When seen from a distance, kites in Gaza may look quite ordinary. But while Gazan children, in many respects, are just children, their kites are hardly ordinary. Often adorned with the red, black, green and white of the Palestinian flag, Gazan children’s kites are expressions of defiance, hope and the longing for freedom.
This is hardly a cliché. People living under oppression take every opportunity to express defiance, even through overtly symbolic ways.
Born and raised in Nuseirat Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip, I remember my first kite. Like most kites, it carried the colors of the flag. The kite was the work of my older brother, now a successful medic in the West Bank. He obliged my incessant cries for a kite despite my father’s objections. But why should a father object to something so seemingly harmless? Simple. A notorious Israeli military camp and detention center was located on the outskirts of our refugee camp, between Nuseirat and Buraij. The military camp served multiple purposes. It was to immediately dispatch troops into our refugee camp at the first sign of protest. Further, the men stationed there guarded a nearby Jewish settlement. Finally, it also served as a temporary prison where Palestinian activists suffered torture before being hauled off to Gaza’s central prison, or worse, Al-Nakab.
The military camp, however, hardly enjoyed a moment of peace. Students and other refugees from nearby refugee camps would descend almost daily into the Israeli military areas, carrying flags, throwing stones and demanding that the soldiers depart. Of course, the soldiers didn’t oblige, and my refugee camp paid a heavy price in blood with every confrontation. In the summer, in Gaza’s scorching heat and humidity, we had two escapes, swimming in the sea and flying kites. The first option was interminably blocked by the Israeli military under various pretenses. During the Intifada of 1987-93, the sea was under Israeli siege. And so kite flying became the most favored pastime.
Gaza’s children didn’t buy readymade kites. There was no such thing. They constructed them by hand and with unparalleled craftsmanship. To be entirely honest, I was terrible at making kites as I am at anything that requires manual skills. The kite maker in the family was my older brother Anwar. His skill was both impressive and troubling. The source of trouble lay in the fact that children made kites carrying the colors of the flags and other symbols of resistance at the time, such as the initials: PLO. They often flew them so that they were visible from the Israeli military camp, and if the wind was right, the kites were right on top of it. The cleverest among the kite runners were those who managed to drop the kite, in an unprecedented moment of sacrifice, to fall right into the military camp.
During the uprising’s summers, there were dozens of kites, all red, black, green and white, waving atop the Israeli military camp and temporary detention center. The soldiers often flew into a rage and stormed the camp seeking their target: children with kites. We could determine the location of the raid when all the kites from a particular location suddenly fell from the sky at once.
One afternoon, I sat upon the staircase of our home in the camp, a white cinderblock house, adorned with patriotic graffiti. It was safe to fly my kite as my father was in Israel, along with tens of thousands of Palestinians who eked out a living under the harshest of conditions. Out of nowhere, Israeli jeeps leapt into the open area, separating my house from the Martyrs Graveyard. Children ran in panic. Tear gas grenades were lobbed in frenzy. Kites fell all around like wounded eagles. I too ran, in circles, without letting go of my kite.
It was not bravery. Far from it. I was frightened beyond comprehension. But it took me months to finally have a kite, and when I finally had one, and an amazingly beautiful one at that, I was not ready to let go. A jeep sped toward me, as my hand trembled. “You donkey,” a soldier yelled in a loudspeaker. “Let go of the kite.” And so I did. When I was asked why I was crying, many hours later, I told my brothers that my eyes were still irritated from the tear gas. But that was a lie.
It was because of this bittersweet memory, perhaps, that the news reports of Gaza’s children aiming for the world record on the number of kites flown simultaneously in the same place captured my attention. John Ging, the director of operations for the UN Relief and Works Agency, assured reporters that the 5,000 children who gathered on the beach in northern Gaza, on July 30, had indeed broken the record. The previous record was set in Germany in 2008, and if the new accomplishment is verified by Guinness, Gaza’s kids will have taken the lead with “flying colors.”
UN officials in Gaza, media reporters and others saw the kite flying as an expression of innocence at a time when Gaza was living through its harshest period yet: suffocating siege, massacres, and collective humiliation. But the message was of course neither about kites nor about world records. It was about the children of Gaza, in fact, Gaza itself — that tiny, subjugated, yet ever resilient, defiant, proud and somehow still hopeful place.
As for me, I never knew of the whereabouts of my old kite when I so reluctantly let it go. I was comforted by the thought that it might have fallen into the detention center, but I was never sure. It was my first kite ever, and I never asked for another one despite my older brother’s repeated offers.
— Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com.
