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.
The cute interpreter maintained a polite tone and trembling
smile as she spoke with us. Obviously, none of us wished to trash all our vacation
photos, all of which were innocuous, since I can’t remember any of us snapping
photos of the immolation. However, none of us protested the policeman’s
commands.
After they thoroughly inspected our phones, they huddled up,
and the interpreter returned, told us we were to be deported immediately. She
told us “no why” when we asked why, all the while maintaining her formal tone
and polished albeit shaky smile.
We were stunned. We couldn’t figure out why we were being
deported, what part we had in this, aside from being witnesses… Perhaps it was
that they saw us as a bad omen, bad luck. Welshman speculated that it was
probably because they would lock down the area and that meant kicking
foreigners out first. Whatever it was, the decision was final. There’d be no
appeals. Peering over at the cops, with their menacing scowls, they didn’t
appear to be open to negotiations.
Once they finished the interrogations, they requested us to
sign paperwork, which was entirely written in Chinese, and which the interpreter
told us was simply a confirmation that we’d witnessed a “terrorist attack” and
an act of “insurrection.” However, flipping through the papers, we wordlessly
glanced at the Chinese characters... To me, the words were like strange
hieroglyphics, practically an alien script...
Then, glancing at each other, we shook our heads, and, to a
man, we refused, on the grounds that we couldn’t read Chinese, and we requested
to speak with our countries’ consulates.
Thinking we might be spending a few days, or weeks,
possibly, in the police station, we decided that would still be better than
signing a statement in a language we can’t read. A statement that perhaps could
be a confession or political ploy, form of entrapment.
But only maybe 20 minutes later, the cops returned, without
the paperwork, and escorted us out and drove us to the hostel to gather our
things. Then we journeyed directly to the airport, to leave on the first flight
out to Hong Kong, which was the next morning, and so we spent the night in the
airport, accompanied the entire time by angry-eyed, surly police escorts.
The Chinese police didn’t abuse us, but there was a look in
their eyes, a seething hatred toward us that I could sense. It was a look like,
“If we had the chance to kill you, to shove you in front of a firing squad, we
happily would, so don’t try anything brave, you stupid fucking honky…”
“…”
We spoke briefly, by phone, with the tour guide, who
promised us a partial refund, because the portion of the trip to Mount Everest,
to drive around the foot of the mountain, would be canceled.
“I can’t climb the fucking mountain naked, right? Bullocks!”
grumbled the Welshman, disappointed. Though he whispered to me, triumphantly,
as we stood at the urinals, with our dicks in our hands, pissing, that his
camera and phone were both set to the cloud and the photos would be safe. He’d
be posting them to Facebook later. He bragged that he’d once sold a picture to
the AP of a soldier shooting a protestor in Bangkok.
“Wonder how much the Firestarter will fetch...” Welshman
wondered aloud in a hushed voice, and a cunning little smile touched his lips.
The whole time in Tibet, even though I’d downloaded a VPN, I
could barely get online. I guess he had satellite net or something else. A few
weeks later, when I was in Japan, he emailed me the pics, but forwarded none of
the “Firestarter.” I didn’t ask why…
Though I was bummed I couldn’t check out Mount Everest,
seeing that sky burial, then seeing that soul pass from the girl’s body, was
far more powerful than visiting any mountain, even the world’s tallest.
Man, watching the girl’s soul, watching her ghost,
witnessing it with my own eyes, it was, to me, a verification that the
Buddhists are right. There is a soul. There is karma. There is another life.
There is something more. I’d seen it. I’d really seen it.
Ever since then, I became a philosophical Buddhist. I don’t
visit the temple or pray, but I’m with the ideology. I can relate a lot to the
Buddha. I too was a sheltered rich kid, a prince, who was profoundly changed,
after leaving my palace and witnessing the real world, witnessing suffering...
I so totally respect and love the Buddha’s story, the Buddha’s whole vibe. I
love the Buddha, man; like every other religious figure is all blood and guts
and damnation, and here’s the Buddha, totally chill…
Maybe I’ll do like him. Start a new religion. Or start a
cult. Colt’s Cult. Cult of Colt. But it’d be a cool cult, like we wouldn’t be
into sex crimes or suicide or spaceships. We wouldn’t be weird. We’d just go
somewhere and chill. Be chill. Like the Buddha…
I’m still a party guy, a philanderer, sure. I’m far from
perfect. But it’s all in fun. Everything I do is fun. I try to create positive
vibes because I know they’ll boomerang back to me. And I know that if I create
positive energy, my next life will be rad. I totally believe in reincarnation,
man. I’m ready for it. Like, death could be awesome, I think, if you’ve been
living right….
So, look, I’m not afraid of any ghosts, man. I’m not afraid
of that house. I’ll visit it later. I mean, for real, after what I saw, I know
that ghosts are a part of something greater. Ghosts are just like you or me.
They’re travelers. They’re passing through, and they’re not to be feared.
You know what I have come to believe? I believe that the
scariest ghosts and monsters are alive. They’re inside us. They’re the evil
living in the hearts of men. They’re the impulses of rage, insanity. They’re
what make people kill. They’re the hopelessness, the desperation that would
drive a person to burn themself alive. They’re our darkest feelings. Now those…
Those are the fucking scariest spirits.
