An Exceptional Haft‑Seen Table
Selected by Faezeh Sasanikhah
Translated by Kianoush Borzouei
2026-3-31
I wanted to celebrate the new year with my family. Together with two relief workers I boarded buses designated for transporting the wounded to Choubideh and received our mission orders. We waited for a helicopter to take us to Bandar Imam Khomeini. I was stationed near the helicopter’s touchdown zone and was slight in build. As the helicopter was about to land, I could not steady myself; the breeze generated by the rotor blades lifted me off the ground. I began to laugh and thought to myself how fortunate I was not to have fallen into the nearby ditch.
The night before the New Year I arrived home. At 20:33:31 on Friday night the year was to turn. We were to gather in Dada’s room—he was our eldest—at the moment of the new year. The Haft‑Seen table they had laid was very modest, displaying only apples and senjed; there was no red goldfish in a crystal bowl. Surprised, I asked, “Then why is your Haft‑Seen set up like this?! There are so few ‘seens’ (items beginning with S)!”
Ziba‑khanum replied, “This year we do not celebrate. With so many martyrs we have lost, who can bear to lay out a festive Haft‑Seen? We set this table for the children.” Then, jokingly, she added, “Of the seven ‘seens’ we have five: Sib (apple), Senjed, Sofreh (the spread), Samovar, and the sabad (fruit basket)!”[1]
[1] Source: The City’s Lit Lamps, memoirs of Zohreh Farhadi; Faezeh Sasanikhah (ed.), Tehran: Sureh‑Mehr Publishing, 2nd ed., 2019, pp. 359–360.
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