Mideast Couple Pays Premium For No-Drone-Strike Option At Wedding (PreOccupied Territory)

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Sana, March 11 - Families of a man and woman hoping not to be dismembered by missiles from an American Predator aircraft at the celebration of their nuptials lamented this week that securing a venue that can accommodate such a preference will cost them a metaphorical arm and leg.

The Jabari and Hufri clans agreed last month to a marriage between Ahmad, a scion of the Jabaris, and Asma, of the Hufris, to take place in mid-March, but planning has bogged down and the event postponed twice already because all parties to the arrangement have agreed on at least one condition that catering halls and other facilities have declared all but impossible: no American drone strikes during the ceremony or party. The only available option, they discovered, involves an underground facility that must undergo significant modifications to attain the 200-person capacity that the event requires, and as such much charge more than ten times the prevailing rate for above-ground venues of similar size.

"We knew, in the abstract, that Biden's election would mean a return to the Obama-era phenomenon of drone attacks on weddings," acknowledged patriarch Hussein Jabari, the groom's great uncle. "But that was before Ahmad got engaged. Now it's real, and personal, and we have to address the down-to-earth details and implications. So far the drone strikes under Biden have been confined to remote areas of Syria, but the Americans are somehow both unreliable and entirely predictable, so at one point we even considered calling off the wedding. But the two of them are so cute together, and it's not fair to put life on hold just because lives are at risk. The Americans have made that mistake, too, with their excessive school closures and lockdowns, when less severe mitigation measures would suffice."

"Anyway," he continued, "we did finally find a guy with a bunch of caves on his property and the remnants of some tunnel, but it's going to take weeks of work to make it safe for our purposes, let alone hooked up to electricity and the proper kitchen facilities. And I don't even want to talk about how much livestock this is going to set us back. The security deposit alone cost me some of my finest ewes."

"It wasn't just the venue," agreed Fatima Hufri, who has taken charge of some of the other logistical arrangements for the affair. "Try getting a band that's willing either to risk its members' lives at an event prone to drone attack or to perform underground where the acoustics are terrible. And don't get me started on florists. Though since they do funerals, too, it was easier to persuade them to make a deal since they're getting our business either way."