Happy Mehregan, festival of freedom and the unity of the Iranian lands.

Whether we kneel or rise depends less on the strength of our knees than on our will to stand, and throughout our history we have practised this will many times.

The secret of our resilience and continuity through history lies in the vast forces hidden within our culture, forces that remain unknown and not yet understood even by us, and it falls to us to discover and cultivate them.

Periods of invasion and occupation have separated us from one another for years at a time and pushed our historical rituals into the back rooms of the cultural memory of Iranian civilisation. Yet whenever we have had the opportunity, we have gathered again and remembered our Iranian identity. We have rediscovered the cultural elements, myths, and historical ideas—in a word, the unifying national identity—wrapped within these traditions, and through them we have kept the dream of Iran alive.

Understanding the importance of this bond is the enduring secret of the rebirth of Iranian cultural power by the children of a land that never accepts the setting of its sun.

Aydin Areta