NOISE

On a breezy sunday morning, as Hasan vigorously brushed the orange earth with his right foot, getting ready to bowl at the three sticks in the slight distance, he heard the call of "Hasan!! " from within the house. As he hit the left most makeshift wicket with the make believe bowl, Jean opened the side door of the rundown farmhouse, and strode out.

Jean and Hasan live in the rundown farmhouse in the middle of the corn farm Jean bought a few years ago, 3 hours outside Karachi, far from any kind of big organized settlement.

"Hasan, come on! Let's go! Come on, now."

"Hold this bag for me, will you.", says Jean, as he adjusts his old fashioned rimless spectacles, looking out over the thin path led off off the farm, through the somewhat wild growth of corn. Hasan takes the bag from Jean's hand, and walks ahead on the path, knowing quite well that it was time for their sunday morning-and-noon by the trail of water in the woods one might call a stream, if one were so inclined.

Hasan is 9 years old, is wearing a buttoned off-white half sleeves shirt, and a khadi colored pair of shorts.

As Hasan skips on somewhat excitedly, with the kind of excitement one might associate with a kid who hates school and loves sunday mornings, Jean trudges along behind him. Jean is 65 years old, and a French expatriate in Pakistan.

Jean walks with dainty, shuffling steps in gray old fashioned trousers, and a white buttoned shirt from yore that covered his somewhat expansive belly. So, on they traveled along the path for what must have been in the range of 15 minutes, before they crossed over from the farm and into the woods.

They weren't your conventional woods, though. Not as thick a woods you might imagine. The influence of the orange in the earth, and the somewhat dusty land showed here too. The woods were slight, but still qualified as woods.

So, Hasan and Jean walked on along the path till they reached the wooden, rickety bridge that Jean said the British had once made. The bridge was, of course, made over the stream we talked about earlier, remember?

Time had made the bridge lose its wooden railings, and one could now sit over the side of the bridge, water of the stream flowing beneath one's feet. And so they did exactly that, Hasan and Jean that is.

When here, Jean often talked about things Hasan didn't quite understand- things Jean called filosophical, important in life things. Sometimes, during these conversations over the stream, Hasan's mind wandered away.

"What's in the bag?", asked Hasan.

"Find out for yourself", replies Jean.

So, Hasan pulled the zipper off the once fashionable Italian denim bag, dug his hand in, and pulled out a whole bunch of thick paper sheets. The kind of authentic feeling paper they used to use in the French Embassy back in Islamabad.

"Have you ever made a paper plane, Hasan?"

"No...", says Hasan, looking back at him with a confused look.

"I'll show you."

"...make the first fold here, like this. Come on, take this sheet- this one's yours', Jean continues...

"and the second fold, just like the first one, like this...yes."

Hasan looks on eagerly.

"Then...you fold the sheet in the middle and turn it around...yes."

"Now, make these folds here, to get the wings of the plane...yes, exactly. Just like that."

Hasan turns to look at Jean, and they both smile.

"Now, send it flying...like this! whoosh."

And Jean lets go of his plane, as Hasan watches delighed.

Without much ado, Hasan now sends his plane flying off along the stream. It lands smoothly onto the slow moving water of the stream, a little distance off the bridge. Makes a few plops along the water that way, and bounces off with the water along.

"Mine landed farther!", cries out Hasan, turning to look at Jean again.

Jean, now turns to him again, and says, "Yes it did, yes it did.", with a wide expansive smile on his endearing face.

They stay silent for a minute or so, looking off into the distance where the stream slightly bounces along, and then Jean speaks,

"Today, Hasan, we are here to talk about the importance of dreams. Note also that your dreams can be fragile, somewhat vulnerable, just like the paper planes. Preserve them."

This time, Hasan felt he did not not understand what Jean was talking about.