Nowruz

Nobody could tell me what it is, but many thought another war was inevitable.

I had someone tell me that these guys, meaning the clerical establishment, were gonna be gone by March of 2026, Nowruz.

And I talked to a very prominent activist in Iran, and sh- we were...

She seemed so hopeful in the fall, and nobody could really place what that meant, what that would look like, but everybody knew something was going to happen.

The Kurdish language will be an official language.

Nowruz, a holiday that Kurds celebrate- Will be an official holiday.

However, the Kurds said, "Until it's in the Constitution, no." And that has not happened yet.

That, that's a longer process.

You know what the tendencies are.

And she would say things like, i trust your intuition mrs benji i trust your intuition and she would pick up the phone much like you do i know you have your practice set up like that she always picked up eleanor meyer picked up her own phone any day of the any time she was so culturally sensitive i remember one time it was new year's it was persian new year and my kid had a fever and i called her and i was like hey dr meyer like this kid's not doing well like we've got 104 going on and she was like Mrs. Benji, isn't it Persian New Year? And I was like, yes.

She goes, I will come to you.

Please don't leave the house.

So we, I think we share an enormous amount of language, poetry, food, you know, all the Sufi traditions.

And, you know, even the, although it is becoming much more rare, we used to celebrate Nevruz rather than the New Year.

So, I mean, for me, saying Iran is, I think, never quite saying the name of a stranger.

And yet, if I ask what I what first rises to my mind, I think it would be the mystics and poets, you know, the Hallaj, Hafiz, Rumi, Hayyam, all those poetry is just too, I mean, too beautiful to me.

... you know? And in the north, it's just totally different.

It's ver- it's mountainous, and in the springtime, everything is lush and green and beautiful, and they have the, the Nowruz festival, which is like the, um, [chuckles] they jump over fire and stuff.

It's, uh, [chuckles] it's hard to explain.

But it's like their spring festival that they do, you know.

What happened there on the night you were arrested? Why were you there, and how did you get arrested?

Well, uh, my wife and I had gone back to Tehran, um, at the end of March of 2018 to celebrate the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, with my wife's family, who had also flown in from California.

And you know, I had gone to Iran, uh, several times before for holidays with my family.

I had taken some friends, Americans, Germans, uh, my buddies from when I was working in Abu Dhabi at a private equity firm.

Close-knit, I think that was the norm.

We spent... weeks celebrating the Persian New Year, Nowruz of course, and that was just a week of celebration where every day you're traveling around the cities to visit every single family member, wish them well for the new year.

The food, the music, the arts, and I guess, yeah, there's a lot there that unfortunately doesn't get seen or recognized in the modern day story of Iran.

And education is also a significant part of your upbringing.