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When Arwad Shahin first met Muhanad Harb, falling in love with each other seemed like the easiest thing in the world.
Ms Shahin, a kindergarten teacher, was drawn instantly to Mr Harb’s quick sense of humour and easy smile. Mr Harb, a barber, was struck by her sprightly beauty and humble nature.
Their chemistry was hardly surprising: they were first cousins and grew up in tight-knit Druze communities, on either side of the Israeli-Syrian border, yet mirror images of each other. But while their love knew no bounds, when the time came to get married the pair, both 25, found themselves divided by one of the most contentious borders in the world.
The bride hails from this wind-whipped village on the Israeli side. The groom’s home lies directly across the border, manned by military check-points and studded with mine-fields, on the Syrian side.
About a dozen brides from border villages are faced with the same stark choice every year: if they cross into “enemy territory” to get married they may never see their families again. By crossing the border they automatically lose their residency and right to return. They are regarded as “foreigners from an enemy state”.
For Ms Shahin, the choice was wrenching. “I feel somewhere in between happiness and sadness,” she said at a send-off party at her father’s house hours before her wedding yesterday. Her mother, Hannah, wept on her daughter’s wedding dress, a strapless gown with a ruffled organza skirt, studded with rhinestones.
“It’s a very difficult feeling to express because I am losing my family but will finally be with my husband,” said Ms Shahin, hugging her mother.
More than a generation has passed since Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967, but the border continues to divide families and disrupt lives in the region, populated by about 15,000 Syrian Druze.
They still live under Israeli occupation, mostly in four towns, including Buqata, where residents refuse to accept Israeli identity cards and reject Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan. The Druze, who follow a religion that broke off from Islam in the 11th century, are still loyal to Damascus.
The situation has created a surreal existence for families such as the Shahins and the Harbs, who are related but rarely see each other because their countries are technically at war. Over the years they have tried to maintain their connections, arranging marriages to strengthen ties between families and creating a weekly ritual where they gather on either side of the border and use bull-horns to speak to relatives.
Five years ago, during one of these shouting sessions, the two families decided to organise a reunion in Jordan, which is where Ms Shahin and Mr Harb first met.
“It was very natural,” Ms Shahin’s uncle Amar recalled. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have given her away to him because I don’t want her to leave her home, but one cannot stand in the way of such love.”
The couple’s courtship consisted of long-distance phone calls routed through Cyprus. They sent photos and letters to be posted by relatives travelling to a third country. As their feelings deepened, their mobile phone bills rocketed.
When they announced their intentions to marry, their families gave their immediate support, but it took more than a year to get the approval of the Syrian and Israeli authorities, an agreement negotiated by the Red Cross.
“It’s a very long bureaucratic process. It can take months and in some cases, years,” said Yael Segel, the Red Cross representative who escorted the Shahin bridal party to the border yesterday. When they arrived at the Kuneitra crossing, Ms Shahin and a handful of her immediate family were shuttled through immigration under the watchful eye of UN observers.
Hundreds of her relatives pressed up against the border fence, yelling at the Harb family standing 500m (1,600ft) away. Their wedding ceremony would take place halfway along the asphalt road.
Ms Shahin kissed her family goodbye, glanced at her groom waiting in the distance and turned to the television cameras. “I will pray that peace will come soon so that one day our families can be together. All we have to do is lift this fence, then we can live as relatives once again,” she said, before taking her brother’s arm and crossing into no man’s land.
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