Tintin and I

By Rushda RAFEEK

I do not or have never owned a dog so white and one that would put down a bone if danger smelt better. Nor do I have full stops inked for eyes or hair pointing northwards like the rind of a skinned off orange although I pretended to, once upon a time when the word ‘tomboy’ romped its way into my childhood.

Can you recall David Hasselhoff and the Knight Rider on ITN? Will you remember the Belgian reporter boy and the elliptic yellow gold that held his running shadow in Rupavahini? My mouth agape with a hand rising ever so high behind the table and off my chair jouncing like a fish out of water, I eagerly wait to say yes for an answer.

To break this line that attaches me to a place called ‘adult’ and ‘fully developed’, my inclination still feels for the unattended dolls in their pink house back in the years. I was very much, to say, without a smudge of shame, by the cane couch in the midst of a brawl spilling my then toddler brother and me to the floor, for the humble JVC remote.

The 90s this was if you may ask what JVC is. ‘Why’ on the floor is a mere question compared to the painful blows I recieved from the sibling. Yet those scars, one can say still remains, maybe reduced to fading. Holding those blocks of ice to the bleeding wound, my toothpick self eventually stroke on a few sympathies–feeling complete with the channel switched to Rupavahini and the remote now in my possession.

Iron grip

In a jiffy, everyone peels away from the smashed-in site and takes their seat, free from hatred as hot as an iron grip in the mix. Thanks to Tintin and his adventures springing from the pen of Hergé. After all isn’t Tintin’s existence aimed to save the day?

On first seeing it through the episode of cartoons, Tintin was no super hero, for me at least. He was the brush with something between that of a softer Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Agatha Christie, I claimed with a string of ‘hmm’ ‘hmm’s. Needless to say, all this even before I swayed that way, way before I pretended I was Sherlock’s wife.

All the more, Tintin never appeared beyond what was written for him. Interestingly he never knew what was coming to him. Tintin’s distinctive vision– as unique as the universe of childhood– presents the world as a gigantic treasure island populated with a necklace of thorns and rosy beads. Put another way, one can say, all that was fancifully experimental to a child.

In fact quite being the inquisitive kind where I impart no blame at myself, I approached the journey with a very explorer’s cap for thought married to my then short cropped curls minus the dog by the side, in a carefree globe circling atmosphere. Like a seeker bird, I was trying to be Tintin, of course with barely similar equipment.

By this escape to other places apart from my home and country, I travelled without stepping an inch outside. During that one hour, a chilling slap of wind or full feet of snow clouded my thinking. There were days that included the discovery of foliage with a medieval acidity, while some people milled about at the busy bazaar in Delhi or an Egyptian mirage chews the horizon blurring.

Strange places

Tintin had enough legs to bring many such and strange places into view long before I had set foot on a plane to witness all these. The uncovering of experiences bitingly triumphant– regularly though– to the point when some even go to echo the glory yet to be embarked which would seem very unlikely if looked through the years of Hergé. That was very much enjoyed in Destination Moon.Some gun to the head threats were soul-itching thereafter grated across the mind like a nail on teeth and went to clarify that such acts our imagination assumes were milder than what were foreseen, until one encounters that rare tug carefully cushioned between a stream of subtlety and belly induced laughter–given the twin detective buffoons and fusty old Haddock representing humour gathered for the story.

Its racial undertones and fresh licks of political commentary, occasionally argued now and again, were those that never stepped into our innocent selves. It didn’t stop us from being busy catching all the charms of the plot as they moth around with the wham whoosh thud of details and thick inked exclamations smack of being told to laugh it. A cavalcade of concisely crafted drawings with almost real life folks thinly disguised, it was without doubt, loved.

In some disrupted rhythm, tension shakes a few eyes sharpening like knives and the mind seems prickly with imagination to waft farther and free getting a fresh hold on whatever critical came.

In-between such encounters the brother would bite my hand. Momentarily I’m less keen to know why for I was more left drowning in how someone lost could be found again, or how two silly detectives add to help grind the knife Tintin hopes to wield, as they can.

That said, I dove into the comics not in that particular order but with strong delight as the same. My first Tintin comic was spotted at one of those mini book fairs the Public Library would hold.

Favourite

The slim books like the cartoon won me goodie bags of princely joy. Tintin in Tibet and The Seven Crystal Balls were my childhood’s favourite. I would run into them many times never owning a copy. Above the mad plots given, what caught me on quickly was the way Tintin restrains from the much trodden effort to find his friend Chang come what may; whether he sweats an ocean or breaks a limb, his ability to wring a drop of hope out of his worn out self is a challenge that eventually gratifies.

I learned from then on; one’s success sits with the bride of patience. To marry them both is struggle’s brain to crack it open. When I also found that the main thrust of The Seven Crystal Balls was based on the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt, I marvelled at the heady heights of yet another major historical case.

More far reaching, however, is the way we reach success who later sings its praise in the last pages. In closing, it is sad, and never likely to be solved, why such days of yore are squeezed out of our lives never again to come to be. Still, holding the very remains I will live for it, although my childhood is a captured Tintin by who I point all that is womanly.

But somehow beautifully, let my memory in the whites of Snowy follow some dusty tracks of a wagon or a ship plunging into the next two hours or so with him in the chains or perhaps in this case, her? To be precise, her.