Word: kite
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...recent Friday when their country's election crisis continued to unfold, a clique well to do Afghans flew kites on dusty Nadir Shah Hill in Kabul. The hill is famous for this - sometimes it is simply called Kite Hill. It is a dusty, rutted place, overlooking the city. "This isn't proper," says Mohammed Ushan, 54, who works at the ministry of construction. "The Municipality of Kabul ought to take better care of this hill." His friend, Aziz Ullah Kukchar, 37, adds that the whole place ought to be developed. "If there was a proper park, and restaurants, and billiards...
These are, of course, difficult times to develop parks, and the idea that Afghans would turn away from their traditions devalues the familiar analogies between kite flying and Afghan politics that became famous in the bestselling novel The Kite Runner. On Kite Hill, as in the book, the kite string is textured in glue and glass, and can slice a sleeve or draw blood from a finger as it un-spools skyward. Once you've got your kite in the air, the aim is to cut down another kite - these battles can draw in dozens of combatants. And usually...
...full of fighting kites is symbolic. The multiplicity of explosive Afghan factions, competing interests and networks remain so complex and hazardous that honest students of the country's recent history are eager to point out the limits of their own knowledge. It is all daunting. As John Dempsey, Senior Rule of Law Advisor for the United States Institute of Peace, says, "there are things I still find confusing about this place, and I've been here seven years." (Read a story about Khaled Hosseini, the author of The Kite Runner...
...Kite Hill, Kukchar, the Gorky Park visionary, voiced a similar idea. The problem was the Americans, the Iranians, the Pakistanis - all the foreigners. He takes over the string of one of the kites he has brought. "The string cuts my fingers," he says, preparing to launch, "but I still fly the kite." (See a video about how skateboard culture has come to Kabul...
Nabi, formerly a de-miner and now deputy at the Mine Dog Center, says that he is too busy to fly kites, even though he and his dogs lived in Kabul's premier kite flying spot. And he does not find it at all strange that the de-mining headquarters shares real estate with the kite capital. "Kite flying is like de-mining, except you use your brain more than your hands," he says, striding to chase away a child throwing rocks at his cages. The kid bolted off, back into the kite-running fray...