When Iranians marked Nowruz, the Persian new year, many did so with the war pressing on daily life and on the ability to reach loved ones, according to reporting by the Associated Press. For families separated by borders and bombardments, the holiday that usually arrives with the spring equinox also arrived with uncertainty about safety and with gaps in communication that have outlasted ordinary plans.
In Paris, Shayan Ghadimi said his family’s absence and worry had shaped how they observed the day. Ghadimi described how his mother had returned to Iran after protests erupted nationwide at the end of 2025, when she wanted to see the uprising for herself rather than watch it from abroad. He said she had initially been following the early protests on television and that she chose to go, while he remained in Paris, running his spice-scented restaurant and preparing Nowruz lunches.
Ghadimi said the separation, and the difficulty of staying in contact through the crackdown that followed and now the wider Iran war, had left his mother “all alone” and watching the sky. He said he could not imagine her state, and he described that since she returned to Iran in January they had managed to speak only twice.
Communications disruption and fear also showed up in how people chose whether to celebrate at all. An Iranian cultural center in Paris that organizes music events for Nowruz said it was in mourning, and the Associated Press reported that some Iranian American communities in the United States canceled or scaled back festivities.
Shakiba Edighoffer, shopping in Paris for Nowruz, said she and Iranian friends were on an “emotional roller coaster” as the war continued, with Israel and the United States attacking Iran’s leaders and military while Iran fired missiles and drones. Edighoffer said that with communications largely severed, even finding out how family and friends were doing under bombardments was stressful. She also said celebrating Nowruz helped with coping and said that “All these oppressors want is for us to be sad,” adding that they want people to forget the “millennia-old Persian and Iranian traditions.”
For some, the holiday’s rituals were pared down to what could be done near home. In Tehran, an Iranian woman told The Associated Press by voice messages on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals that she was too scared to venture far and that she nearly forgot it was Nowruz. She said there were no decorations in the streets and that the only clear reminder was seeing a friend’s mother holding a hyacinth, a flower associated with spring, and she said she learned it was Nowruz “by chance.”
That woman also described skipping the traditional family shopping trip to a market about 9 kilometers away. For the New Year spread known as Haft-Seen—traditionally made with seven items including garlic, vinegar, sumac, apples and sprouting greens—she said she had to use what was available at home. She recalled her mother’s reaction when setting it up: “Why do you want to set it up, just forget it!’” She said the family still made do.
She said one tradition remained even as other plans fell away: she and her mother burned espand, aromatic seeds meant to ward against the evil eye.
At Ghadimi’s Paris restaurant, the mix of diners reflected how different people were coping with the war’s impact on family and community. Some came to mark hope for a new dawn, while others could not see past the deaths and destruction wrought by Israeli and U.S. strikes, Ghadimi said. He described diners who had both tears of anguish and tears of joy—people telling him, he said, “Did you see? They are coming. We are going to be saved,” alongside others saying “Our country is being destroyed.”
Ghadimi said that after his mother returned to Iran in January, they had still found only brief chances to speak. He said he had stopped trying to call because it caused stress when he could not reach her, and he said his sister called many times a day without getting through.
He said his mother had promised to return to Paris for Nowruz, but that when they last spoke—about a week before the Associated Press report—she told him those plans had changed. He said she told him she was staying in Iran until the end, and he said she, having lived through the 1979 Islamic Revolution, wanted to see what she described as Iran’s next chapter.