Nepal’s capital is choked with smoke and gripped by fear

“I’m a real Gen Z, we all are here, and this is not what we wanted,” said a student whose surgical gloves were black from the sticky filth he and his friends were scooping away.

Kathmandu: The Hilton hotel was still in flames. Carcasses of government buildings gaped, their innards exposed. The few motorcycles and cars that dared to break a curfew had to navigate a series of checkpoints patrolled by soldiers, their fingers on the triggers of their rifles.

Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, is normally a city of noise and commerce, where gods survey the jammed traffic from brightly lit roadside temples. On Thursday, soon after clashes between security forces and protesters claimed at least 37 lives and ripped the institutional heart out of the city, much of Kathmandu was swaddled in suspense and silence, save the crunch of shattered glass underfoot.

Nepal is now a country without a functioning government. No one seems to know where the president is. The prime minister has resigned. The army is talking with the young protesters, who are known as Gen Z and have proposed Sushila Karki, a former chief justice, to step in as interim leader of the country. They say that she could be sworn in as early as Friday, but it’s unclear who has the legitimate power to appoint her and what kind of government she could even assemble.

Many of the capital’s mighty institutions — a palace complex turned seat of government, the Supreme Court, ministry buildings — lay in ruins. Reams of documents, bank notes and official finery were turned to ash. A former prime minister and his wife, who is the foreign minister, were attacked by a mob. Another former prime minister’s wife suffered extreme burns and underwent surgery Thursday.

“I never imagined this, no one could have imagined this,” said Lance Cpl. Ramesh Tamang, who stood outside the Hilton hotel, where flames still spurted out of blackened rooms. He had not slept in four days, he said, having been deployed to fight blazes at a succession of buildings. At the Hilton, the firefighting soldiers had already used up 25 tankers’ worth of water to power their hose, but the flames had not yet been extinguished. Panes of glass broke off the building and crashed onto the road.

Also at risk of going up in smoke were the dreams of the Gen Z protesters, who began their rallies Monday to uproot corruption and halt the revolving door of leadership that has kept power in this Himalayan country shifting among three old men for the past decade. What started off as youthful pushback against a government ban on social media platforms turned into a bloodbath: At least 34 protesters were killed after security forces opened fire Monday, the Health Ministry said Thursday. Three police officers have also died, according to a police spokesperson. More than 1,600 people have been injured.

Outside the gate of the Maharajgunj Medical Campus on Thursday evening, a few dozen mourners gathered soon after sunset, during a brief reprieve from the curfew, to light candles on the pavement and remember those who died three days before. Portraits of 11 young people were set behind a small field of candles as grieving relatives took turns speaking.

Rashik Khatiwoda, a 22-year-old student, had been shot dead during the protest. His mother, Rachana K.C., sobbed, asking how anyone could hurt her child.

“I never slapped that boy, not even once,” she said. “How could anyone choose to kill him?”

Another mourner, Kamal Subedi, recounted how he had been running behind his cousin, Roshan Neupane, on the day of the crackdown. He saw a bullet tear through his cousin’s head. Subedi asked why no authority had come to pay respects to the dead — no politician, no army officer.

Fresh graffiti on an underpass near the hospital asked in English: “What to do with police who murder?”

If anyone is in charge in Nepal today, it is the army, which, unlike many others in Asia, has little history of direct military rule and has so far refrained from taking the reins of power. Much of Nepal’s leadership is now under army control, their associates said, being kept in various army barracks. It is not clear whether the reason is to protect the ministers or to keep them confined.

The nation’s army chief, Gen. Ashok Raj Sigdel, has met repeatedly with the Gen Z protesters. Two of the protesters said they first mentioned Karki as their preferred choice for leader of an interim government Wednesday. Karki is seen as an anti-corruption crusader untethered to the political old guard.

On Thursday afternoon, students representing the Nepali Congress party defied the nationwide curfew to chant anti-army slogans and call for President Ram Chandra Poudel to appear.

“Make our president public,” they shouted. “We won’t accept a military coup.”

Later in the day, a group of senior lawyers met with the president to discuss his plan for a political future, according to one of the lawyers who did not want to be identified because of the confidential nature of the discussions. Poudel, 80, has not been seen in public since Monday’s violence, but in Nepal’s constitutional system, his role includes endorsing the head of any interim or caretaker government.

Observers say supporting Karki, the Gen Z choice, is not his preference.

Thursday evening, 8,000 soldiers from 15 districts across Nepal arrived in Kathmandu, intelligence sources said, provoking more fear and uncertainty in a capital accustomed to both emotions. Nepal has suffered through a vicious civil war and the massacre of its royal family in 2001, both of which eventually led the country to exchange its constitutional monarchy for a parliamentary democracy. King Gyanendra Shah was dethroned in 2008. But royalist parties have been lobbying for the restoration of the monarchy, and people loyal to them took part in the recent anti-government protests.

The curfew was suspended Thursday for a couple hours in the morning and late afternoon, allowing residents to buy groceries, breathe the air still smoky from the widespread arson attacks and exchange gossip about the current political cataclysm.

For some Gen Z students, the suspension of the curfew also allowed them to undertake another key mission: cleaning the city’s streets. They were dismayed at how the movement had metastasized into a frenzy of arson, vandalism and looting. The Gen Z protesters said that did not come from their ranks.

In one stretch of asphalt near a burned-out department store, a dozen teenagers squatted to scrape away an oily mound of ash spreading out from under the skeleton of a city bus.

“I’m a real Gen Z, we all are here, and this is not what we wanted,” said Swarnab Chowdhury, 18, a student whose surgical gloves were black from the sticky filth he and his friends were scooping away.

Chowdhury lamented that shadowy forces had filled the streets, crowding out the students. Many of the Gen Z protesters did not join the rallies Tuesday when the burning and looting intensified, according to the protesters and to video footage of the scenes of destruction.

“We wanted a revolution, but they burned down our own country,” Chowdhury said. “We wanted to build it, and they burned it.”

The week’s violence in Nepal coincided with the most beloved of Kathmandu’s annual celebrations, in which devotees pull three golden chariots belonging to three gods. In Kathmandu’s hallowed Durbar Square, with its gnarled banyan trees and pagodas with bricks cracked from earthquakes, the chariot-pullers make their way toward a structure holding the Kumari, a young girl who is worshipped as a living goddess for one day a year.

This year that day fell Thursday. Thousands of Nepalis disregarded the curfew, crowding into Durbar Square. Soldiers patrolled and snipers watched from high windows. But a relaxed festival atmosphere prevailed.

For the Kumari, however, it was not to be. She would not meet the chariots and her devotees. Security considerations would not allow it. It was the first time in living memory that the Kumari did not appear in Kathmandu.

Organizers rushed the rest of the ceremony. The crowds thinned, confused by the disruption to a timeless ritual that had somehow happened at the wrong time.