Today is Chahar-Shanbeh-Soori, which can translate to " Wednesday celebration". Despite its name, the Wednesday celebration takes place on the last Tuesday before Nowrooz, which is the Persian New Year celebration.
Today's party is a very old party, which revolves around two main ideas:
Firstly, the Zoroastrian Persians of ancient times used to light fires on their roofs on this day, because they believed that their deceased ancestors would visit them from the other world after dark, and the fires would help them find their way (which kinda fuels intriguing niche theories involving extraterrestrial visitors).
Secondly, since they believed they were expecting special guests, people tried to clean their homes as best they could and remove all traces of old clutter, and this included the practice of throwing away and breaking up old pottery, such as worn and cracked jugs or chipped plates and trays. These practices have evolved into "khooneh tekâni" or "house shaking" (aka spring cleaning), to which one may add the ritual of jumping over bonfires as well as the use of firecrackers and fireworks. Many other things were added later in time, and the set of rituals tends to vary from one region to the other.
But because there is fire involved, and there are firecrackers going off, and it's noisy, and because it is a "celebration" and because it involves pre-Islamic traditions, and because of people jumping and dancing and boys and girls getting together and because there is food, music and joy, the Islamic Republic hates it.
They have always hated this fire Wednesday, they hated it for 44 years, and now it has even become a very sensitive subject for them, because such a celebration, in the current context, inevitably contains revolutionary elements.
There have been "invitations" or "calls" - (to hit the streets) issued on social media, and even when these invitations failed to reach them, many people took to the streets indeed, chanting slogans and lighting fires, in anticipation of tonight's celebrations, and by each of these small gestures, the people of Iran have shown the Islamic Republic that the Revolution persists and spreads.
The dance challenge video of the "girls of Ekbatan" has gone viral. The regime did search the whole neighborhood to find them, and of course they did force them to wear masks and oversized sweatshirts, and come and apologize for their behavior in front of the camera, but tribute videos are being filmed over and over again, their dance is being copied in protests abroad, and the original performer of the song they danced to even gave them a public shout-out.
Normally, those few weeks before Nowrooz are devoted to tidying up, shopping and organizing festivities involving large quantities of food. Think Christmas markets and New Year's Eve shopping, and visits across the country to pay respects to the oldest members of the family and in the midst of all that, which would already be enough of a headache for the regime, which can't even manage to distract the people with their spectacular management of the school poisoning crisis, or the traditional end of year display of self-satisfaction, there are these girls who dance, with their hair down and their navels in the air, and the whole country cheering for them or even imitating them, down to the little Balooch girls in traditional costumes. Each one of these videos of girls showing off their dancing bodies with a blurred face or even a cropped out head, is yet another bold spit in the face of a power that keeps piling up unsuccessful attempts to silence the revolution in all its expressions.
Fortunately for the Regime, there is always hope to be found in their relationship with the Western powers, whose appetite for the any form of "agreement" remains insatiable.
And when I say "agreement", I'm talking about the kind of deals that involve the payment of large sums of money, which will always invariably be spent in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, if not directly wired to the offshore accounts of our "leaders", all in exchange of prisoners who were lucky enough to have a backup foreign passport, such as a British or German or American passport.
Possessing "alternative citizenship" is valuable, when it comes to having a powerful country putting in the effort to rescue/liberate/repatriate you, but in Iran it mostly turns you into a target.
The many years of experience of the Islamic Republic in its relations with Western powers have led it to literally consider these "binational citizens" as ready-made prey, means of pressure or more simply put, mere sources of income.
The economic situation is bad, that's for sure. They managed to strike a deal with the Saudis recently, which means they might have stabilized inflation at around 70% for now. Yes, 70% is considered a win. Without that deal we were going more towards 300 or 400.
So, we are very calmly considering an inflation rate of 70% for the upcoming year. And there is a severe water shortage. And there are many of our brave men and women, who feel like pieces of our own bodies, in the prisons of the Islamic Republic, where there are no limits to the methods being used, to turn humans into frigid corpses, or barely living receptacles for ever shattered souls.
Let us take a short moment tonight, as we stand by our fires, to ask ourselves who exactly are the dead who would visit us from the other world this year?
Many children would be among them. Dozens of children and hundreds of young men and women have been killed in just a few months. Let's not forget them tonight.
And let's not forget that the ancient Zoroastrians were not fire worshipers. They worshiped "Wisdom", which was only represented by fire. Truth can only be seen in the light of wisdom. This is the central idea of the Zoroastrian religion. Wisdom - the very thing we seem to have lost along the way.
Zoroastrians have a tradition of keeping the fire going in their temples. Some of these fires have been maintained for thousands of years.
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