A Journey to Nepal About “Buddha”, “Holy Fire” and the Temples of Kathmandu : Khalil Al Nuaimi

“Whoever sacrifices himself walking the earth becomes an imam.” Al-

Hamdani

“The world’s misery is better than its injustice.” This is what I will quickly realize in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. We reach it in the evening after a staggering storm, which caused our plane to divert to India. After hours of confined to our seats, perched high in the Himalayas, she flew again toward Kathmandu for early night landing. And in the first night, what do we see? We see amazement: people and dust, that is Kathmandu, but that is not a definition, as we will soon know, but a 'way of life'.

Early in the morning we go out eagerly to see everything. We go out to meet, to meet the others scattered in the streets like Al-Jazeera plants. We walk on our own, and watch adversity and dust. The simplicity of people and things are alluring. No tension, no fighting, no oppression, no arrogance. Nothing but their tempestuous, ineffable presence outside their constant motion. This simple, overwhelming feeling is the one that fills the Kathmandu space around you, and you feel it strongly from the first sight, everyone is equal in movement and silence in front of the lukewarm light and dust, in front of the fragility of existence that you almost hold in your hands. The first thing we visit in Kathmandu is the “Royal Palace”, which was a royal palace.

Today it belongs to the people. For a people who does not forget anything from their life, even if they do not talk about anything. It is the necessities of daily life that fill his intellectual bowels, or so it appears to me, but the outward, often, is mold. Mold that organisms are trying to get rid of at the cheapest cost:

Before we entered the palace they took everything from us. They took our minds and our hearts: cameras, telephones, watches, everything that could show us the way: “the path of common sense” or that seemed to us to be. We start the visit unarmed. We are almost barefoot and naked. Civilization's accessories, its daily necessities, all, they took! And they said: Enter!

At the entrance to the beautiful palace, there are shields, and horses, and elephants, and there is a black peacock, who dominates them all, including the white bear, and the predatory tigers. The first thing we see, entering, is the portraits of the first kings: Prithvi Narayan Shah 1725 and Pratap Singh Shah 1751, and portraits of other kings adorn the entrances to the halls of the majestic palace. And wherever you look, you will see the legendary Himalayan scenery, as if to assure passers-by that it is their firmness that protects the bottom from flight. We also see pictures of beautiful peacocks, ivory and alabaster furniture adorned with luxury, drowning in an abyss of silence, the silence of history, which no longer matters outside the walls, and finally, a picture of the summit of "Avrest", which is the national emblem of "Nepal".

The dominant palace colors are green, the color of love and chastity, gold and silver. On the bottom is a bright red Kashmiri carpet. Above all are the tops of the great mountains that lie under layers of snow and clouds terrifying peaks, as if they are ringing the bells of the universe before it reaches the point of nothingness.

When we leave the palace, Buddha bids us farewell, the quiet and deep Buddha, looking down his eyelids. Buddha does not stare at other people's faces because he is deeply immersed in him, and since we leave, I stand in my place, and I repeat in amazement: What are these legions dusty? And what kind of people are these? The wind is blowing while they are panting, as if they are thirsty for the old “Hasakah” for cold air.

Those I knew in my childhood, with whom I shared embers, embers of heat and its inferno! What is this soft soil like silk? And these rough feet that trample the bottom with such ferocity and determination that they are at war with it, did I come here on purpose to enjoy the pits and the bottoms?

In the Pashupatinate temple I sit on my palms, enjoying deep inner peace. In the space of this red brick temple, monkeys roaming at will, as well as humans, humans, pigeons and other living things, there are various strange creatures, finding deep rest in it. Here beings, regardless of their gender, feel deep brotherhood and peace.. No one is better than another, we all jostle towards the shade, the shade of the great trees that protect us from the sun. On its deaf stones I sit for a long time, immersed in an animalistic silence in which there is no language, nor, I could say, feelings, it is only silence, a great silence without any other dimension.

A magnificent temple is this Nepalese temple, located on a hill filled with trees and stone. The sacred, the eternal, and the daily transient, spontaneously blend in, with a great deal of amazing humanity in its honesty and simplicity, in which we understand the meaning of cosmic peace that ultimately rids us of lies, arrogance and foolishness. He makes us equal, in spite of us, with other living things, not just with beings! Here there is no difference between a monkey and an individual (note: only one point).

There is no difference between them except in length! But the height did not come from nowhere. It's a genius outgrowth of biology, says Darwin. It is this infinite and unlimited development that has made us many and diverse, but without giving us an advantage over others. Now, after a long session with the "cautious and gentle" but largely selfish monkeys, I shall look for another focus worthy of consideration.

Bagmati is another great temple that makes the visitor feel dizzy. Cremation platforms Throughout it, on the bank of this miserable stream that does not flow, or so it seems to me in the thickness of its water full of manure, are liturgically lined up astonishing pallets, and terraces of stone and wood, on which the cremation above them ceaselessly throughout the day. This living “hell” was our destination this day, what demon entered my soul to throw it into this hell?

In the beginning of the Levant, I used to hear the mysterious words about the saira that would devour the bodies of people on the Day of Resurrection, and I was terrified. I run to the land to urinate from fear, and here today I am facing the dead in their decorated fires, as if they were at a wedding. In Nepal, they did not wait for the Day of Resurrection to cremate their dead. They, having adorned them, perfumed them, and washed them, cast them into the heart of the burning skirts of the river's edge. the river?! Rather, say a shallow stream filled with ashes, mud, scales, and rags.

Its water is frightening because of its thickness. Its color is earthy and miserable, which only refers to death. This, which was once a river, has become a watery cemetery for the remains of an infinite number. And because the parents throw some coins with the dead, you see hungry children wading through the thick mud of corpses, submerging in it to their chests, and their hands like claws searching at the bottom of the river for coins that are worthless, or almost.

In front of the sacred fire I sit majestically on the bottom Fire? Many fires burn the dead in an artistic way that is almost ritualistic. Ichlonha long sticks, and move it when it fades. Around the fire that would devour their dead, they glistened with reverence and silence, as if they were afraid that the dead might hear what they were thinking.

Like them I do amazed, but, what do they read in the tongues of fire rising toward the clouds? And what is the secret that keeps them burning constantly? Why does the red brick color dominate the bank of the River of the Dead dedicated to cremation? Why all these human gatherings in the courtyard of the "Temple of Death" that dominates the ceremonies of eternal farewells? And who are these people? How does one meet with whom?

Some of them grill their family over hot coals, and others hold delicious barbecue feasts near them. They devour the sumptuous food and their saliva flows, the lust for food blinding them from seeing the sadness of those around them? No! It makes them resist death, they resist it with an insatiable appetite, and I? I roll in amazement among the multitude of voracious eaters, satiating their strange appetites. Among the multitude of burners guarding their dead perched on the pillars of blazing fire, silent, he commanded. I pass, and I go back, again. No wailing, no scars, no tears.

Their last farewell moment: silence. Which brings me back to the island’s plains, and its mourning mourners, whose wailing fills them with righteousness even over those they do not know! The silent scene reminds me, too, of the Arab mourners who “shed their senseless farewell words” when the “deceased” mattered, even if it was not. They care about him, unlike those who now crouch before me like fairy-tale beings in the high Himalayas, seeking to cleanse themselves of falsehood.

In the courtyard of this "temple of death", full of life, I am drawn to the careless crowds of people, who are dressed in the most beautiful clothes. For them death is the supreme form of existence. Otherwise, how do we explain this extravagant extravagance in food, clothing, adornment, looks and movements? And why did you see me standing naked in my feelings, staring with overwhelming passion at the woman in the red sari, bending with temptation to blow the blazing fire, as if she wanted to set my heart on fire? Its grace, its delicious burgundy color, its softness and its seductive movements really captivate me. And he found me, near her, crouching on the bottom, cross-legged among those who sat on the ground spontaneously, and like them I picked up a long stick with which I stirred fire! An Indian from the “Syrian Island” in Nepal. Syrian writer