Before she could walk down the aisle, West Bank bride May Warda first had to crawl through a tunnel under the Egypt-Gaza border to meet her groom in the Gaza Strip.
Spiegel Online has the story:
When Mohammed Warda first took his bride in his arms she looked "as if she had just stepped out of a grave that was filled with earth." He had spent an hour sitting nervously by a big hole in the ground in the Gaza Strip, while May crawled backwards through the tunnel, keeping her eyes closed because of the sand that trickled from the roof. Her groom had to pay $1,500 (€1,021) for her to be smuggled through a tunnel from the Egyptian side of the border to the Gaza Strip. And 23-year-old May knew the whole time that the risky undertaking could cost her her life.
Mohammed had been honest with her when he phoned her, telling her of the dangers she faced. First of all there were the Egyptians who were trying to cut off the tunnels, sometimes by throwing gas grenades down the shafts. Dozens of people working on the tunnels had been killed in recent months by these methods. Furthermore there were the Israeli air strikes to contend with: Ever since Israel failed to halt the smuggling during the Gaza war they launched at the beginning of the year, its air force had taken to sporadically striking the border with Egypt.
And then there was the danger that the tunnel could simply collapse. "I knew that I could be buried alive at any moment," May says. After almost an hour underground she staggered into Mohammed’s waiting arms. "I was shocked," the 26-year-old says. "I felt so bad that she had gone through this ordeal for me."
Full story here.
