Weddings in the Belarusian capital of Minsk are not complete without a visit to the Island of Tears. To safeguard their unions, newlyweds must cross a humpback bridge from the affluent suburb of Traetskaye to a small island in a bend in the Svisloch river. The soil there is foreign, brought home by mothers who travelled to Afghanistan to find their sons, but instead found their sons’ graves. They carried home fragments of the earth that had devoured their children during the long, suicidal occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. There are 771 names recorded on four altars inside …read more
Source: The National
