The Golden Gate Bridge

       The day I walked on the high suspension bridge, the sky was blue. It was quite windy and cool. With 1.7 miles long, it must be a long walk.  I hesitated a while and asked myself if I wanted to keep stepping forward. The pavement beneath my feet vibrated a bit. It seemed to move with the wind and sway with the traffic speeding by. Standing quietly and looking down the deep roiling water, I saw sailboats cruising under the bridge and everything became smaller and smaller around the San Francisco Bay.

       The five-hundred-foot-high orange tower is really a visible and outstanding landmark in the setting of the whole skyline. Viewing east, the sad story of prisoners in Alcatraz Island flashed into my mind. Beyond its cables and steel, my imagination started to wander to the other span of Golden Gate Park in Marin County where the author of The Kite Runner started writing about his painful and devastating life in Afghan before his family was forced to flee to America. When he glanced up and saw a pair of kites floating in the sky side by side, he thought of the days he had had in Afghan and his loyal friend, a low servant, Hassan.  I decided not to go across the bridge as I’d planned long before the visit because my heart was heavy with  the story of his life. The images of the characters in the story and the Golden Gate Bridge have just stuck in my mind until today.