Beginning of winter

To all my readers: following the recent disturbances, Internet services have been erratic, so please excuse my tardiness in adding new posts. See next post too.

Update on Among the Iranians: on Monday 21 Dec. I emailed the proof corrections and the index to the publishers in Boston, so my involvement in the text is now complete.

That very same Monday night was the longest night of the year, the winter solstice, or Shab-e Yalda in Persian. Normally this is a celebratory occasion for Iranians: they gather in the houses of their family elders and spend the best part of the longest night of the year munching seeds, nuts and sweetmeats, taking auguries from Hafez’s collection of lyrics and keeping alive the hope of summer in the form of eating watermelon. (A greengrocer in a street behind the Parliament building in Baharestan, central Tehran, stocks watermelons all year round.)

I say “normally”, because this year this happy occasion coincided with the beginning of Moharram, the month of mourning for Imam Hossein, so things were rather low key this time around.
(to be continued in the next post).