Mary Edwar was holding hands with her husband Kareem Ghattas outside St Mark's Coptic cathedral in Alexandria after the packed church service with some 700 other families a year ago when the bomb went off and they were both thrown into the air.
When she saw blood seeping from his head she knew then that his situation was, in her word, 'irreparable'. The couple had been married a year and eight months, and Mary was two and a half months pregnant, expecting their first child. Her life was full of joy that Palm Sunday in 2017.
Now, aged just 33, after losing her husband and suffering a miscarriage she has abandoned any desire to have children and, though remarkably positive, she remains heartbroken and cannot bear to look at the palm leaves that are again everywhere around the church.
'He was a wonderful man, a very normal man, not overly spiritual,' Mary told Christian Today and several other media outlets at the ancient church yesterday afternoon, on the eve of Palm Sunday which this year is today in the Orthodox church calendar here. Speaking in Arabic with a translator from the Christian broadcaster in the region, SAT-7, she added of Kareem, who was 43 when he died: 'He lived a normal life, he visited his mum and dad, he served in the church and his heart was in heaven.'
Mary herself suffered multiple shrapnel wounds in the legs and stomach, and was hospitalised for nine days after the suicide attack on April 9, which killed 18 people and wounded at least 48, It coincided with another in Tanta, leaving a combined total of 45 deaths and more than a hundred injuries.
Footage from a church security camera showed the Alexandria bomber walking through an open gate before being directed toward a metal detector which was guarded by police officers. Stopped by a Muslim officer, the man then detonated his explosives outside the church, where hundreds had gathered for this, the most important church occasion of the year in Egypt alongside Good Friday and Easter Day (Coptic Pope Tawadros II, the leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, was inside St Mark's but was not harmed).
Yesterday, the Christian community of many hundreds at this coastal city were slowly but steadily gathering in the spring sunshine in preparation for this morning's service. Entering through the checkpoint with two metal detectors, you are immediately struck by the images among the palms of what many here call the eight Christians martyrs of the attack, which was claimed by Islamic State and which in the event actually killed more Muslims – police and passers by – than Christians.
