Immolation in Lhasa, Tibet

As the evening sky began to purple, I shifted my gaze and spotted a young Tibetan girl, maybe 15 feet from us, down the city block. The girl was in an oversized, floppy white robe, like what a cult member would wear. She’d shaved her head, like a Buddhist nun, and her face appeared reddened, yet blank, emotionless, like a passport or driver’s license photo.

Showing no feelings, she set down a backpack, and from it, lifted out a red canister, held it aloft and doused herself in a clear liquid.

She then whipped out a lighter from under her white robe, flicked it with her thumb, and touched the tongue of the tiny orange flame to her chest.

She didn’t explode. It wasn’t like a bombing. It was more like when you start a fire and the kindle begins small and spreads, grows. The flames began in a small pool on her chest and grew into waves that wrinkled, washed sideways and upwards, slower than I’d have expected, although it could have been that the scene was so surreal that it appeared as if the whole thing was happening in slow-motion.

Standing with her arms outstretched to a “T”, the fulgurate flames fully engulfed her form. She appeared as if a burning effigy, inhuman, particularly given her silence. I’d have expected she’d scream or chant, utter a statement, and maybe she did, but I didn’t hear it.

After a handful of long seconds, she then crumpled to the ground, her forward falling body becoming a burning ball, a heap of tumbling flames.

Then the smell reached us. It was far worse than that of burning hair. It was burning hair mixed with the smell of burning flesh. It was such a nauseating smell, such a stench, that once the smell found me, I felt an ugly sensation tingle and wash over me, sickening my stomach, like I swallowed a thumbtack.

It was then, I swear, that I saw the girl’s soul, like a specter, float upwards and leave her body; her ghost, her soul in a spectral cast, ascending luminously from the fire.

The girl, in her white robe, was whole, intact, her form translucent and radiant. Her face was resolute, contrite, as she rose from the burning lump, like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Then she broke apart, into a thousand hailstone-like pieces that whirled and washed in with the wafts of bone-gray smoke billowing below the purpling night.

The police in the booth nearby had been playing on their phones, when it happened, and were too late to stop the immolation, though I guess they rushed in once they’d looked up and seen the flames. The cops, panic painted all over their twisted faces, clumsily hurried over, brandishing fire extinguishers, and they desperately shot a volley of gooey white foamy liquid bursts that extinguished the blaze.

But they were unable to prevent the soul from exiting the body, and all that remained on the pavement was a white and black blob, vapors, and curls of smoke...

Our group stood transfixed, watching the scene. It was like some shit from a movie, seeing a person burn themself alive. I’d never seen anyone die before. I was frozen in shock. Then I shuddered, my throat dry as salt, my throat clicking. I was thinking I might vomit.

Even the Welshman was moved by the scene. He just stared at it, somber, his face bleached pink and his upper lip curled, his head cocked to the side. The other guys cried. My eyes teared up a bit, too, I’ll admit.

I wondered if she’d moved on to another life. I hoped she did. I hoped she wasn’t a ghost, an unhappy ghost, wandering the Earth. That wasn’t a sky burial. But did it count? Was it merit? Or would she go to the Buddhist version of hell, Naraka? I wanted to ask our tour guide about it...

But I wouldn’t have the chance. Another group of cops quickly showed, swarmed the scene. They whisked us away and led us to a couple idling cop cars and brought us to police headquarters.

Man, that police place was grim. It was a big gray box of a building, and it seemed like everything in it was gray or colorless. Worse yet, it was cold as a meat locker, smelled moldy as an old gym, and practically every cop inside was smoking cigarettes. Smoking cigarettes inside their offices, the hallways, at their desks, even in the elevators. I’d never seen so many people smoking. It was like we’d stepped out of a time machine, stepped into a 1950s black and white movie...

The police didn’t handcuff us, and they weren’t rough with us. But, with the help of an interpreter (a police lady, a young, 20ish Chinese girl, not bad looking, either) a pair of shifty-eyed middle-aged coppers questioned us for an hour or so about the incident, asking the same stupid questions again and again.

We were then shuffled from one drab, gray room to another, made to wait. Finally, an English-speaking policeman arrived to question us. The policeman had a fat head, and the flesh around his eyes was all puffy. The fat head gamboled in, walking in confident, elongated strides. He was smoking a cig, of course, and he sat down to speak with us.

(The fat head’s comportment and his appearance gave him the look of a man who is very important, or a man who just thinks he’s very important. I couldn’t determine which... )

The fat head’s eyes had a quiet kind of animosity to them. He spoke impeccable English, almost in an upper-class British accent. He proceeded to interview us as a group. Then he brought us to other identically drab waiting rooms and interviewed us separately, asked the same shit he and the other cops asked, “What did you see?” “Where are you from?” “Did you know her?” et fucking cetera, man.

(Like any of us would know a random Tibetan chick on the street? Come on!)

Then another set of cops, in different uniforms trudged in. They were more military looking, these cops, had helmets, combat boots, the whole nine. With furrowed brows, lips seemingly curled in disgust, they checked our phones, and one of their gruff superior types, who didn’t speak English, demanded us, through the cute girl interpreter, to delete every single photo we’d taken during the trip.