How Militias Doomed an Iraqi’s Attempt to Replicate Paris’s ‘Love Locks’ Bridge

posted on: Jan 31, 2015

When Ayman Karim fell in love last summer, he wanted others to experience his joy. Iraq was reeling from an escalating war with Islamist extremists, and men from his home city of Basra were dying by the dozens.

“We were living in the dark,” said the 26-year-old. “We needed a point of light to make people happy. I was happy, and I wanted to share my love with everyone.”

His idea: to bring the tradition of the “love lock” to Iraq by encouraging sweethearts to affix padlocks to a bridge in this southern city in an affirmation of their love.

The young engineer took inspiration from Europe, where the custom has burgeoned, most famously at the Pont des Arts in Paris. One of the French bridge’s railings collapsed last year under the weight of the tokens of affection.

But the course of true love never did run smooth, and in Basra, a city with a strong presence of religiously conservative Shiite militias, such a public display of affection inevitably risked a backlash.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com