"Some Cynical Guy" No. 54: November 25, 2001

Kite-Flying And Other Crimes

The dreaded Taliban was crumbling like a stale loaf of bread caught in a C-clamp. When the guards of the evil regime slipped out of Kabul, there was dancing in the streets of the Afghan capital. The joyful noise of outlawed music flooded the city, and the local citizens made a point of performing other once-forbidden acts: men shaved their beards in defiance of Taliban regulations; women exposed their naked faces to public view for the first time in years. And people of every age flew kites. 

That's right: as the blue meanies in their black turbans scattered to the high hills, the sky over Kabul was filled with soaring patches of color that danced in the wind and glowed in the sunlight. Kites had been forbidden under the rule of the Taliban, and now the kite-lovers of Kabul were having their day. So should it ever be, because flying a kite is one of the most exhilarating exercises ever devised by our much-too-serious species. In fact, I shook my head at the news that kites had actually been banned by the Taliban. I couldn't stop thinking about it for several days afterward. What would motivate any government, however evil and repressive, to make a crime out of something as innocent as flying a kite? Even Hitler and Caligula never banned kites.

I tried to think like a fundamentalist Muslim but I still couldn't understand the offense. I could see why the Taliban might cast music out of their midst: the popular ditties of the past half-century have opened a Pandora's box of petty evils in the West, ranging from slackened standards of literacy and morality to a general punkiness of attitude and appearance among the pubescent. We certainly wouldn't want the people of Afghanistan to raise a generation of punky kids if they can help it. I could even see why the Taliban might shroud the faces of their women from the inquisitive eyes of strangers, though to do so not only demeans women -- it assumes that a beefy, mustachioed Afghan male won't inspire an equivalent degree of lust among the womenfolk. Still, I could understand the proprietary urge to keep a winsome feminine face under wraps, even if I hated the kind of thinking that turned it into law. But I simply couldn't figure out why the Taliban would include kite-flying among the cardinal offenses of their fundamentalist regime.

To fly a kite is to experience moments of the purest spiritual uplift; the soul takes to the air and soars heavenward along with the crudely assembled contraption of paper, sticks and string. As the kite gains altitude, we can feel it tug the string and unroll it under its own power. The kite and its flyer engage in an intimate and giddy dialogue; they're connected by a mere thread but can feel each other's subtlest vibrations. Though we're still earthbound, our kites frolic in the sky and transport us to the delirious upper regions of our sad world. Something so simple that can produce such happiness is a rare and precious commodity among humankind, and we should treasure it as such. 

What is it about a kite that could give offense, even to a humorless religious fundamentalist? I had to wonder if Mohammed banned kite-flying in the Koran. (I quickly perused my own copy, finding chapters on cows, spiders, figs, constellations, alms, smoke and blood clots -- but nothing on kites.) Did Mohammed hate tripping over the strings, or did he get tired of extricating tangled kites from the palm tree in his yard? Did his father refuse to give him a kite when he was a lad, causing him to pass his own deprivation down to his disciples? Did he envy kites for soaring too close to heaven? I can't imagine anyone as wise as Mohammed troubling himself to nurture a hatred of kites. The fault, I concluded, must lie somewhere in the wayward fundamentalism of the Taliban regime.

The Taliban, like religious fundamentalists of every stripe, tend to take the Word of God too seriously. They forget that we have no direct written communications from the Almighty; all our scriptures are the mere wishful interpretations of eloquent but essentially clueless earthlings. To abide by the Word -- to lead their own lives according to the venerable dictates of scripture -- gives fundamentalists a sense of security and inner peace. Who can blame them? After all, they no longer have to make decisions about right and wrong; The Book spells it all out for them. 

But I find it hard to believe that any book of wisdom, however austere and commanding, could ban the innocent practice of kite-flying. Surely the Taliban were making it up. Maybe they felt that to govern a people it was first necessary to deprive them of joy. Not simply the lustful, potentially self-destructive varieties of joy that hedonists pursue with all their horny hearts. We're not talking about promiscuous sex or recreational drugs that can ravage the body and soul; we're not even talking about raucous contemporary music that can turn us into punks. We're talking about kite-flying: the act of sending a paper toy into the heavens and reeling it back again. To ban such a practice amounts to the prevention of pleasure for the sake of preventing pleasure. It strikes me as the ultimate expression of joyless and meddlesome Puritanism -- the philosophy that if we can't find pleasure in life, we'll be damned if we let anyone else find it. And in a world that already forces us to exile pleasure to the outer fringes of our lives, such wanton deprivation is nothing less than a hate-crime against humanity. I applaud the ongoing collapse of the Taliban; long may it remain fallen, and long may the kites of Afghanistan mount the sky.

The Cynical Pick of the Week
The so-called 'Patriot Act' wins the Cynic's nod for creative euphemism. This not-so-subtle swipe at the liberties of American citizens (including the searching of our homes without our knowledge) has been approved, naturally, without a popular vote -- and whoever named it deserves to be slapped upside the head with a copy of the Bill of Rights.

© 2001 by Bridget Petrella Media Relations. "Some Cynical Guy" appears here by permission of the publisher. If you'd like this column to appear regularly in  your own site or publication, write to UPBEATmag@aol.com.

Profile of a Cynic...

Bayan, who claims to be a "kinder, gentler cynic," currently lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His weekly column, "Some Cynical Guy," is published and syndicated by Upbeat Online.