris past, and of hand-concocted combustibles made of house paints that, as one male participant puts it, “made a Molotov cocktail look like a tea light.” “It’s gotten a lot less wild than it used to be,” another leaper commented nostalgically. In keeping with the original sense of the tradition, a sense of renewal and release gripped the revelers as they welcomed the end of a universally taxing year, marred by economic strife, pollution and political flux. One young activist reflected on the statement of Sadegh Larijani, the conservative head of Iran’s judiciary, regarding the continuing jailing of Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, both under house arrest since 2011. Larijani’s unusually conciliatory words regarding his two “dear” former political associates raise questions regarding the country’s political future: Will the new year bring new concessions for the country’s opposition groups? And if the Persian year 1392 was officially billed as the “year of epic politics and economy,” what will be the government motto for 1393? The neighborhood had long fallen silent as the partygoers finished their cups of bathtub liquor and dispersed to their homes in various parts of the city, leaving the more serious points of the conversation unresolved. Fresh clothes were laid out and alarm clocks were set. While much of the country is on holiday, the last day of the year on 20 March is, officially, a work day. |