Paper planes.

The Upwards Pine.

First Chapter: Paper Planes.

Author: Naveed A. Balouch

`I cabled earnest in a turn,

When feathered rainbows drew a line.

I could not sink the artefact,

That grew upon the Upwards Pine.' - Naveed Balouch

It was early spring in 1969.

The location is Prep School, Lawrence College, Ghora Gali, a boys boarding school, about 9 kilometres south of Murree, the popular summer retreat in the hills, on the way to the great Kashmir range of mountains, and 50 kilometers north of Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad.

As the wind picked up at the back of the prep school building, just past the outdoor rugger field, a number of paper airplanes soared high over the deep expanse of Nimble Valley.

On this particular afternoon, there were four boys in day-time uniform, and four paper airplanes already in flight.

The paper planes seemed to be motionless in suspended animation, as the air currents gently lifted them higher.

Way down below in the valley, an ancient gong sounded, as if to remind us that we were standing on a mountain in heaven, away from the cares and concerns of approaching adolescence.

The paper planes slowly started to fade into the distant hazy blue sky, rising higher and higher above the snow-clad back-drop of the Kashmir mountain range

.

I gazed at this ethereal show for what seemed like an eternity, when all of a sudden, the ringing of the afternoon prep bell, jolted me back to earth, reminding me that I had earthly chores to attend to.

In the two years that I spent in Prep School, most afternoons would find me and a handful of boys, partaking in this paper-plane flying ritual.

The very strange thing that has stayed with me all these years is, that not once did I or any of the other boys see an airplane actually land back on earth.

They would all just keep on ascending, higher and higher, until they were little white specks in the distant skies above the valley, like tiny snow-flakes soaring against the backdrop of eternity

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