How a wartime wedding can remind us of our humanity.
| By Susannah Meadows Senior Staff Editor, Opinion |
Like most women I know, I'm over beauty. It's hard to find value in something that's mattered more than it should for so long. |
And then I read Alyona Synenko's lovely guest essay about the meaning of beauty in wartime. It did the thing that I always look for in pieces: It gave me a new way of thinking about something I thought I understood. |
Synenko is from Odesa but is currently based in Nairobi, where she is a regional spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross. After spending 13 years in conflict areas, she now has to grapple with horror at home and has spent part of the war on emergency assignment in Ukraine, based in Kyiv. Visiting her family in Odesa, she saw her city drained of life, its streets choked with dirty sandbags. |
In Ukraine, she writes, any attempt to plan for the future was drowned out by uncertainty and fear. But then she got a call from her aunt: Synenko's cousin was getting married in Odesa. Synenko knew she couldn't miss the wedding, even though it meant flying from Nairobi to Moldova and walking across the border into Ukraine. |
Soon the excited mother of the bride was texting pictures of dresses, cakes and rings. Synenko started browsing Instagram accounts of clothing designers still in Odesa, on the hunt for her own fabulous dress. She realized that the future did exist if they could plan for it. |
"The way we imagine lives in war-torn countries is shaped by news coverage, often images of suffering and violence," Synenko writes. "Wars create pain, uncertainty and fear. But survivors can't live on pain and fear alone." |
On the day of the wedding, she donned a shiny red dress that was "deliberately over-the-top," as she puts it, and high heels, which she usually does not wear. Her feet ached, but it was worth it. As she writes: |
"Today I hoped that the glamour of dressing up and holding flowers would challenge the emptiness of war. I wanted to claim the right to something unnecessary and pretty at a time when electrical blackouts were about to start. Beauty brings joy. And living amid violence, when it is easy to forget that joy exists, beauty becomes a lifeline to normality." |
Most of the seats in the wedding hall were empty. Synenko was one of six family members in attendance. They celebrated at a rooftop restaurant, overlooking the glittering Black Sea. They pretended not to be afraid, made promises to the future and reveled in the beauty — and normality — that was theirs for one day. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
Forward this newsletter to friends to share ideas and perspectives that will help inform their lives. They can sign up here. Do you have feedback? Email us at opiniontoday@nytimes.com. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment