A kite is a victim you are sure of.
The December / January 2005 edition of The Walrus has a photograph of merchant Zilgai Tajahi in front of his kite stall in a Kabuli bazaar. The Taliban outlawed kites in 1996; during the years they were illegal, Tajahi sold contraband kites to children.
In April 2005, Pakistani Mullahs attempted to ban a kite-flying festival (”Basant”) in Lahore. What tangled strings have these poor Lahori kites: Basant is a Hindu festival; no, it’s a Muslim festival; no, it’s both, but it falls on the same day that, in Medieval times, a Hindu was put to death for insulting the Prophet, causing riot and retaliation. So Basant glorifies an infidel; no, it glorifies the righteous wrath of Islam against infidels; but Basant pre-dates the incident - it has nothing to do with it. “But it might“, say the Mullahs.
Some things have too much symbolism for their own good.
John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace”, from “The Kite, or the Fall of Pride”:
…Were I but free, I’d take a flight,
And pierce the clouds beyond their sight.
“But, ah! like a poor pris’ner bound,
My string confines me near the ground:
I’d brave the eagle’s tow’ring wing,
Might I but fly without a string.”
It tugged and pulled, while thus it spoke
To break the string; at last it broke.
Deprived at once of all its stay,
In vain it tried to soar away;
Unable its own weight to bear,
It fluttered downward through the air;
Unable its own course to guide,
The winds soon plunged it in the tide.
From “A Dream of Red Mansions“, a Chinese classical novel:
“The string of the ill Lin Daiyu’s kite reached its end, so her maid Zijuan snipped it off. In seconds, the kite drifted away. According to an old Chinese tradition, a disappearing kite would carry off the owner’s bad luck. So, it was hoped that Sister Lin’s illness would vanish, too.” (http://www.chineseliterature.com.cn/traditionchineseculture/games/games2.htm)
A kite is also a kind of bird, a small hawk that combines the soaring grace of a harrier with the speedy manoeuvrability of a falcon, another bird that hunts on the wing in three dimensions. In India, the Brahminy Kite, associated with the Hindu god Vishnu, predicts the victor in battle by hovering over the winning side.
Leonard Cohen, in “A Kite is a Victim”, says:
A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.