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Fight or Flight
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When you're forced to leave your home, what traditions do you take with you? A journey with an Afghani kite fighting master.
- 00:00
Image: View Image - 00:22
The Kite Runner: View Image - 00:36
If we look around today a lot of the countries that are around us in the region are plagued by war.And things like intangible culture and heritage don't seem as important when you are running away from danger.
- 01:08
It's September, 1980. We're in Afghanistan. - 01:41
And this man knows he is never coming back. - 02:11
Basir Beria: View Image - 02:33
As one of 6 children, his family lived in a large house built into a hill looking out over a valley. - 02:58
The 1960s and 70s in Afghanistan were an era where Kabul was known as the Paris of Central Asia. - 03:17
And, there was the kite. - 03:31
Basir Beria: View Image - 03:53
He would practice flying with his friends, and the young children would watch the older boys and girls take on the more advanced sport of kite fighting. - 04:20
That is what the kite runner means. You have to collect as many kites as you can. - 04:52
The Kite Runner: View Image - 05:28
I learn so much things when I see the people of the kite flying people. Is the nicest people. The humblest person. - 05:51
Image: View Image - 06:43
It’s impossible to break. You can pull a car with that. - 06:55
The normal string is really smooth, the glass coated one.. it’s crusty. It almost feels like you’re running your fingers over a child’s glitter art project - 07:26
Basir learned the method from his father. - 07:58
Everybody has his own secret. that is what the weapon is. And that’s the killer. That is the samurai. - 08:06
Glass cuts string just as much as it cuts fingers, sometimes to the bone. - 08:24
As Basir got better at flying and fighting kites, the battles escalated in intensity. - 08:40
Image: View Image - 09:04
Basir’s life in Kabul was, in many ways, idyllic – playing with the neighbourhood kids, flying kites on his rooftop.And then, everything changed.
- 09:26
"I was that time, around 14-15 years old when it happened, one day, wake up, see Russian soldiers on your street, and it start from there - explosion" - 09:57
Soviet soldiers outside Kabul, January 7, 1980 [Source: AP Photo]: View Image - 10:07
Afghan guerrillas - 1980 [Source: AP Photo]: View Image - 10:24
"You cannot find any house in Afghanistan, especially in Kabul, back that time, that not lost 2-3-4 persons in their household." - 11:01
Shabnama is a farsi term for a pamphlet that communicates a warning, and is usually distributed discretly, Basir’s shabnama was in support of the mujahedeen, the rebel forces. - 11:26
He was thrown in prison. For the first 3 months, his family had no idea where he was. - 11:41
Photo Source: Flickr: View Image - 12:17
Basir Beira: View Image - 12:28
[Source: Flickr]: View Image - 12:45
Eventually, 8 months later, his father convinced a friend who worked for the government to issue Basir’s release. - 13:14
Afghan refugees behind a barbed wire fence at the border with Pakistan [Source: AP]: View Image - 13:32
The month was September, the air was slightly cool, and Basir left with his hat, his pakul, a few coins he liked to collect from childhood, and, of course, a string of kite. - 14:06
He hugged his father goodbye, and climbed into the truck as a passenger next to the driver, a friend of his father’s who was regularly helping Afghanis flee across the border. - 14:58
"Can I hug you one more time?" - 15:24
I don't know how I survived 7 days and 7 nights walking from Jalalabad all the way to Peshawar. - 15:47
'That line you see right there - you are not in Afghanistan anymore.' - 16:10
Pakistan - Afghanistan Border [Photo Source: Reuters]: View Image - 17:12
Afganis at the Afghanistan-Pakistan Border [Source: AP]: View Image - 17:17
He reunited with his brother in Pakistan who had fled Afghanistan before him, and the two flew onto to Germany where they spent the next 5 years there. - 17:31
Then, one day the brothers get a call from their father. - 18:05
"You know, nothing is make me happier to get your family together." - 18:32
"As a kite flyer, as a person who likes to have that freedom of - to be on the beach, to be on that green area, flying kites – Las Vegas is gambling in the desert." - 19:00
Basir, his 2 brothers, 3 sisters, parents, and extended family have been living next to each other in LA since 1985. - 19:15
Basir Beira: View Image - 19:40
He receives a phone call. - 20:14
"I swear to God, I didn't know what is Dreamwork mean. I thought it is agency of work and they find you dream work! So I said, wow, maybe they find a good job for me - dream work. " - 20:27
Basir Beira: View Image - 20:40
She said, 'Did you read the book, The Kite Runner?' - 20:52
Image: View Image - 21:13
Dreamworks picked up the right to turn it into a film. And that’s when Basir gets the phone call. - 21:28
They were looking for a kite master to train the actors how to fly and fight kites. - 21:53
Basir and actors, The Kite Runner: View Image - 22:15
Basir, The Kite Runner: View Image - 22:37
"That was my dream." - 23:40
"I pick up the kite and fly it, and fly it until it was really dark, and I could not even see the kite." - 24:12
He talks about wanting to go back, to live as a normal Afghani family, but there’s a resignation in his voice like he knows the Afghanistan he wants to return to doesn’t exist anymore. - 24:36
There was a period under the Taliban rule from 1996 until the early 2000s in Afghanistan when kite flying was banned nationwide for being “un-Islamic”, along with dancing, weather forecasting, and bird-keeping. - 25:00
Basir tells us that some avid kite-fliers fly clear plastic kites to go undetected, so to a far-off Taliban soldier it just looks like loose trash twirling around in the wind. - 25:27
Basir Beria with one of his handmade kites, a traditional Afghani fighter kite.: View Image - 26:20
'You know what? You cannot take away dream from anybody.’ - 26:38
Image: View Image
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