At dinner, I’m seated across from Omid Afshar, the founder of Club Joon, which hosts events celebrating “Persian culture, music, and connection” across cities including New York and London. (Naturally, Afshar was in charge of the dance party following dinner.) I told him I loved his name, and he proudly asked me if I knew what it meant. I said yes, as I’m Pakistani, and Urdu borrowed the word, which means “hope,” from Farsi.
As brown kids in America often end up doing, we find ourselves talking about diaspora—how the label can be frustrating, and how the word is so easily flattened. How no one in any diaspora has a simple relationship to it, and how it’s always as beautiful as it is complicated. It’s a subject that felt especially timely given the ongoing conflict in Iran, which everyone in the room had surely thought about every day since it started. I have too. But diasporas are never monoliths, and within the Persian diaspora, there are no easy answers around what the best solution is for their community. That’s exactly why the preservation of traditions like Nowruz is sacred.
And one of the richest traditions of Nowruz is, of course, the food. The menu began with crispy saffron rice bites topped with caviar and Barbari bread from Jonny’s Pizza served with dips, then followed by a breathtaking display of Nasrin’s Kitchen’s slow-cooked lamb and fish with crispy skin and stewed sabzi and legumes—so much food that, at times, it was hard to keep the courses straight. (Though it was impossible to miss the giant tins being toted around the dining room and bar for impromptu caviar interludes.)
photography shot by Kate Owen @thekateowenKate Owen
photography shot by Kate Owen @thekateowenKate Owen
photography shot by Kate Owen @thekateowenKate Owen
photography shot by Kate Owen @thekateowenKate Owen