Nowruz – the arrival of spring, the quiet awakening of nature, and, for some of us, the beginning of a new year.
A turning. A soft return to light.
A table is set – the haft-sin – the seven S’s, carefully arranged like a promise.
Each element on the haft-sin carries a quiet meaning, a language passed down through generations.
- Sabzeh (the greenery) for rebirth, growing even when we are unsure how.
- Seeb (the apple) for beauty and health, a reminder to care for what is fragile.
- Seer (the garlic) for protection, against what we cannot see.
- Serkeh (the vinegar) for patience, for the slow unfolding of time.
- Somāq (the spice) for the color of sunrise, the promise that light returns.
- Senjed (the seed) for love, the kind that roots deeply and stays.
- Sekke (the count) for abundance, freedom of wealth and health.
There is of course always room to make the table more personal. You may, if you like, add the coloured eggs for fertility and growth. And a small fish circling in clear water, moving, always moving – a reminder that life continues, even in stillness.
A table is set with an understanding that life, in all its complexity, insists on continuing. Despite how much the world is on fire, the sun will still rise tomorrow.
With Nowruz and spring comes the green sprouts reaching upward, and in the kitchen,
the scent of herbs rising – sabzi polo,
green and fragrant,
cooked the way it always has been,
as if memory itself could be preserved
through taste.
This is how we remember. This is how we begin yet another year, hoping and praying for time with loved ones.
Nowruz is a breath of fresh air. And yet this year, it arrived on the same day as Eid and me releasing a book I’ve been working on for years – all between breaths.
This Nowruz, I find myself between worlds.
Between then and now—
Sarajevo and Istanbul, where I first created pieces, I still carry with me.
In another time of uncertainty, and today, where I return to it, carrying a different kind of weight.
Because while I am here, building something new, parts of my world feel like they are unraveling.
Home feels far away.
And someone I love is lying in pain, beyond my reach.
And still, I smile as the phone lights up.
A name appears.
A place.
A voice that has travelled through distance, through fear, through war.
And in that brief second,
before I answer,
my heart forgets how to beat.
This is how so many of us live life now, holding our breath between calls, learning to measure life – in voices that return.
And then, suddenly, you hear them. Dreams coming true. Prayer heard.
Still there. Still breathing. Still yours.
While everything inside you softly, carefully, begins again.
This is how we count our blessings now.
Not in days, not in years,
but in answered calls,
in voices that survived the night,
in laughter that dares to exist
between sirens and silence.
This is how we step into the new year.
Grateful to be among those who still get to hear the voices they prayed for.
Grateful that somewhere, life continues to answer back.
And still, I hold my breath.
For the future of our home.
For what will remain.
For what we might one day rebuild.
from what has been broken.
Nowruz is meant to mark renewal – a turning, a beginning again.
So I hold on to that.
To the green on the table.
To the rituals that refuse to disappear.
To the meals we cook as if nothing has been lost, and yet everything still can be.
To the idea that even now, something is growing.
That even in uncertainty, there is movement.
That creativity in itself is a way of believing in what comes next.
So I gather what I have left,
A voice,
A memory,
A fragile, stubborn hope, and I step, gently, into another year.
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