Newroz! | Photos From Our 1st Kurdish New Years
This week is Newroz (now-rose) for the Kurdish people, and it’s been quite the occasion. I’m glad our friends here encouraged us to move over here in time for the beginning of spring and Newroz.
I think the beginning of spring is a beautiful time to have a new years celebration since everything actually feels new. Logical points to the Kurds for not putting their new years in the middle of winter.
So I decided to wander the city with a borrowed telephoto lens to take a few shots of the festivities. I was surprised at how politically-charged a lot of the protests were, but with all the protests that are going on across the Muslim world I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at a celebration/protestation fusion. Here’s a brief look at my tour around the city:
I started my walk on the main road near our house. People were saying there’d be a big ‘parade’ happening on the road, but I was surprised at how small the crowds actually were.
So I hopped a cab and headed for the bazaar in hopes of finding a larger crowd. I succeeded.

Pretty sure they thought this picture would end up on the cover of some newspaper, cuz they begged me to take it.
I finally got sick of people accosting me for pictures and ducked down a nearby side street. I walked for awhile before finding a little boy building his own personal bonfire in the middle of a busy intersection. This is what I mean by celebration/protestation. To an outsider like me, a fire like this seems pretty far removed from anything resembling a celebration. Sometimes protests and celebrations really do seem indistinguishable (though certainly extinguishable, har har!).
A little further down the road and I found a severely eccentric man building a fire, giggling to himself and smoking cigarettes while jumping through the flames.
For more pictures from our first Newroz, check out our Flickr stream here.
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