Afnan Jibril, a Gaza lady, is surrounded by family and friends who are applauding and clapping as she smiles brightly on her wedding day, determined to enjoy herself despite the ongoing conflict.
The wedding took place in the besieged southern city of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border. They family members of the couple gathered on Friday for the wartime wedding in a small room of an abandoned school building.
“We are a people that love life, despite death, murders, and destruction,” remarked her father, Mohamed Jibril.
The families of the bride and groom are among the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have left the conflict further north, and the city has been under daily Israeli shelling.
Afnan, 17, who is wearing a flower-adorned crown and a crisp white dress with bright red embroidery, and her partner Mustafa Shamlakh, 26, are eager to enjoy this unique opportunity to celebrate.
They giggle and dance while visitors splatter white mousse all over the place but all of a sudden they have to face reality.
The uncle of the groom, Ayman Shamlakh, told AFP that “the house where the groom was supposed to live was destroyed.”
Both families approved of the marriage since they believed there was no benefit to waiting while the war continued. The pair leaves for a ceremony that is scheduled to happen in a tent following the school celebration.
With a sizable throng of well-wishers surrounding them, their entrance into a waiting black SUV nearly seems like any other wedding day.
“The tragedy that we are all experiencing is the same,” Ayman Shamlakh remarked. “However, we must continue to live, and life should go on.”
