Spreading Happiness And Joy

It is a peculiar custom in many Arab and Muslim countries for joy to be expressed by taking up arms and shooting recklessly. Of course that reckless shooting is meant to be aimed at the heavens. To awaken a sleeping all-seeing Spirit mayhap? To alert the surrounding community, of course, that there is a ceremony or some other celebratory occurrence occasioning great happiness needful of being communicated in audible range of gunshot.

Of course this is seen by others, Westerners, for example, as a rather feckless tradition wrought with the potential of disaster. Jubilation can be expressed by many other means. On the other hand, nothing snaps people to attention quite like the firing of firearms now, does it? And people were most certainly snapped to attention at the conclusion of a marriage ceremony in Turkey, in a little village in the southeastern province of Gaziantep.

Never heard of the village of Akcagoze? Located in that southeastern province of Gaziantep in Turkey? Well you can bet that the villagers living there and for miles around will recount in the future the story of the marriage of Tevfik Altin. Who, on the joyous occasion of his wedding to his beloved, thought to celebrate his nuptials with the traditional volley of rapid aerial shots. With an AK-47 rifle.

The misfortune, in the general aura of celebration and good times and a bright future for the bridegroom and his blushing, albeit soon-to-be-alarmed wife was that Tevfik Altin appears to have lost control of the AK-47. It suddenly assumed a life of its own, as it were. Perhaps taking umbrage at being used for such a trifling event, rather than to mow down people designated as enemy combatants as is the wont with such firearms.

Alas, Tevfik Altin has been arrested. His wedding night was spent in jail, not in the unresisting, warm arms of his beloved. And he might have felt badly about that, but perhaps not quite as anguished as the thought that he was the instrument (as it were) of the death of his father and two of his aunties. Just incidentally, other guests at the wedding were raked with fire. No word on their condition. They obviously survived the surprise.

This most definitely will rank fairly high in the fabled story-telling category of "you'll never believe what happened at Tevfik Altin's wedding".