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Cyber Persia

The most misrepresented and misunderstood country of the world.

by Reza Hashemi, Iran

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Norouz Pirouz! Happy Nowruz!

Mar 24, 2009 04:20

Saturday, March 21, was Norouz. Norouz, which means a new day or day of renewal and rebirth in Persian, marks the first day of Spring and the Persian new year in the Iranian calendar. So let's wish everyone a very happy Norouz and New Year!

There are a couple of spellings for the Iranian new year Norouz like NowRuz, NoRooz, NowRoz, Naurooz and even NewRuz which have replaced the Persian "no" with its English translation "new".

All these spellings point to the same non-religious event which is based on the astronomical vernal equinox (the start of Spring in the northern hemisphere) when the sun is observed to be directly over the equator and the North and South poles of the Earth lie along the solar terminator; that is, the sunlight is evenly divided between the north and south hemispheres.

Norouz has been celebrated for several millennia in Iran and some other countries which were part of the Persian empire or Great Persia (former name of Iran) in the past or where Persians have migrated to.

Google also celebrated Norouz with the Iranians by customizing its logo on its Persian site:

Friendfeed also celebrated the Persian new year and changed its logo on its global site:

Both the Google and Friendfeed logos showed the Iranian "Haft Sin" or Seven S' arrangement. This includes seven specific items starting with the letter "s" which symbolically corresponds to seven creations and the holy immortals protecting them. The little goldfish carries the message of life and is released into free water at the end of the Norouz holidays.

Microsoft also changed its Live search engine frontpage to an ancient Persepolis theme with a Happy New Year message in some parts.

Norouz is now part of the UN calendar and is celebrated by more than 300 million people around the world. It symbolizes the rebirth of nature and the inevitable end of darkness and cold.

Norouz brings the message of change and President Obama at whitehouse.gov didn't miss this opportunity. He also sent his Norouz message to Iranians. He spoke Persian, uttering the phrase "Eid-e Shoma Mobarak", which is equivalent to Happy New Year in Persian.

I hope this message paves the way to removing unfair behaviors, bans and sanctions on Iranians and Internet users enforced on them by the US Government.

Happy Norouz to you all.

--Reza

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About Reza Hashemi

Reza Hashemi is a Web entrepreneur.He has an engineering degree in computer hardware and a Master in computer systems and networks architecture. He has experienced a condensed history of computers, operating systems and dot com generations. In his younger days, he mastered the art of playing computer games and programming for Commodore 64 then IBM 370 mainframes with card readers in university and hooked up to the Internet via a 19.6Kbps shared connection in 1993. He is also a university instructor, IT consultant and founder/CEO/board member of a couple of e-businesses since Y2K.