A WILD NIGHT IN TEHRAN

Posted: Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Categories: Tehran , Iran

By Ian Williams, NBC News correspondent

Last night Tehran sounded like a war zone. It went on for hours - the thuds, pops and sometimes deafening bangs. Sparkling trails of rockets whizzed across the sky and bonfires raged in the middle of roads.

Crowds of mostly young people gathered along the streets and around the fires, mischievously rolling firecrackers under the feet of passers by - including, to our occasional alarm, the NBC crew.

Cars cruised around town, music blaring, youngsters hanging from the windows, dispensing their arsenal of rockets and firecrackers.

They were marking Chaharshanbeh-Suri, an ancient Iranian festival that dates back to at least 1700 B.C., and is a prelude to the Persian New Year, which falls on March 21 this year. The eve of the last Wednesday of the year – last night - is supposed to be the “Eve of Celebration,” the idea being that fire and light will bring happiness for the New Year.

On one road, crowds sang and danced around a huge bonfire, Iranian pop music blared from speakers on the wall of a nearby house, while a strobe light flashed behind. Young women, their compulsory headscarves well back on their heads, gyrated in the doorway. Then, as the fire got smaller, men and women lined up to jump over it. Children followed, some helped by the adults, a man banged out a beat on a drum beyond.

“It’s tradition,” one man told me, his young son on his shoulders. “ But it can get a little out of hand.”

A young woman, clinging to the arm of her boyfriend, told me candidly: “It’s the only time of year we can get out and enjoy ourselves in public like this. Parties usually have to be held indoors.”

I had noticed the groups of police, standing uneasily on street corners, and asked one man whether he was worried. “They won’t bother us tonight,” he said with confidence. “Not tonight.”

When they jump over the fire, people are supposed to chant: “Give me your beautiful red color and take back my sickly pallor.”

In Persian folklore, there’s also a lot of stuff about good and evil, and visits by the spirits of ancestors, though these days it is really more of an excuse for young people to let their hair down and have a good and rare public party. Most older Iranians wisely stay indoors or watch the mayhem from windows of doorways into which they can beat a hasty retreat.

The occasional ambulance, lights flashing, winding its way through the heavy traffic, served as a reminder that it's perhaps not the safest way to party.

Still, young Iranians see it as also a good opportunity to thumb their noses at the authorities, safe in the knowledge that on this day at least they are not likely to break up the fun.

Not that the mullahs are happy. Soon after the Islamic revolution they tried to ban Persian New Year as un-Islamic, which I suppose it is if you accept their definition of Islam. But to most of those taking part, that’s the attraction, a chance to break, however briefly, the usual strict limits imposed on their behavior.

Persian New Year is certainly pre-Islamic, which also rankles with the mullahs.

Some hard-line clerics still grumble loudly, but the government as decided, perhaps wisely, that the festival is so deep-rooted, it’s best to allow it, though I’m told the parties get more raucous each year.

I have to confess that I had to pinch myself once or twice last night just to remind myself where I am. The Iranians really are fun-loving people, and given half a chance they can party as well as the best of us. Perhaps too well. When I returned to my hotel, I and lay in bed, kept awake by the thumping music, the firecrackers