Dear Deeply Readers,

Welcome to the archives of Syria Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on May 15, 2018, and transitioned some of our coverage to Peacebuilding Deeply, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on the Syrian conflict. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors contributors.

We continue to produce events and special projects while we explore where the on-site journalism goes next. If you’d like to reach us with feedback or ideas for collaboration you can do so at [email protected].

BROWSE THE SYRIA DEEPLY ARCHIVES

Conversations: As Barrel Bombs Fall, Moving a Wedding from Aleppo

After a barrel bombing campaign makes transport – and public gatherings – too risky, a young bride is forced to move her wedding to Gaziantep.

Written by Karen Leigh Published on Read time Approx. 2 minutes

As part of our effort to highlight civilian stories, below is a conversation between Syria Deeply and a 25-year-old newlywed from Aleppo city. Married for three months, she says she moved her wedding from Aleppo to Gaziantep after a months-long barrel bombing campaign by the Syrian army made it too dangerous to gather a large group together in public – and impossible for her guests to safely traverse the roads.

They are now honeymooning in Istanbul, where they are staying with relatives who have also left Syria. As residents continue to pour out of Aleppo, she says she and her husband, 26, plan on returning to the city soon to raise a family.

When we were single, we were both living in Aleppo city. I was studying for my masters degree at Aleppo University, but stopped, because of the revolution. He was studying economics, working with his dad. They had a factory. But it stopped functioning, too, because of the revolution. His family is still in Aleppo.

We met three years ago. We were planning to have our wedding in Aleppo, but then the barrel bombing suddenly began. You couldn’t stay there, waiting for a plane [to fly overhead]. They were killing us, the civilians. That’s why we couldn’t gather our friends, our families. And it was very difficult to have our friends and family there, because of transportation issues – we are from different cities – because of checkpoints. It takes a lot of time to travel. I couldn’t wear my white dress – it would get dirty on the way.

It wasn’t very big, the dress, but it was very beautiful. There was my tiara and my veil. It was embroidered, mostly made from silk and tulle. He looked very handsome too [on the day of our wedding]. He brought me flowers.

But of course we couldn’t have our whole families there [in Gaziantep]. I have four brothers, and they couldn’t come because of checkpoints. We do not trust the government, they could arrest any young man at any checkpoint for no apparent reason. That’s very common in Syria. He has four sisters, too, and they were unable to travel from Aleppo to Gaziantep. Before the revolution, it took two hours to go from Aleppo city to Gaziantep. Now it takes about 14 hours and its very dangerous.

My mother was there with us, and a couple of friends. Not our close friends. A friend of ours hosted the wedding and did everything. It felt like home, but it wasn’t as beautiful. We are planning to do another wedding ceremony when the time is right, when we can bring our families.

Now we’re on honeymoon. It’s our third month after the wedding. We didn’t plan on coming to Istanbul, the opportunity just came up. It’s not in our tradition to take a long honeymoon. Normally it’s only two weeks.

We still can’t believe that we finally managed to get married. We want to have 15 children [laughs, jokingly]. We will try to do our best of course to establish a good environment for them. It was amazing to live in Aleppo, to be free there [without regime rule]. It could happen again. We could have an excellent house. We might even have our car back.

Republish this article

Our mission is to empower stakeholders and the wider public with high quality information, insights, and analysis on critical global issues. To help achieve this, we encourage you to republish the text of any article that contains a Republish button on your own news outlet.

By copying the HTML below, you agree to adhere to our republishing guidelines.

By copying the HTML below, you agree to adhere to our republishing guidelines. Click to expand

  1. In republishing any of our articles:

    Ensure that you include a line of our HTML tracking code on every article you republish. This is a lightweight, efficient way for us to see the number of page views of each specific article published on our partners’ websites. This does not affect page layout, nor does it provide any information about your users, other web pages on your site, or any further data. By copying and pasting the HTML code in the box below, the tracking code is automatically included.

    If, for any reason, you do not copy the code prepared for you, you must paste this code snippet into the end of the article in your CMS: 

    <img src="http://ping.newsdeeply.com/pixel.gif?key=98870&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsdeeply.com%2Fsyria%2Farticles%2F2014%2F04%2F17%2Fconversations-as-barrel-bombs-fall-moving-a-wedding-from-aleppo" alt="" />

  2. Adhere to the guidelines below:
    • Edit our stories only to reflect references to time (e.g. "today" to "yesterday"), location (e.g. "New York" to "here") or editorial style; do not edit the wording of our articles.
    • Include all the links within the story.
    • Credit our authors and partner institutions — ideally in the byline. We prefer “Author Name, Institution”
    • Note at the top and/or bottom of the story that it originally appeared on Syria Deeply. This note should include a direct link to the original article and a sentence that offers the reader the opportunity to join the Syria’s mailing list. Our recommended example is:
      • This should read : “This article originally appeared on Syria Deeply. You can find the original here. For important news about the war in Syria, you can sign up to the Syria email list.”
    • Do not republish a photo without our written permission. Some sources don't allow their images to be republished without permission.
    • Do not translate a story into another language without our written permission.
    • We often republish pieces from our partners. If you want to republish a partner’s story, you must credit the original partner and include a “via News Deeply” link.
    • Note that News Deeply considers the publication date to be the date marked on the story, and is not responsible for any content that you choose to repost.
    • After republication on the partner website, if you make an accompanying post on social media referencing the republished article, you must include the relevant Deeply social media handle in such post. For example, (i) for Twitter posts this means adding the appropriate @Deeply tag such as @SyriaDeeply, @WaterDeeply, or @WomensGirlsHub and (ii) for Facebook this means tagging the appropriate Deeply page in your Facebook post.
    • News Deeply material may not to be provided, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly, to third parties or affiliates for redistribution through those entities, unless you have received prior written approval from News Deeply.
    • You may not automatically or systematically republish any material from our sites; all stories must be chosen individually for republishing.
    • You may not sell our content or republish it for commercial purposes without our prior written consent.
    • We reserve the right to request that any partner ceases republication of our content, including but not limited to if the guidelines listed above not being followed.
    • If you have any questions or concerns please contact [email protected]

Suggest your story or issue.

Send

Share Your Story.

Have a story idea? Interested in adding your voice to our growing community?

Learn more