Visitors to the Martin Place memorial broke into applause Sunday as a Muslim bride laid her wedding bouquet down for the victims of the fatal Lindt cafe siege.
The ?23-year-old Muslim bride — Manal Kassem — and her groom,?Mahmod Homaisi, originally decided to have their wedding photo shoot in the city but were hesitant to do so after the recent siege.
“She was going to cancel [the photoshoot] because she didn’t want to be judged … celebrating her wedding in a scarf while people were terrorised,” said Kassem’s wedding planner Dina Kheir. …”But she made it her priority to visit the memorial site as the first pit stop.”…”She did it out of respect for her country, that will one day be the country of her children and grandchildren.”
The sea of flowers continued to grow at the memorial site until announcements were made Monday that the flowers would be removed?due to rainy weather forecasts.
The decision to prematurely remove the memorial was made in consultation with the families of ?Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson, who were both killed in the siege.
According to ABC, removal of the flowers will allow all the cards attached to the bouquets made in tribute to be preserved.
New South Wales Premier Mike Baird said people can still pay their respects to the victims by leaving flowers at a marquee.
“There will be a marquee at the [Lindt] cafe so people can still do it,” he said on Monday.
The removal of the cards and flowers began Tuesday morning. Volunteers from the Rural State Emergency Service and the Red Cross are helping to collect the flowers in coordination with City of Sydney personnel.
“The cards will be brought together and put into a book which will ensure that the family members will see forever the tributes that have flowed from this great city and the people that make up this great city over the past few days,” said Baird.
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Alecia Pasdera is a recent college graduate from Wisconsin who is currently working as a copy editor in Kentucky. Her academic background is in journalism and communication. Alecia sees a lot of problems with the world today, and although she doesn’t have the power to change them singlehandedly, she does have the power to write about them and raise awareness. It’s her belief that education and knowledge are the strongest tools in making tomorrow a better world for everyone. You can follow her personal blog at allthingsgrowingup.weebly.com.
