Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Akkawoo

2022; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 96; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2022.0056

1945-8134

Lena Bezawork Grönlund,

Spatial Cognition and Navigation

Akkawoo Lena Bezawork Grönlund (bio) A grandmother thinks of her two kite-flying grandchildren each time she wakes and sees the birds outside her window. The windows start on the floor and stretch to the ceiling on all sides of the restaurant. From here, you can see the harvest fields and the wetlands further down surrounding us. Gabra and Teshome look like dust corns or stones that someone threw. They run fast and hard, as if they are on their way somewhere someone else decided for them. But it is only the wind and the kites that pull them along. They run down toward the wetlands, their jackets shining in purple and green. Click for larger view View full resolution DEREJE DEMISSIE (ETHIOPIA), PSYCHSCAPE (2009) Teshome runs ahead. He’s got taller legs than his sister although she is two years older. I worry they will continue onto the wetland when someone asks me how long we are open today. Gabra and Teshome don’t think we’ve noticed how they have [End Page 40] been carefully unpacking and packing the kites back into their boxes in the attic. We bought the kites in a winter market, one hour from here, two years ago. My daughter and her husband had just opened the restaurant then. It was one of those markets we understood came back every winter. The same day when the restaurant was empty, they tried them indoors. The kites hit against the ceiling, fell to the floor. The children would not stop trying to get them outside. We started telling them stories to distract them, about children being carried away by heavy drakes, arriving somewhere completely different, but that just made them more interested. When spring finally came and we brought the drakes outside, the wind was perfect and they could fly the kites for hours. Their father and mother showed them first, ran down the gravel road while the kites flew in the wind. When the last lunch guests have left, I walk after them. Their tracks are small with wide distances. It is clear that they have been running. There are also tracks after a stick Gabra usually keeps to see how much water there is on the wetland. Some say enough to keep an ocean underground, to provide water to the harvest fields close by. And on them the old herbs grow. It isn’t useless land. Not like the large, excavated fields in our homeland. That needed to heal from the mining. The Italians looked for minerals during the occupation, then others took over, men from the government, companies. The sand earth spread over the last grass as if the earth was full of poison. It is cold. I try to get my hands inside the arms of my jacket. The tracks turn left, down toward the lake. Here, the boats are lined up like a necklace. When I moved to this country Teshome and Gabra had already started school, but it was as if I had always been here with them. When their father and I came walking up the road toward the house the first time, Gabra cried granny so loud that the birds resting on the power lines scattered and flew away. It took a long time before they came back. Every time I wake and look out the windows I see the birds and think of them. Gabra and Teshome, brother and sister, looking straight ahead, with no thought of the wetland water. When Teshome and I begin to fly the drakes, it’s like the wind won’t lift them high enough. We walk down the path by the harvest fields. When we begin to run, the wind catches on a little. Teshome tries to draw patterns with the lines, but it is hard not to get them entangled. When we lose our grip on the kites, they quickly glide with the wind and then fall down far away, beyond the lake. We run in the same direction, plowing down the fields and then the wetland. It doesn’t matter that the fields should not be stepped on like this or that the wetlands are filled with...