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KEY TAKEAWAYS

Ancient cultural traditions like Iran's Chaharshanbe Suri persist despite political repression and conflict.
Mountain gorilla populations show resilience with multiple births in dangerous conservation areas.
Individual acts of commitment, such as a single woman fostering three siblings, can preserve family unity.
Long-term, consistent policy efforts can significantly improve urban air quality, as seen in Beijing.
Personal perseverance can lead to transformative life changes, exemplified by a hospital cleaner becoming a medical professional.

GLOSSARY

Chaharshanbe Suri

A 3,000-year-old Persian fire festival celebrated on the last Wednesday before Nowruz, symbolizing purification and renewal through fire.

Virunga National Park

Africa's oldest national park in eastern Congo, known for its mountain gorillas and challenges from armed conflict affecting conservation efforts.

Mountain gorilla conservation

Efforts to protect and sustain the population of mountain gorillas, which face threats from habitat loss and armed conflict.

Air quality improvement

The process of reducing pollution in urban environments through infrastructure, policy, and technology, as demonstrated by Beijing's recent progress.

Foster care sibling preservation

The practice of keeping siblings together in foster care placements to maintain family bonds and emotional stability.

Personal perseverance

The sustained effort by individuals to overcome obstacles and achieve significant personal or professional milestones.

FAQ

Why is the Chaharshanbe Suri festival significant in the context of Iranian society?

Chaharshanbe Suri represents a cultural tradition that has survived thousands of years despite political repression and conflict. Its continued celebration symbolizes resilience and the preservation of identity beyond government control.

What challenges do mountain gorillas face in Virunga National Park?

Mountain gorillas in Virunga National Park face threats from armed rebel groups and dangerous conditions for wildlife rangers. Despite this, gorilla births continue, highlighting the persistence of conservation efforts under difficult circumstances.

How did Ashley Anderson contribute to keeping a family together in foster care?

Ashley Anderson chose to foster three siblings together, preventing their separation. Her decision was informed by her experience as a social worker and reflects the importance of maintaining sibling bonds in foster care.

What factors contributed to the improvement of air quality in Beijing?

Beijing's air quality improved due to sustained policy measures including cycling infrastructure, clean air zones, and electric vehicles. These efforts spanned multiple governments and years, demonstrating the impact of long-term commitment.

What does Shay Taylor's story illustrate about personal perseverance?

Shay Taylor's journey from hospital cleaner to medical professional exemplifies how consistent effort and determination can lead to significant personal transformation, even when progress is slow and unrecognized.

EDITORIAL NOTE

This piece is part of The Present Minds — essays on psychology, identity, and modern life.

Here are your 5 pieces of good news from this week. Not the kind that pretend the world is fine. The kind that happened at the same time as everything else.

The Fire That Would Not Be Put Out

On the evening of March 20th, as bombs were still falling on parts of Iran, families in Tehran lit fires in the streets.

Not in protest. In celebration.

Chaharshanbe Suri is a 3,000-year-old Persian fire festival, held on the last Wednesday before Nowruz, the Persian New Year. You jump over the flames. You say the words. The fire takes your pallor and your sickness and gives you back its warmth and its colour in return.

The Islamic Republic has spent decades trying to suppress it. This year, with a war running and an internet blackout in place, they tried harder than usual.

The fires still burned.

In apartments across Tehran, people lit candles on windowsills. In fifty cities around the world, the Iranian diaspora held Nowruz celebrations in parks and squares, hundreds of thousands of people standing together in the cold, keeping something alive that no government has ever successfully killed.

An Iranian woman reached by journalists through a private channel said simply: they have tried to take everything from us. They have not taken this.

A 3,000-year-old tradition. Still burning.

The Gorilla Who Kept Going

Mafuko was four years old when armed individuals killed her mother in the forests of eastern Congo.

She grew up anyway. She joined a new family. She had children of her own. In 2016, she gave birth to twins. They did not survive.

In January 2026, in Virunga National Park, the oldest national park in Africa and one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a wildlife ranger, Mafuko gave birth to twins again.

Both male. Both healthy.

In March, a second female gorilla in the park gave birth to twins. Nine gorilla babies born in Virunga in the first three months of 2026. This is a park where parts of the forest are controlled by armed rebel groups. Where rangers have been killed protecting these animals. Where the word conservation means something closer to stubbornness than science.

There are just over 1,000 mountain gorillas left in the world.

They keep being born anyway.

The Family That Would Not Be Split

In West Palm Beach, Florida, a woman named Ashley Anderson got a phone call about a little girl who needed a home.

She said yes.

Then another call came. The first girl had a sister.

She said yes.

Then a third call. There was a baby. Four months old. Their youngest sister.

Ashley said yes to that too.

She went from zero children to three in a matter of months. She is a licensed clinical social worker. She had seen the foster care system from the inside. She knew what happened to siblings when nobody stepped forward. She had decided, quietly and without announcement, that it would not happen to these three.

Anastasia. Aliyah. Antonique.

They call themselves the A-Team.

Ashley Anderson is a single woman who decided that a family would not be broken simply because nobody else was prepared to hold it together. There was no dramatic moment. No campaign. Just a phone that kept ringing and a woman who kept answering it.

The girls have her last name now.

Good things happening around the world this week

The City That Quietly Fixed Its Air

For years, Beijing was shorthand for unbreathable.

Photographs of commuters in surgical masks. Air quality indices so high they had to invent new categories. Children kept indoors on bad days, which was most days.

Then, without announcing it, without a single viral moment, the city got to work.

This month, a report from Breathe Cities found that Beijing is among 19 cities worldwide that have cut air pollution by between 20% and 40% in just fifteen years. The improvement came from cycling infrastructure, clean air zones, electric vehicles, and policy decisions that were made, revised, and made again across multiple governments and a decade and a half of unglamorous commitment.

Nearly half of the nineteen cities are in Asia. Nine are in China alone.

Paris is on the list. Berlin is on the list. London is on the list.

Nobody made a headline about this every year that it was happening. It happened anyway.

The world’s air is cleaner than it was. Fifteen years of work that looked like nothing until it looked like everything.

The Same Halls, a Different Door

For ten years, Shay Taylor walked the corridors of Yale New Haven Hospital with a mop and a cleaning cart.

She made sure the rooms were spotless. She watched the doctors work. She learned the rhythms of the place, the sounds of it, the particular quality of light in the wards on quiet afternoons.

She kept going to school. She applied. She was rejected. She applied again.

This year, Shay Taylor returns to Yale New Haven Hospital.

Same building. Same corridors she knows by heart. Same wards she cleaned for a decade while the work of becoming who she was going to be was happening somewhere underneath the surface of every ordinary day.

She will be wearing a white coat.

The hospital she mopped for ten years has no idea what it was watching the whole time.

The fires burned. The twins survived. The air got cleaner. The woman went back through the same door in a different coat.

None of this cancelled anything else that happened this week.

It happened at the same time.

Five Times the World Refused to Give Up is a weekly series on The Present Minds. Every week, five stories. One from each corner of the world. Back next week.

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