Ancient Nowruz is approaching—a Nowruz that in our historical memory is not merely the beginning of a new year, but a season of remembrance, fidelity, and renewal of our covenant with the great lives whose names and paths will not be erased from the memory of this land.

This year, compatriots everywhere in the world are invited to place upon their Haft-Seen table the photograph of one of those whose names became eternal in the killings of Dey. There is no doubt that the memory of all those thousands of dear lives remains alive in our hearts. Yet so that we may become narrators of the names, lives, and sacrifice of these honourable children of Iran, each of us can choose one name from that long list—especially someone about whom less has been said, whose life story has been told less often, and whose name has been heard less amid the crowd of grief and news.

We can make a short video of our own Haft-Seen table and speak a few sentences about that person’s life, or offer a few words of solidarity to their grieving family, so that every home becomes a place of remembrance, every table a witness to fidelity, and every voice a bridge between our collective memory and the silent grief of families who lost those they loved in the path of homeland and freedom. This act is not merely symbolic remembrance; it is an expression of respect for the dignity of people whose names have become enduring in the horizon of Iran’s history.

We go forward to welcome the new year with this firm and enduring faith:

Never dies the one whose heart has come alive through love;
our endurance is inscribed upon the register of the world.

Last year, on the threshold of the new year, I opened Hafez in memory of Iran and found:

If fortune grants me the dust beneath my beloved’s feet,
I will trace a line of that dust upon the tablet of my sight.

I drowned in longing for the embrace of your shore, and still I hope
that the waves of my tears may carry me to that shore.

May we, after the sea of our tears, reach tranquillity and rest in the embrace of the tomorrow of the Ahurian land of Iran.

May ancient Nowruz be auspicious.
Long live Iran.