Nowruz is six days away and my kitchen is already a mess. The samanak is soaking, the haft mewa ingredients are piled on the counter, and my mother has called three times this week to remind me that the house needs to be “properly clean” before the new year arrives.

Every March, this happens. Nowruz lands on March 20 or 21 - the spring equinox - and for Afghan families, it’s the biggest celebration of the year. Bigger than birthdays, bigger than most religious holidays. It’s the new year, the arrival of spring, and a reason to gather every person you love under one roof and feed them until they can’t move.

In Sydney, where spring is actually autumn, the seasonal symbolism doesn’t quite translate. But everything else does. The cleaning. The cooking. The new clothes. The visiting. My family has been celebrating Nowruz in Australia for over twenty years, and we’ve never missed a year.

Khanah Takani - The Deep Clean

Two weeks before Nowruz, the cleaning starts. And I don’t mean a regular tidy-up. Khanah takani literally means “house shaking” and that’s about right. Everything comes out. Curtains are washed. Rugs are beaten. Windows are cleaned. Cupboards are emptied and reorganised.

My mother approaches khanah takani like a military operation. She has a list. She assigns tasks. She inspects the results. My father, who has been through this process for forty years, has learned to simply do as he’s told and stay out of the way.

The idea behind khanah takani is that you enter the new year with a clean house and a fresh start. Dirt, clutter, and disorder from the old year shouldn’t follow you into the new one. There’s something genuinely satisfying about it - a physical reset that feels appropriate for a new beginning.

Haft Mewa - The Seven Fruits

Haft mewa is the Afghan equivalent of the Persian haft sin. It’s a mixture of seven dried fruits and nuts soaked in water, served as a sweet, fragrant drink-and-snack combination during Nowruz.

The traditional seven items are: raisins (kishmish), senjed (dried oleaster), pistachios, walnuts, almonds, dried apricots, and a seventh that varies by family. My family uses prunes. Other families use figs or hazelnuts.

You soak everything in water with a little sugar and rose water for at least two days before Nowruz. By the time it’s ready, the water has turned sweet and slightly syrupy, and the fruits have plumped up and softened. You serve it in a big bowl and everyone scoops out a glass, getting a mix of the fruit and the flavoured water.

Preparing haft mewa is one of my favourite Nowruz rituals. It’s simple, it tastes beautiful, and the smell of rose water and dried fruits soaking in the kitchen signals that the celebrations are about to begin.

Samanak - The Special Wheat Pudding

Samanak is the most labour-intensive Nowruz preparation and, honestly, the most meaningful. It’s a sweet pudding made from sprouted wheat, slowly cooked for hours until the natural sugars in the wheat caramelize and turn it into a thick, dark brown paste.

The process starts about ten days before Nowruz. You soak wheat grains in water until they sprout, then grind them, extract the liquid, and cook that liquid with flour for 12-15 hours, stirring constantly.

In Afghanistan and in the Afghan community here, making samanak is a communal activity. Women gather at someone’s house, take turns stirring the pot, sing traditional songs, and stay up through the night. The singing is a specific part of the tradition - there are samanak songs that have been passed down for generations.

My mother insists on making samanak every year. She says it’s the heart of Nowruz. She’s recruited my sisters-in-law, my cousins, and increasingly my teenage nieces into the process. Last year, my niece filmed the whole night and posted it on TikTok. She got more views than she expected. People were curious.

I love that the tradition is surviving the generational transition. It would be easy to skip samanak - it’s exhausting, time-consuming, and you can technically buy it. But making it yourself, with your family, singing the songs - that’s the whole point.

New Clothes

Everyone wears new clothes on Nowruz. This is non-negotiable in my family. My mother will buy fabric months in advance and have outfits made. These days, with my nieces and nephews growing up in Australia, the “new clothes” are often a compromise - traditional Afghan clothing for the main family gathering, and something new but Western-style for visiting friends.

The symbolism is the same as the cleaning: you enter the new year fresh. New year, new clothes, new start.

In Afghanistan, buying new clothes for Nowruz was a significant family expense. For many families, the Nowruz outfit was the only new clothing they’d get all year. That’s part of why it matters - it’s not about fashion, it’s about dignity and renewal.

The Food

The Nowruz table is excessive and that’s the point. Every family has their own spread, but common dishes include:

• Kabuli pulao - Always. This is the centrepiece.
• Bolani - Stuffed flatbread, usually potato and leek.
• Mantu - Steamed dumplings with meat filling and yoghurt sauce.
• Ashak - Leek-filled dumplings with meat sauce and yoghurt.
• Roht - Sweet bread with cardamom.
• Firni - A milk pudding flavoured with cardamom and rose water, served cold.

My mother starts cooking two days before Nowruz and doesn’t stop until everything is ready. I’ve taken over some of the cooking in recent years, but she still supervises. The mantu dough needs to be thinner. The qorma needs more time. The rice isn’t fluffy enough. She’s always right.

Visiting

The days following Nowruz are spent visiting. You go to the homes of relatives and friends, oldest family members first. At each house, you’re offered tea, sweets, and haft mewa at minimum, and often a full meal. Declining food is not an option.

The visiting cycle can take a week or more. In Afghanistan, workplaces and schools often closed for the full Nowruz period. In Sydney, we compress the visiting into weekends, but it still takes several weeks to get through everyone.

There’s a warmth to Nowruz visiting that’s hard to describe. Whatever tensions or distances have developed between people during the year, Nowruz is the reset. You show up, you eat together, you wish each other well for the new year. It works.

Nowruz in Australia

Celebrating Nowruz in Australia requires some adaptation. The season is wrong - we’re heading into autumn while the tradition celebrates spring. Work and school don’t stop. Some of the ingredients are hard to find (though Sydney’s Afghan community has made this much easier).

But the core of it survives intact. The cleaning, the cooking, the gathering, the generosity, the fresh start. My kids, born in Sydney, know what Nowruz means. They help with the haft mewa, they wear their new clothes, they sit at the table with their grandmother and eat kabuli pulao and mantu.

The tradition is alive because we keep doing it. That’s how it works. Nowruz mubarak to everyone celebrating this year.