Sweet celebrations as Iranians in the UAE usher in the new year

Expatriate restaurateur is finding people of Iranian descent are flocking to her eatery to celebrate their secular new year in traditional fashion with gifts, good luck charms, Iranian foods and sweets, lots of sweets. And her Nowruz success is spreading, Anna Zacharias writes

Shirin Jourabi learnt to cook hospitality foods and sweets at her aunt’s side in Iran. Now her Abshar Iranian restaurant in Dubai is busy with people celebrating Nowruz. Photos Jeffrey E Biteng / The Show more

Shirin Jourabi’s hospitality was developed at her aunt’s side. At eight, she would huddle with her family around a living-room stove in Khorramabad, Iran.

The room smelt of cardamom. Led by her aunt Fareshteh, she fried butterfly-shaped pastries. After dusting them with icing sugar, she would proudly present the sweets to relatives visiting for Nowruz, the secular celebration of the Iranian New Year.

Three decades later, Ms Jourabi serves hundreds of Irani expatriates in the Dubai community every Nowruz at her restaurants in Deira and Jumeirah.

“My mum always says when I was 10 years old I always loved to do something for the guest,” said Ms Jourabi, 42, the manager of Dubai’s Abshar restaurants. “I love this and I always have.

“Every year I celebrate with 400 people. I cannot sit with my husband and my children but all of them understand because we prepare the happiness for the others, and for that we will be happy too.”

The Iranian new year begins with the spring equinox, usually about March 21, when the Sun crosses the equator and sunlight is evenly divided over the northern and southern hemispheres. The 13-day celebration officially began this weekend, starting at 8.57pm on Thursday.

Nowruz in Dubai is a contrast to the celebration in Iran, where the holiday revolves around visits to family. In a city where people do not have large extended families, they head to restaurants and malls and celebrate with desert bonfires and park picnics. Abshar is one of the community centres for Iranians the city.

Nowruz has been marked in Dubai homes since the first Iranian traders settled on its coast, but when Ms Jourabi arrived with her father in 1989, there were few signs of public celebration.

Her first Nowruz in Dubai was a lonely affair. At age 17, she was the eldest of her siblings and had come to care for her father, a bank manager, when he started work in Dubai. “It was only me and my father, and it was a little sad.

“Because of that time, because of that feeling I had, I wanted everybody to feel good. If they are alone here and they don’t want to stay home alone they can share it with their friends.”

The first year Ms Jourabi offered Nowruz dinner at her restaurant in 2000, it was full. Ms Jourabi was surprised. “I was not sure anybody would come. The way I had been alone, I thought many people must be like me here. And the first year my restaurant was full.”

Now, a restaurant dinner has become intrinsic to Dubai’s Nowruz tradition.

“Here, everybody goes out,” Ms Jourabi says. “There, it’s about visiting family. But here if anybody wants to invite you over they will invite you to a restaurant, not to their home. I think it’s because people are tired. Everybody is working.”

The holiday is a time of travel and many Iranians, passport holders and those of Iranian descent, come to Dubai during the holiday.

“Every year it gets bigger, bigger and bigger because I think people from Iran are coming here for Nowruz,” says Ms Jourabi. “I have many reservations from Iran. Last night some people called me from Iran and made a reservation for 12 people. He said for the last five years he’s been coming to Abshar. I have two reservations from Italy. They’re coming tonight. I have a reservation from Australia, they made their reservation months ago.”

Dubai is hosting two weeks of concerts featuring artists banned from performing in Iran.

Iran’s megastars Ebi and Googosh performed to a sold-out audience of 6,000 on Friday. Ebi is Iran’s silver-haired Frank Sinatra, who lives in Spain. Googosh is a singer and actress who lived in Iran until 2000, despite being banned from performing after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The performers, ages 64 and 63 respectively, continue to record and release music overseas.

Heartthrobs Shadmehr, the LA-based King of Persian Pop, and Arash, an Irani-Swedish performer, will perform at Emirates Golf Club on Monday. The concert series runs until April 2, the final day of Nowruz.

Nowruz, a time of new beginnings, is ushered in with the Haft Sin, a table laid with seven symbolic objects that begin with the letter S. They are: an apple for beauty and fertility; garlic for health; sumac for the sunrise; coins for wealth; germinated wheat pudding for wealth; dried oleaster fruit for love; and sprouted wheat, barley or lentils. Lit candles, a mirror, goldfish and other lucky items may be added for good fortune.

Some items are easy to find. Others, like oleaster fruit and wheat pudding, must be imported. Ms Jourabi sells everything needed for Haft Sin at her pastry shop before Nowruz.

The fountain is filled with goldfish for sale. Sprouted wheat and hyacinth bulbs, ready to flower, are on sale by the doorway. Inside, beside the usual vessels of dried mulberries and pyramids of pistachios, the room is crowded with painted eggs, wax-green apples and garlic cloves painted silver and adorned with florets.

And then, there are the sweets: chickpea flour nokhodi cookies sprinkled with pistachio; keshmeshi cookies spiced with saffron and raisins; rice-flour berenji cookies flavoured with cardamom; ranginak date and walnut cakes; delicate papillon pastries, honey drenched zaban puff pastry and Iranian baklava, rich with pistachio and rose water and pinched into small pockets.

“Sweets are important,” Ms Jourabi says. “It doesn’t matter what kind of sweets.”

Abshar produces more than 10,000 kilograms of sweets for its restaurant and takeaway service during Nowruz. More is made for the pastry shop under the scrutiny of chef Amin Eslami and his team of five cooks.

Ingredients tell the story of Iran’s geography – honey from Sareyn region in north-west Iran, roses from Shiraz in the south. Walnuts from Ardabil province of the north, and cranberries from the eastern province of Kermanshah. Saffron is from the crocus fields of Razavi Khorasan province in the north-east.

For Mr Eslami, 38, Nowruz is synonymous with Gol Mohammedi, a square of walnuts, almonds, cashews and berries topped with rose petals. The sweet maker who trained in Tehran has lived in Dubai for nine months and it is his first time abroad for Nowruz. “I just miss everyone in Iran,” he says. “Even my enemies.”

Nowruz is a 13-day holiday in Iran and a national holiday in countries from Georgia to Afghanistan. In Dubai, however, it’s business as usual.

This Norwuz has been a sweet one for the merchants of Dubai’s Iranian souq, the Murshid bazaar in Deira at the creek’s mouth.

Nowruz is a good time to judge Irani markets. Traders are cautiously optimistic for the first time in years, given better trade relationships with Iran that followed the election of president Hassan Rouhani in August last year.

The months before Norwuz are the busiest time of year for Dubai wholesalers selling to Iran. They saw a significant increase this year compared with previous years.

“One month or two before Nowruz we do a lot of business,” said Hassan Mahmoud, a second-generation Dubai toy wholesaler. “This year it was much better than last year or the year before that. Much, much better.”

Business is not as good as it was five or six years ago, but it has now finally started to improve.

“This year it was better than the last four or five years. There were more sales and more demand,” said Mohsen Mansouri, 39, who sells PVC tablecloths from the same bazaar shop where his grandfather worked. His family came here in 1962.

“You see, Dubai, it’s a country where you have security,” said Syed Huq, 58, a fruit-and-nut trader who has lived here for 30 years. “Whatever communities are here, they feel home. Back home you have restrictions. The Indians feel they are in India. The Iranians feel they are in Iran and Europeans feel that they are in their own country. Birds of a feather.”