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It’s not just a new year; it’s a new century

March 26, 2021

It wasn’t just the start of a new year, but the start of a new century this Now Ruz as 1399 gave way to 1400.  But the new year began with the traditional delicacies of nuts and fruit being so expensive that many families felt it better just to do without this year.

The Supreme Leader began the year by unveiling his slogan for the New Year, as he does every year. But this year’s slogan was little different from last year’s as it was a call to work harder and produce more so that the country wouldn’t be hurt, but actually helped, by sanctions.

The slogan for 1400 is: “Production, support and removal of barriers.” The slogan for 1399 was:  “A surge in production.”

The new addition of a “removal of barriers,” said Khamenehi, referred to such impediments to greater production as smuggling and burdensome regulations.

As for last year’s call for a “surge in production,” Kha-menehi said mysteriously:  “I would say that this slogan was realized to an acceptable degree….  Of course, it did not materialize to the desired degree.”

For four decades, the regime has told the public that sanctions are actually good for Iran because they force the country to work harder to produce more goods and make the country self-sufficient and free from the efforts of the West to throttle the economy.                     Of course, for the same four decades, the regime has also said that sanctions are a form of terrorism that makes life harder for Iranians and even denies them food and medicine.  The regime sounds the positive refrain only in domestic propaganda; the negative assessment is heard more often in messages aimed at foreigners.

The religious establishment is not pleased that the country’s main holiday is a non-Muslim religious event. It had hoped to abolish Now Ruz and Chaharshanbeh Souri when the revolution first succeeded.  Faced with public anger, it quickly abandoned a plan to ban them outright.  Forty years later, it still tries to crush the Chaharshanbeh Souri main event of jumping over fires the night before the last Wednesday of the year by banning bonfires, a decree the public has ignored for four decades.

The clergy has accepted Now Ruz, however reluctantly, and tries to apply a patina of Islam to convey an aura of Islam to it.  In 1988, for example, Ayatollah Khomeini made a big point of the fact that Now Ruz fell on the birthday of Imam Hossein, the third Imam.  This year, Khamenehi made a point of saying that, because the Islamic lunar calendar is 11 days shorter than the solar calendar, the 15th of Shaban, the birthday of the last Imam, will fall twice during 1400, which Khamenehi seemed to think was auspicious.

Former President Moham-mad Khatami, who served from 1997 to 2005, issued his own statement on the occasion, but presented a criticism of the regime rather than the usual upbeat words.  “Instead of offering congratulations to the people, I prefer to offer my sympathy and support for the suffering and sorrow they have endured,” he said in a video message.”

Residents often commented that the holiday this year lacks the gaiety and spirit that normally accompany it, even in the war years of the 1980s.

Even spring cleaning, a tradition that came to the West from ancient Persia, suffered this year.  Rasul Hamdi, a 38-year-old cleaner, told The Associated Press he was struggling because families “wouldn’t let me come and clean their homes out of fear of the virus.”

But another problem is not related to the virus a shortage of the fruit and nuts that have long been the staple of Now Ruz celebrants.

A man named Moham-madzadeh is the distraught owner of a confectionery shop in the Abbasabad neighborhood of Tehran. In the past few years, he tells IranWire, sales of sweets and nuts have dropped by around 50 percent.

“Three years ago, I had seven employees,” he laments. “But now there are two in this shop because we’re no longer busy. Three years ago, I would buy two tons of nuts for New Year’s Eve. But this year, I only bought 300 kilos, which is still here, as you can see.

It was the same in another pastry shop on Moallem Street. “This year,” says the shop owner, “both the number of customers and the amount they buy have shrunk. Everyone buys about half a kilo or a kilo.  And clearly there will be no Now Ruz gatherings or parties. Of course, we know there’s a coronavirus outbreak and people aren’t getting together much, but are they not consuming sweets and nuts themselves? No one is buying nuts at all and I’ll have to return them after Nowruz. People no longer have the money. They have made the people poor.”

Ghassem, the owner of another shop, told IranWire most of the shipments he bought for the New Year are rotting because people cannot afford the astronomical prices he has been forced to charge. The costs of different types of fruit, he says, have increased by 100 to 500 percent compared to previous years.

Jafarian is the owner of another fruit shop near Haft-e Tir Square. “The number of customers has halved compared to last year,” he told IranWire, “while the volume of fruit people purchase has dropped to a third of what it was last year. Even I, the shop owner, cannot afford 50,000 tomans [$2] for a kilo of bananas and 25,000 tomans [$1] for oranges to take home this year.”

Sadegh, a fruit seller in Hor Square, says he thinks people’s purchasing power has decreased by around 50 percent since last year. With prices this high, only the wealthy can now afford the traditional goodies for Now Ruz.

“Fruit has become a luxury,” he says, “and not everyone can afford it. People are having trouble buying so much as potatoes and onions. Is this how to manage a country? If the country were left to its own devices, things would be better. And it’s not just now; in the last six months, it feels as if death has spread through the market.”

Ms. Javaherzadeh is an elderly woman living on Bahar-e Shiraz Street in Tehran. She says that this year, for the first time in her life, instead of observing the “joy” of Now Ruz in people’s eyes, she sees “sadness” in their faces. “Even during the war,” she says, “or at the height of the Islamic Revolution, I don’t remember people’s financial situation being as bad as it is now.

Officials dealing with the coronavirus have been pleading with the public to stay home this holiday season, the biggest season for intercity travel.  Police are posted outside the cities with the largest volume of covid cases to stop people from entering or leaving.  But most cities including Tehran are open.  The national traffic police say traffic volume the first few days of the holiday was up 52 percent from last year, when the public was first experiencing the pandemic and many people were afraid to travel.             More than 120 people have died in traffic accidents, including 14 people killed in a three-car crash near Zahedan.

The Chaharshanbeh Souri fire festivals saw at least 10 deaths, according to state broadcasting, most due to mishandling fireworks.  Of 1,894 injured, 87 lost a limb.

The Tehran police banned gatherings the night of Cha-harshanbeh Souri, using the virus as the rationale.  But most of the public saw the clergy’s hand behind the order, and the order was just ignored.

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