On March 21 of each year, millions of Kurds, Persians, Pashtuns, Azeris and other ethnicities celebrate Nowruz, which means “new day” in Persian and Kurdish and is equivalent to New Year’s Day for these communities.

Nowruz is considered the only holiday celebrated by different ethnicities and religious groups across the globe. It is an official holiday in many countries, including Iran, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, the South Caucasus, the Crimean Peninsula, the Balkans, Kashmir, the Indian state of Gujarat and northwest China.

For hundreds of years, Nowruz was seen as a religious or cultural holiday for most of those who celebrate it. More recently, however, it has taken on a more national character among the Kurds and has become an annual event for Kurds to underline their identity, demands, and national and political rights in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.

The ritual of the Kurds begins March 20 at sunset, with the lighting of the Nowruz fire — a custom dating back to the era of the fall of the Assyrian Empire at the hands of Medes (the Kurds’ ancestors), namely Kawa, the blacksmith who went out to the mountains with a torch of fire in hand to send a sign of victory to the people, according to the Kurdish narrative explaining the history of Nowruz.