no peace in the Middle East

By: ms_proud2 Mood: i feel like crap Date: 06/05/2008 10:47:40 Music: none

A 33-year-old Italian artist was killed in Turkey last month simply for the sake of her craft. Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo (a.k.a. Pippa Bacca) was performing a stint for her latest creative project "Brides on Tour," hitchhiking her way through Middle East in a white wedding gown to symbolize a proposed "'marriage' of cultures and the building of trust." She imagined "a road journey, in part to symbolize the ways in which minds can travel toward compromise. Their wedding dresses would evoke the sense of hope and life-changing possibility that a bride might feel on her wedding day." Although her idea was well-received in Istanbul, the heart of Turkish tourism, she never made it past the Anatolian region of East Turkey. Turkish police arrested a man named Murat Karatas, who they believe to be guilty of sexually assaulting Bacca before he strangled her. For some reason, this hit home with me...although I'm aware of the HUGE risk she took (hitchhiking through a historically-chauvinistic country, without knowing the language, without an escort) I can't help feeling like she died in vain.