My First Novruz Holiday Experience….

So in Muslim countries they have the Novruz Holiday in March. It marks the beginning of the New Year. The entire country takes the entire week off-so basically spring break AZ style. They start growing little plates or dishes of tall green grass (some sort of sprouts) a few weeks before the holiday week. There is a build up of activities a few weeks before the main week, but I didn’t see anyone really observing it. The green grass is decorative and everyone has some in their houses and offices. The women do a lot of spring cleaning and an insane amount of baking. They make all sorts of pastries, candies, and baklava. Tuesday is the big day where the family has a massive feast (think Thanksgiving). In the Muslim religion the number 7 is big, so they have 7 major dishes on the table. I was invited to several places for the big feast, but could only go to two of them. I went to my tutor Farana’s house and then to my boss’ house. Coordinating my holiday was a mess because my boss told me to come to his house but none of them speak English. Farana’s family invited me to their house also. I asked if I could go to both houses for a couple of hours, but they would never say yes or no. After several explanations and many sets of phone calls everything was straightened out and everyone was happy. I went to Farana’s house and had dinner with her brother and parents. Her dad was funny. It was the first time I had met him and he was really nervous about having me there and he wanted everything to be perfect. They put 7 little piles of hay in the yard, light them on fire, and then you run/jump through them. It symbolizes you leaving all of the bad things of the past year behind you and you having a fresh start to the new year. The flames were HUGE and we still ran through them. We sat down to a massive meal of rice, chicken, fish, pastries, and several other Azeri dishes that I can’t really explain. We each lit a candle and made a wish and whoever’s candle burns the fastest has their wish come true-I lost. They died eggs and we had an egg cracking competition. You hold your egg in your hand and someone hits the top of it with the top of their egg-I lost again to Farana and her father. After a wonderful meal, Farana and I headed over to my boss’ house. They have a tradition of throwing hats at doors and you get candy or money so we threw our hats at a couple of doors on the way. At my boss’ house we sat down to a ton of pastries, fruits, nuts and tea. My boss brought out an old photo album and then he talked about Russia and Azerbaijan for 2 straight hours. It was really interesting to hear his views, but I felt bad for Farana. My boss loves to talk a ton and you could tell she wasn’t enjoying the conversation too much, so I felt bad for dragging her along with me.

The next day Tom and I met Nene at 7:30am to head to the river. This is strictly a Lenkeran tradition. The entire town goes to the river early in the morning on that Wednesday carrying these small identical red clay water pitchers. You wash your hands and your face in the river and fill up your pitcher. When you get home you sprinkle some of the water on your door, in your yard and in each room of your house for a “cleansing”. I filled up a plastic water bottle for my new house. What was great about it was looking at the dirty brown water we were using to “cleanse” everything. After a nice nap and some laziness, Tom and I went back to Nene’s and had dinner with her, her grand daughter Fazile and two of her friends. Fazile lives in Baku, is 19, speaks really good English, and is really fun. She’s a city girl and doesn’t like it too much out in the regions. It is funny to see Nene with young girls and the hierarchy. She gets to boss them around and they have to do all of the dishes and small house work. Nene was really tired, so she crashed and Tom and I hung out talking with the girls about music, movies and America for a long time. It is extremely evident that they have grown up in the big city because their views are much more modern, so that made it really fun to talk with them.

I thought about going to visit some friends in the country during the week since we didn’t have any work, but I’m so glad I stayed in Lenkeran. I had such a good time Novruz week. Everyone was extremely nice that week, saying hi and smiling constantly. Plus I ate so much good food, it was great! I’ll make sure I’m in town that week next year for sure….

The pictures seen were of: Novruz grass at Nene’s house, the fire piles we jumped over at Farana’s house, me with Farana and her mother and then with her brother, Tom and Nene heading to the river, Nene filling her pitcher, Me, Tom and Nene’s candles, some of the pastries, and finally of all of the people heading to the river at 8 am.