Malinda Words: Gauze-kites in intemperate skies

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A single kite way above the tree-line seemingly adrift against rain-threatening clouds is a sight to behold. If there is lightning and thunder promising a torrential downpour it is even more spectacular.

You could watch from a distance, perhaps from a window or some other place where you know perfectly well that you are safe, that lighting will not strike you and will not get wet regardless of the precision of the best plans hatched by rain and wind.

A kite can be buffeted by wind. Indeed, the wind can wrench it from the hand that holds the string, however strong it may be. Rain can drench it. Gravity will do the rest. The spectacle is overpowering nevertheless. A kite being brought down thus leaves a mark harder to remove than a tree being felled. Sometimes. A kite in a storm tells more about elemental power than a storm that goes about its business without having to deal with trivialities made of paper, string and some firm material used to make the frame.

There are no threatening skies above the lands I inhabit these days. Dismal skies, yes, on certain days. Some rain. Snow too, just flurries. Temperatures aren’t threatening either. The evening skies are pretty as they yield gold, crimson, pink and other shades, especially when seen through the branches of trees bereft of leaves and forming a lace-like filter. I haven’t seen any kites.

I know the ways of kites and skies. I know something of elemental conspiracy. I know about gravity too. And yet, never have I been accorded the privilege of seeing the spectacle of kites in bloodshot skies, challenged by forces other than wind, lightening and rain, ordered to surrender and yet dancing with abandon as though convinced that skies will clear, the wind will abate, lightning will cease and forces that consider such innocuous impediments as an affront retire to contemplate sins to the end of time.

There are kites made of gauze, that flimsy material made of cotton, wool, sink or synthetic fibres with a loose, open weave. That material which we know is used to dress wounds and is probably the oldest dressing known to us, dating back to the ancient Egyptians who used it to wrap bodies prior to burial. Yes, that kind of gauze. Kites made of that kind of gauze.

As of December 9, 2023, a total of 17,487 have ascended to the skies over a particularly tragic territory. That’s since October 8, 2023. So, in 62 days , on average, 287 kites have entered these skies every day.

The sky does not care for the lines that human beings believe can be drawn on the earth. They may, as collectives, agree and claim the sky above such lands demarcated on paper to belong to one race or another, but kites heed not such ridiculous trivialities. They soar. They do not carry travel documents, they will not be stopped by immigration-emigration functionaries of any persuasion or identity.

And so, these 17,487 kites, all made of gauze, weave and wave, rise, swoop down and rise again, in strange solidarities that will not harm even one but instead move like an exquisitely choreographed dance ensemble. And each day, on average, they are joined by 287 new kites. All made of gauze.

[read what gauze means to millions under siege: gauze blood-stained and torn]

This sky is unlike any sky I have ever seen. It is probably unlike the skies seen by the vast majority of people on this planet. This sky is malevolent. It is barbaric. It’s blues and whites are like flags chosen by the captains of genocide. Its reds are like gauze that cannot stop blood-letting of the coldest and cruelest kind. Its gold is the gleam of profits gathered by the only true and faithful lovers of war, the weapons industry.

Terrible birds of prey roam in these skies. They spread wings and open fire and drop bombs. They are kite makers and are quite industrious, for it is not an easy task to make 287 kites per day on average. Gauze, after all, is not an easy material to work with, at least not when you use it to make kites. These vultures are not satisfied by kite-making. They are strange inventors for they are as determined to destroy the kites they themselves made and made airborne.

The gauze kites are not bested by wind, though. Lightning somehow bypasses them. Rain falls around them but not one drop soaks the flimsy material. Bullets and bombs cannot touch them for they seem to have acquired the strange attribute of untouchability.

It must be in the material. Gauze. That’s a name derived from the region where the earliest weavers of the fabric called home, Gazz. The gauze kites are actually stories. Memories, hopes, histories, fears and joys, determination that consistency wages war against helplessness and prevails again and again — these are written upon the flimsy and yet amazingly resilient fabric of these kites. It’s the spirit of those who will not let themselves, their histories, their loves and their obstinacy be buried.

Gauze kites, tens of thousands of them, have occupied the skies. They deflect sunlight into fields that carry seeds named ‘Tomorrow,’ they look tyrant and tyranny in the eye resolutely and they laugh and laugh and laugh.They sing and sing and sing. They dance and dance and dance.

They are magical kites. Too strong to be torn by the most powerful missiles as yet manufactured. They are made of gauze.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 291st article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

13 December 2023

Gauze-kites in intemperate skies

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