Ground level

A man with a smile on his face welcomes me inside, and I am given a pair of slippers to wear. Ajaz explains that he needs to keep the temperature low in his workshop to prevent humidity that can damage the colours of materials and lead to the formation of mould.

He disappears, and comes back with a kite assembled from a shiny material in green, red, and silver. It is strung up like a three-dimensional star inside a thin hexagon wooden frame. The warm autumn light, streaming through the window behind us, hits its surface so that fields of coloured light patterns are reflected on the floor.

Under the ground

Down in the basement we step into a room filled to the brim with tools and colourful materials. In the centre of the room is a rectangular workbench with a cutting board, various spools and handles wrapped with thread on top. Around the room are shelves with books, paper, and old ice cream boxes labelled as containers for everything from kite lights to thread and glitter. Every piece of the wall is filled with hooks for screwdrivers, levels, rulers, hammers, coping saws, files, scissors, knives, and glue.

He moves around from one end of the room to the other, and drags out one kite after another, long rows of Eddy kites and kites shaped like snakes, cat heads, and bats. A new idea of what he wants to share surfaces, before he heads toward a cabinet. He accidentally knocks into a bell, and explains how he is also experimenting with kites and sound.

Ajaz has come to find that the best material to use for kites in the wet Norwegian climate is mylar. It's also possible to use plastic bags, ripstop, and paper, he says, but paper can easily get wet and heavy. He hands me the edge of a piece of mylar, and initiates a tug of war with the fabric; it is best to use materials with good tensile strength.

The somewhat chaotic energy changes into focus as he places a stack of purple mylar on the table. He puts a finger to his mouth to moisten it, and flips through the top five sheets. He places them on a side table, with two blocks of wood screwed to either end, supporting a ruler placed diagonally across the pile, and makes a quick cut across.

He brings out a homemade cutting board made to transform the sheets into sails precisely and evenly from different angles. It is assembled from a round wooden disk at the bottom, with a square wooden plate directly on top. The top plate is made from an old bathroom wall, with small wheels mounted on the tiled underside, so that it can rotate over the round disk. At the top, it has several different blocks, and an arm that is screwed in, to hold the stack of sheets in place for the cuts. This invention is made to ease batch production for his speciality of making many kites for one line. Ajaz has flown as many as over 1,000 kites on one string, setting a Guinness World Record.

He cuts quickly and pulls the cutout towards himself so it makes a swishy sound, before rotating the board quickly into another angle, pushing the ruler to the other side. The movement is repeated three times for different angled cuts, before he holds the sheets up in front of himself. ‘Perfect,’ he says.

Next, he brings out sticks of bamboo, fibreglass, and carbon fibre. He picks up some of the different bamboo sticks. ‘These come from Malaysia,’ he says, ‘and these come from Vietnam.’ Another pile comes from Bangladesh, and one from Pakistan. ‘Southeast Asia is known for a tradition of classical kites made of bamboo, paper, and cotton thread. Experimental designs and use of modern materials and techniques are more common in North America and Europe,’ he says.

He takes out a stick from a pile he has split up from a larger stick and nails it quickly, balancing it on the edge of the knife to check if it's equally light on both sides. ‘It must be slightly thick in the middle, and thin on each side,’ he says. He pulls out a round stick, explaining how it does not have a lot of flexibility. Then he pulls out a flatter one, and shows that these can be bent quite a bit, as he flexes it quickly five times with high pressure. ‘It's a natural arc that we’re going to strengthen a little,’ he says.

He puts one of the sails on the table with the coloured side down. He places one stick vertically towards the back of the sail, and tapes it some centimetres in from each end. ‘It is important to use as little tape as possible,’ he says, ‘so that the kite does not become too heavy.’ He places another stick horizontally under the first, with the most bendable side pointing down towards the sheet, and tapes it up into a slack span.

He also uses tape in two layers around the edges of the sticks, and reinforces the construction with four pieces of tape around the intersection on both sides of the kite. He picks up a thick needle and attaches it to a thread. He sticks the needle through two different points diagonally over and under the cross from the back to the front through the sail and layer of tape, and ties the thread four times.

Now he takes out another invention of his, a stand with gift ribbons in red, purple, gold, and turquoise that are split into half of their size on their way through an eye screw attached to the stand. He pulls out two arms' length of the ribbons, doubles them, ties a loop at one end. He tapes the tail to the back, with the loop some centimetres in from the bottom. At last, he holds up the kite and flies it from side to side over his head, and says, ‘Now we can fly it outside!’

Towards the sky

Outside in the garden Ajaz helps me put the kite up into the air. It strikes me how this lightweight construction transforms the breeze into a substantial weight, pulling the thread out from the spool in my hand in a slow, decisive rhythm. Ajaz sets out a line with a golden kite on it and feeds out thread as he clicks on the rest of the kites, guiding them in a focused choreography with a large spool of thread held firmly between his hands. As the kites dance further and out towards the blue, I am left with a warm feeling in my chest.