Perched on the roof of his home in Iraq, 7-year-old Imad Ridha would gaze into the sun for hours as he watched his homemade kite dance around in the wind.
“I used to make it so tiny in the sky,” said Ridha, now an adult.
On Sunday, he watched proudly as his 9-year-old son Ali did the same thing at the Arvada Kite Festival. The annual event brought roughly 15,000 people to the fields at Stenger Soccer Complex.
As eager children and their families ran in circles fighting with the wind and struggling to get their kites in the air, Ridha’s soared. He stood completely still, smiling up at the Spiderman kite he purchased for his son as it sailed over his head.
“It’s kind of an art,” he said. “I was so good at it.”
It’s been a long time since the Arvada resident last flew a kite. He worked as a translator in Iraq before fleeing his home 2½ years ago and settling down with his family in the United States.
“I had to leave everything behind,” he said.
That included his collection of hand-crafted kites.
While he threaded the kite string through his fingers on Sunday, Ridha’s mind traveled back to a time when he would craft simple kites from balsa wood, tape and bags and sell them to his friends.
“I’m thinking of myself at 7 or 8 years old, flying kites on the roof of my house,” he said. “I used to make so many kinds of kites.”
Ali studied his dad’s hands as he attempted to lift a kite of his own into the mild wind. To his frustration, the diamond-shaped flier dived into the grass.
“Why is yours flying?” he said. “Mine keeps crashing.”
Despite his frustration, Ali was impressed.
When Ridha’s string intertwined with a Disney princess-themed kite, he deftly unsnarled the tangle using some of the skills he picked up in Iraq.
“I would fly mine. My neighbor would fly his,” he said. “We’d try to tie them around one another. Then we would pull. It was a competition.”
Other parents at the festival wanted to pass on the childhood tradition to their children. Chris Ketter and his 10-year-old daughter Mia attached their kite string to a screwdriver to keep the line taut.
The idea was inspired by a trick Ketter learned as a kid.
“We used to fly kites a lot,” he said. “I would take my fishing pole and tie a kite to it. Then I could reel it in.”
But for Ridha, flying kites was more than a childhood pastime. “We used to have kites all through the year,” he said. “So many flew kites. Here, it’s maybe only one day a year.”
Though he left the craft of building the high-flying toys in Iraq, Ridha said he hopes his son develops a love for flying kites. Some of his favorite memories are times he spent staring up at the sky.
“I remember one time at night, and I attached my kite to my bed on the roof,” he said. “I went to sleep, and when I woke up, it was still flying.”
