PARIS: When Iran erupted in nationwide protests at the end of 2025, Shayan Ghadimi’s mother returned to the country from Paris to see the uprising for herself.
Her absence — and the struggle to stay in touch through the bloody crackdown that followed and now the Iran war — hang over the family. Like many Iranians outside the country, they will mark the normally festive Persian new year, known as Nowruz, with heavy hearts — or not at all.
Ghadimi’s 70-year-old mother had watched the early protests on TV. “We could see the market closed, the people in the street. She said, ‘I want to be there,’” the 41-year-old Ghadimi said of her mother, as she prepared to serve lunches in the spice-scented restaurant she runs in Paris.
“Now, she is all alone ... with no way to stay in contact, watching the sky. I cannot imagine the state she is in,” Ghadimi said.
An Iranian cultural center in Paris that organizes music events for Nowruz says it’s in mourning. In the United States, some Iranian American communities also canceled or scaled back festivities.
