Coming of age in a land under siege…

If my land had a face, the way terror had a face, then this face would be slashed and scarred from its forehead to its lower chin. And my Uncle Dilly, ducking under a sea of fists, would be the first and the last of the tormented, bloodied faces of those who loved this land.

And it’s true, for decades, everyone had been beaten down, but at some serious point my uncle had been beaten down in the strangest of ways; the way a weaker nail bends sideways at the smash of a hammer.

Skinny Uncle Dilly, the scorn of the village, was an easy scorn. And in the town square, people made fun of the tall, crooked man. Not because he was horribly disfigured, but because word was my uncle Dilly was more than useless during the war. Unlike my father who was a true hero, Uncle Dilly, it was said, did nothing the day the northern tanks rolled in.

Thus, on this grey October afternoon, taking me sight-seeing was, as far as I was concerned, just more stupid uselessness from Uncle Dilly. Besides, I’d seen the ancient tower that loomed over the town a hundred times or more on the way to school. And my uncle Dilly? Well, during the afternoon hours he was usually on his floor-mat, asleep to the world.

“Nephew, today is the day where I’ll show you where your father lived,” he said triumphantly as we put on our raincoats.

“We’ll get a good look, especially since most of the soldiers will be preparing for their little parade.”

With his white locks of stringy hair dangling over his spectacles, he took the longest of moments to stare at me.

I felt a warm strangeness.

“You look just like he did when he was your age,” he smiled, “Come now, and don’t forget my backpack.”

Thankfully, the pack was surprisingly light. Too light, I thought. But my uncle being my uncle, I didn’t bother to ask what I was carrying exactly.

“Can we stop by the bicycle shop?” I asked.

“After the viewpoint. We’ll be back in two hours, tops.”

So, as we doubled into the town square, I sat on the rear of my uncle’s bike hoping no one from my school would see us. Pedalling the rickety bike as fast as he could, my 55 year old Uncle Dilly huffed, “We need to get there just as the guards leave early for the parade.”

“You mean,” I said. “The October celebrations that no one celebrates.”

Uncle Dilly let out an outrageous whoop.“ Now you’re sounding like your father.” He whooped again..

The enemy imposed curfew had ended, but the long streets of our town were quiet. The few people who dared to venture outside were still wary, especially around sunset. But to his credit, Uncle Dilly, as he had promised, said once we were free he would tell me everything about my father, so I guessed today was the day.

At the tower’s entrance, we parked the bicycle behind a tree. The tower’s gatekeeper, a thin man in a tight grey uniform smoking a cigarette and reading a magazine, took a long moment to leer at a pretty woman exiting the tower arm in arm with a well-dressed man.

When he saw the couple leave, he smirked, then he eyed the bicycle parked illegally, and then, the both of us.

He spoke in a flat northern voice.

“25 minutes ’til close — not much point eh?”

“That’s fine,” Dilly said in a reasoned tone, “My son has just returned from abroad and was feeling sentimental.”

“Sentimental?” the clerk said puffing on his cigarette and looking at me as if I was effeminate, or worse.

We stood in embarrassed silence.

“So…” He said as though he had a sudden inkling of what his job was supposed to be.

“What’s in the backpack?”

Dilly lied about the backpack as deftly as he had about our relationship.

“Just my son’s schoolbooks.”

The clerk sighed, shook his head, and handed us our tickets.

“25 minutes.”

In school before the take-over, we were taught that the town’s magnificent nine storey tower was built in the 7th century. Under the new government only northerners and easterners were allowed to enter, until today.

“Nephew, give me your backpack.”

“It’s no problem Uncle, I can-“

I couldn’t finish the sentence. Uncle Dilly reached around expertly stripping me of the pack.

“What’s in it anyways? Uncle?

“I’ll show you very soon, but if someone asks just say it’s your schoolbooks. Now zip up your coat.”

The two of us, buttoned up tight in our raincoats, although there was only a desolate wind blowing across the town centre, started trudging upwards along the tower’s stairwell to the viewpoint.

Our footsteps echoed through the high walls of the tower. Soon the path curved and a crumbled wall exposed us to buffeting winds from the eastern valleys. Moments later, when we were back inside the protected north side, we heard the sound of heavier footsteps.

I was thinking yesterday morning would have been more preferable for uncle’s sightseeing fantasy, when, as if he was reading my mind, Uncle pointed to his pack.

“Your mother wired this together yesterday morning.”

Why on Earth would my mother have anything to do with wires? I was about to ask when out of the yellow shadows, a burly shaped soldier with a scowl appeared.

“Tower’s closed.”

“The clerk said we could have 25 minutes to watch the sunset.”

“Why?”

Uncle Dilly sighed as if this was the most obtuse thing he had ever heard.

“You lot have done enough. Don’t you think civilians can enjoy a sunset?”

The soldier looked past Uncle Dilly.

“What’s in the pack?”

“Schoolbooks.”

The soldier glanced me over. Then he stared at my uncle for the longest time; the way most people do when confronting his unique disfigurement.When the burly soldier abruptly turned and his heavy footsteps had dissipated in the shadows, the worry in my voice was palpable.

“I still don’t get why we’re here.”

After a few more turns up the staircase, Uncle Dilly stopped.

Through a brick window ledge, dust particles flew in like tiny white devils invading a golden dreamland. My uncle reached down and opened the backpack. Inside, I saw the colour of the Resistance, the colour that had been forbidden. I took a deep breath. Inside my uncle’s backpack was a crimson-red kite made of wood, canvas and wire.

Uncle peered at me through his shimmering dusty spectacles.

“We need to launch this before sunset, or all will be lost.”

Behind his smashed cheekbones his determined dark eyes ignited.

“Can I count on you? No matter what HAPPENS?”

His usual mellow voice became thunder echoing down the corridors of the staircase.

I took a step back. My scorned Uncle Dilly had become a stranger. A confident stranger with a dark aura of malevolence, demanding obedience. I nodded with tight lips not knowing if I could rise to whatever he was thinking.

He zipped up the backpack, slid it over his shoulders, and with his crooked gait he led the way around the tower, heading upwards. Obviously the kite was a signal, but for what? Especially since we now have peace? I dared not speak, nor could I think straight; I could only ponder the barrage of bullet holes in the walls around me.

“After today you’ll know everything,” He said as he stepped through beams of orange shooting through the random holes in the walls.

“Your father and I were — “

The words had just left his mouth when pounding frantic footsteps echoed towards us and the hysterical shouts of; “That’s him! Stop Stop! !” froze us in a web of fear.

They were two. The first soldier, the burly one, had returned with a younger body-building type soldier in a shiny uniform. Without warning they immediately lunged at my uncle, and instinctively I ripped the backpack from my uncle to my chest and fell against a wall.

With surprising agility, the burley soldier maneuvered behind my uncle and bear-hugged my uncle’s frail body with his strong arms. Then his muscular partner smashed my uncle directly in the stomach with his fists. Repeatedly. This went on and on, and just when I was about to scream for them to stop; I caught my uncle’s eye urging me not to say a word. I closed my eyes and bit my tongue. After a while, the punching sounds slowed as the muscular soldier had grown tired. Finally my uncle bent over and let out a grimace of pain. Uncle Dilly collapsed on the floor, beaten, and so, they turned on me. I had no choice, no alternative, I had to betray my dear uncle. Living under them we learn this from an early age: pass blame and apologize to your oppressor.

“Thank you! “ I shouted, attempting to disguise the fear in my voice with eloquence, “That man took my bag, Sirs, and wouldn’t let me go! Sorry to be a bother.”

The soldiers immediately looked back to Dilly.

The burly soldier’s pie-face lit up like a birthday cake.

“Ah!… I see.” He said with a relish. “ A pedo!!”

His partner’s cheeks flushed with the colour of a poisoned rose as he weighed the matter.

“Dilly… Dilly Sunnitra? mastermind terrorist… Like little boys do we, Dilly? ”

The deeply religious soldiers were enraged, and went to brutally kicking my uncle on my behalf.

I again wanted to scream for them to stop, but behind the blood on his glasses, there was wild steel in my uncle’s eyes.

Sick to the notion of my betrayal, I fell into a corner and hid my ears from the sound of my uncle’s groans. Fifteen minutes later when it was finally over, they propped my uncle up, handcuffed him, and took him down the spiral staircase, leaving me alone staring at the pools of my uncle’s blood.

I could have just sat there in prayer; praying and sobbing for my uncle, but it wasn’t enough, I had to do something!

By now, the light shooting through the bullet-holed walls had turned to pink, but God’s blessings told me I wasn’t too late. I got up and raced through the beams of magenta that poured into the flights of staircases. I raced around the tower. Upwards and upwards. I raced until I was almost out of breath. And when I raced to the end of the last flight, I crashed through a thick oak door. Tumbling onto the gravel rooftop I stood up and saw a sight I had never seen in my 13 years. The whole town was laid out in front of me. Rows and rows of majestic rooftops with farmland in the background and farther on, bathed in a slow serene twilight, misty mountains. In the distance, I could see the village in the valley where my father had grown up. Is this why I am here? I thought, as my shivering hands unzipped the blood-stained pack. Would my father’s brothers and sisters, and all the tribes from his side of the mountain be able to see this kite? This crimson red kite my mother had made for this very purpose?

Down below, in the sepia shadows of the buildings, I spotted the wicked soldiers dragging my uncle away, and for the first time in my life, despite my fear, I wanted to spit. Spit on them like the animals they were — I had witnessed their terror. The kite of my people would show them.

By now the wind had become blustery and my raincoat made flapping sounds. I desperately tried to hold the kite in the punching air, but it discombobulated to and fro. Thankfully, after a few more tries, like a great phoenix, the red kite finally braced itself against the air currents. Then, taking the rope that I had wrapped around my waist, I fed more and more to the kite. Up and up, in the late afternoon sky, it rose along it’s long rope until… My crimson kite was alive! A hero messenger! A beacon of hope!

The sun was an orange bruise, only an hour from setting, but I knew launching this kite was part of my kidnapped uncle’s, and my dead father’s, and my blessed mother’s masterplan. Our neighbours would see the magnificent crimson-red kite with it’s long green tail sailing above the tower and they would act, and free us from this evil life. Oh, how my grandparents would be proud. Thank you Uncle!

But then, in the way a moment is lost forever, in the way joy turns in on itself and becomes resolve, I felt something. Something different. As soon as the word uncle rang from my mouth; for I was yelling and screaming, my tired arms dropped to my side, and I experienced a sense of calm as if the wind had changed its whisper. Telling me there was, indeed, another job to do.

Fluttering high in the west wind, the Kite of Resistance now circled above my city, but I had to ensure its safety. I scaled a steep wall no soldier could ever scale, and pulled the excess slack rope through a cross-shaped window, and tied it firmly in a series of knots. The kite picked up the rope hungrily as if it knew its purpose. My kite was soaring even higher for the world to see. But the sun was dropping, and in spite of the clarion calls in my heart, I left the tower’s perch and jumped down to the rooftop viewpoint. Then I ran, for the first time in my life, with the purpose of a real man, a man who would make my father proud. I felt unstoppable as I raced past the bullet-holed walls, past the pools of my Uncle Dilly’s blood and into the unknown.

I descended the stairs as fast as I could, and at the bottom when I saw the first evening star rise above the black tower, I stopped.

Even though my kite was but a dark silhouette peeking in and out of the ominous evening clouds, I knew this moment was only the beginning.

I said a small prayer in the shadow of the spiral tower knowing there was a task I needed to accomplish.

Ironically, on a day that started out as ever so useless, my life had found its purpose. So, as my father had done before me, I marched straight into the town.

And for the next 10 years as I grew into the face of a determined man, I searched my war-torn country for a disfigured man, a very driven man, and the only man who bent like a nail, my Uncle Dilly.