Kite Hill

by Jordan Elgrably

There is a documentary photographer in the agency who is American, the only American. Sometimes, as a joke, a taunt, his colleagues call him the ugly American. Ironically, he was born in Paris but his parents took him to Los Angeles when he was three years old, because their French had not been good enough to find well-paid work. His mother, a metisse from South Africa, found a job teaching high school English in Silverlake; his father, a light-skinned Palestinian with black hair and blue eyes, became a construction foreman. Benjamin Dingane Odidini Kanafani, whom his mother had always called Dingane, grew up in Echo Park, but he hasn't set foot on American soil in nearly ten years. He travels constantly out of a desire, he says, to belong everywhere and nowhere at once, wanting to experience every possible life. His images appear in magazines and newspapers around the world, under a pseudonym that is familiar to anyone who pays attention to the photo credits of major publications. Kanafani, thirty years old now, has a horrible distrust of language and imagination; he feels that language is dangerous because it is something he does not entirely own. And his fear of the imagination has become almost crippling.

I am a clinician at the Centre d'Auscultation, located in Jornada, just outside of Paris, southeast of Montreuil. My name is Dr. Maurice Issartel. Monsieur Kanafani has been coming to us now for seven weeks. This morning he told me the story that I feel at last explains his bizarre condition--what must be classified as a phobia of the imagination, evidenced by the patient's unfortunate dis-ease with words. I have transcribed Kanafani's story into the third person to permit objective distance. It is as follows.

Whenever his mother and father seemed like strangers to him, Dingane would walk to the top of Kite Hill, a place where it was possible to be alone. Here he would dwell for hours, watching one of his hand-made kites soar far above and beyond (sometimes) the immediate world. The kite was free; through him, it was a friend of the skies. It was during just such an outing, on a windswept Sunday in the late summer of his thirteenth year, when the thing occurred.

For months he'd been perfecting his technique and knowledge of the winds. The more he learned, the further he could fly a kite. The preceding Christmas, his father had given him a camera, a Brownie; his mother a self-assemble kite kit she'd found in a shop in Eagle Rock (where he subsequently went for supplies). It didn't take Dingane long to decide he preferred flying kites to taking pictures. When the first kite got tangled in some telephone wires, he started designing kites on his own.

His favorite was one he'd constructed in the form of a boy which looked quite like himself. Actually, only the boy's profile was discernible: the unclothed body was stretched prone and adorned with a pair of long white wings. Dingane brought the boy-kite to the summit of Kite Hill, carrying a wrinkled old shopping bag brimming with roll upon roll of string. He had accumulated so many rolls in such a variety of colors that he now was under the sublime impression he could fly the boy-kite around the world, guiding and controlling its course from his throne carved into a great chunk of limestone upon the summit.

Today he was utterly alone. The radio meteorologist had reported that strong gusts of up to fifty miles per hour were to be expected. Indeed, the omnipotent fingers of the wind, surging from the west, mussed his hair like crows flying wildly in every direction, and the August heat rushed up against his bare torso like invisible hands caressing his taut skin. Dingane stood firm in the windy heat, then suddenly turned when, dislodged by the force of those same invisible hands, a large rock went crashing down the hillside onto Ummatti Street. Overwhelmed with hapless enthusiasm, he thought this was a good omen. He removed a spindle of red nylon string and wound it through the small metal rings attached to the boy-kite's nipples. The paper and pinewood boy erupted from his hands like an errant soul and went charging off into the troposphere. "Ah!" cried Dingane--the boy-kite's sudden surge was the joy of escape, mirthful Icarus flying the first air currents as he flees the tower of Minos with his father.

The kite continued to rise. Dingane hoped its featherweight chassis of pinewood (painted pomegranate red, the better to be seen) and ricepaper body and wings would not prove too fragile. He'd lost two other kites to the hands of the wind in the past. The first was a copy of the Chinese serpent, or flying dragon, the second a replica of the dodo bird which he'd made after studying its features on an old Hungarian postage stamp. It was undoubtedly the first dodo ever to leave earth, but his friends made fun of his creation, insisting it looked just like a big ugly chicken with a beak that resembled his own nose. Powerful winds had ripped through their bodies and sent them plummeting back to earth. The green and black carcass of the flying dragon he never recovered--it seemed to have shrunk into the soil, oozing down like imagined slime. In fact, having run all over the lower slopes of Kite Hill, he'd wondered if the explosion of the dragon-kite's breast in the distance below the clouds hadn't been the work of his imagination, a strange figment of his own clutching mind. But the dodo bird had fallen right at his feet, as if to say, "you were wrong: I am extinct and I could never fly."

The effigy was pulling away faster than he could unleash the string. He held on with extra determination as it jerked up and away. These convulsive spurts of the boy-kite were almost frightening, as if it could not flee the earth fast enough. Within a few moments the three-hundred-foot roll was exhausted; the boy-kite was the size of a doll swinging left and right in the Aegean blue sky. Dingane weighted down the wooden spindle beneath a small boulder-today's flight might be limitless, he hoped--and set to attaching each roll of string to another, laying them in a line on the tufted grass like thick beads on a native necklace. There were so many beads that he gave up calculating the boy-kite's total possible flight distance. Anyway, it was better not to know.

Nearly an hour had elapsed and he'd still not unraveled the final roll of kite string. His heart was pounding furiously with trepidation: how could a kite fly so far, what right did he have to so penetrate the heavens? And yet he was practically in a state of delirium! The boy-kite, his craft, was merely the tiniest speck in the distance, so minuscule it was nothing more than a sunspot in his eye. Without realizing it at first, Dingane began to sing. He sang in a sweet young soprano, beautiful, melancholic melodies rising from the well of happiness inside, just his voice and the silence of Echo Park down below him, and the quiet thunder of the unknown above, bracing his skinny sun-browned body. He sang to the boy-kite in flight around the world.

"Hey! What language is that you're singing? Sounds like Greek to me," suddenly came a voice from behind him. Dingane whipped around to see it was Chuchu, one of the sons of the family who ran the Echo Park Market. Chuchu gaped at the sight of the invisible kite on its interminably long tether. He approached Dingane and peered into his face.

"Boy, do you look weird! How long you been up here, anyway?"

The reply caught in Dingane's throat; suddenly he was hoarse.

"Don't know.''

"Will you look at that-can't even see the thing anymore! D'ya have any idea how many miles of string you started out with? How far away do you guess it is? Boy, are you crazy," Chuchu said, in awe of his friend. Dingane didn't feel like talking, that was plain. He was too absorbed with the flight of the boy-kite, doing all he could to maintain the reins while it bit in the wind. Chuchu started back down the slope. "I'm going to get the gang,'' he yelled back.

"No!'' shouted Dingane, "no! I don't want anybody up here with me!"

Chuchu turned around, perplexed.

"But this is something, really something. You're going to need witnesses or else nobody's going to believe you flew that kite so far."

"Witnesses?...I don't care about that right now."

"Yeah sure, Kanafani, but you will-later, when it's too late!" Chuchu cried, and he vanished around a bend in the hillside, impervious to Dingane's wishes.

By the time the gang of neighborhood kids had arrived at Kite Hill's summit, Dingane was letting out the last roll of string. His forearms were aching, his biceps felt like raw pumps of flesh and it was all he could do to hold on to the boy-kite's lurching tether. Dingane was convinced the wind speed had risen above forty per; the violent ripples in his heavy dungarees proved it.

They were all there, every one of his companions and cohorts, from the youngest to the eldest, representing every class, race and culture living in Echo Park. Even Francine was present, with her brothers Lucky and Bruno. Didens and Roy the Rat greeted him too (he'd snuck into an adult sex movie with them on Friday), and Donald South, whom everyone called Donald Duck, of course. They were all talking at once: chaos. Each of them wanted to take over, hold the boy-kite's destiny in their own hands; every one of them was impressed beyond belief.

Dingane said: "But it's not me, I'm not doing it alone; it's the wind and, and the sky and the time..."

He refused to turn over the reins of power to anyone. As much as it hurt to hang on, he would.

"But what are you going to do now?" Didens asked.

"Yeah," argued Lucky, "you can't stand here forever."

A third voice chimed: "Give us a chance!" It was Chuchu's little brother, Chiquillo.

A fourth: "We're your friends, right?"

A fifth: "C'mon, Dingo, you dunderhead! Just five seconds!"

The more they chided him, the more his muscles burned, the more he was determined never to let go. He could no longer recall singing, there was a hammer beating between his temples, and he'd forgotten how, exactly, the whole odyssey of the boy-kite had begun.

Suddenly a tall kid, the neighborhood villain and bully, shoved his way through the gathering of disgruntled worshippers. Their babel of voices dropped to a whisper: it was Fernie Sainz, who at one time or another had either threatened, robbed or beaten almost every one of them. He was dangerous and crazy. After victimizing a given boy (but never a girl), he would offer him an unspecified sum of money by thrusting out a hand filled with coins and sometimes bills. "HOW MUCH DO YOU WANT?" he would hideously grin. "I-I don't want any money," the boy would stutter. "C'mon, don't be afraid: take!" Fernie would invariably say, lording over the boy's prostrate body the way a lion pauses above a wounded impala. Sometimes the victim would just be recuperating a little of his own money, so it hardly made any sense, but Fernie was always adamant and no boy escaped without some form of payment for the punishment he'd endured.

Dingane hated Fernie Signs just as abruptly as he appeared, hated him more than anything. He'd never forgot that afternoon when he'd been sitting on a bench outside Elysian Heights Elementary, talking to Fernie's girlfriend Ernestina. He was twelve, she was fifteen, and Fernie had just recently told her she wasn't his girlfriend anymore. Dingane had glanced up to see Fernie come running around the corner towards them; he hadn't believe anything would happen, but before he could move or say a word, Fernie rushed up and kicked him right in the mouth--just like that, one good hard kick. He was so shocked he sat there, shaking and wet with blood, as Fernie grabbed Ernestina's hand and led her away, calling back, "Don't you ever talk to her again, little fuckhead." And he hadn't dared to say a word to her since.

Now Fernie stood between Dingane and the crowd of kite worshippers, immobile yet bursting with hirsute anger. One would swear he was going to beat his chest like a gorilla and start swinging his arms. But Fernie Sainz was too intelligent for that sort of behavior--he never made dramatic gestures or empty boasts, he just lashed out and hit a person whenever the need arose. Dingane and the others could hear the echoes of all the insults and injuries he'd ever inflicted upon them. Idiot! Weakling! Sissy! Crybaby! Wimp! Fuckhead! But nobody moved or uttered a word.

Dingane ran his tongue over his teeth and tasted something bitter as rust, the fear of Fernie he hated, because he knew he wasn't strong enough to take him. A fresh gust of wind tugged on his invisible boy-kite and he looked away into the infinite distance, hoping evil Fernie would vanish just as suddenly as he'd appeared.

"Aren't you going to say hello, fuckhead?"

His throat cracked. "Hello."

"That's it, just hello? No 'how you doing, Fernie? How's Ernestina?'"

Dingane didn't answer. He kept his eyes on the imagined boy-kite. Francine, all of eleven years old, dared:

"Can't you see he's busy? Why don't you go chase girls?''

Then, without warning, Fernie drew from inside his belt a sharp knife, leapt at Dingane and lopped off the boy-kite's tether just inches from his knotted hand. Dingane was left with only the spindle.

A great sigh rose up from the neighborhood gang, all at once, like the knell of death. Dingane slowly turned to stare Fernie down-the bully was a good head taller and, everyone knew, could and had beaten up his own father.

"Why?" Dingane moaned, as if his very own soul had been cut away from him.

"Why did you have to do that?''

The throng of children booed Fernie, their voices growing louder and bolder now. Dingane wept openly, tasting his salty tears. Fernie stood between them wearing his usual hideous grin.

"I don't like you, little fuckhead. You don't respect me. You want to know why I cut your toy down? Ah no, it's not down is it? It's gone, up there, maybe forever."

"Fuck you, Fernie,'' he said. "I don't care what you do to me now."

The bully laughed. Then he made a sudden lunge at the others as they lamented amongst themselves. "SHUT UP!"

They all watched him laugh. He walked round and round Dingane Kanafani flipping his knife in his hand as though he were preparing to throw it.

"Why?" begged Dingane again.

"Why?'" Fernie echoed in a sissy voice, "why? Shit, it's a mystery to me. I heard you were up here and I had to see how you were doing. What're you flying kites for if you can't keep 'em in the air, huh? Look at you crying now, look at you. See? That's why I had to cut you down-go ahead, sob! I like it, you look more like a girl that way. Hah-hah-hah!"

Fernie couldn't stop laughing. It was the ugliest laugh Dingane had ever heard. Fernie's laugh echoed down Kite Hill and into the valley of Echo Park and came floating back up to swim in his ears. He sat down at last in his limestone throne and stared away into the east, wondering where the loose boy-kite flew now. He thought it could remain aloft for hours, maybe days, living high off the air currents of the lower stratosphere. He shut his eyes and exerted his imagination to bring the boy-kite back, to see it as plainly as a photograph. The thing was real, was a palpable object, he'd made it with his own hands, had felt it leave the surface of the earth, had seen it grow smaller and smaller and smaller until no larger than an atomic particle of light...And yet, the kite was gone, invisible in the sky and invisible in his mind. Dingane implicitly understood that although everything in the world had been photographed and thus anthologized in the human mind, no one had ever been able to photograph the human soul. This was why he could not see the boy-kite any longer, this was why he couldn't remember...

His pain gave way to a meditative calm; too, everyone, even evil Fernie Sainz, had disappeared, without a sound, leaving him once again, utterly alone.