War is rippling through their ancestral land — and being waged with the country where they live. This week, Iranian Americans already trying to navigate a push-pull of worry and hope unleashed by this month's conflict have been wrestling with a new concern: how — or even whether — to celebrate Nowruz, the Iranian new year.
Kayvon Pourmirzaie and his wife, Behnaz Almazi, settled on celebrating — in part by coming up from their home in Philadelphia to attend a pop-up Persian dinner in Manhattan last weekend. Pourmirzaie has lived his entire life in the United States; his parents moved here before the Islamic revolution in 1979. At the dinner, he and Almazi dreamed about what the war could bring.
