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Rain of Shadows
Accompanying Outside’s behind-the-lines special report on Nepal’s Maoist insurgents (“The Last Days of the Mountain Kingdom,” by Patrick Symmes, September) is this haunting photograph by longtime Kathmandu photojournalist Thomas Laird. Here, in an exclusive account, Laird offers an equally haunting first-person look at the most extraordinary 24 hours in Nepal’s recent history—and his own thoughts for what this storm-wracked kingdom has in store.

By Thomas Laird

Kathmandu, Nepal—The news came in an e-mail from America: "Nepal Royal Family Shot Dead." Hoping it was just a strange Internet rumor, I searched the Web for confirmation, as sunlight filtered through morning glories just beyond the computer screen. It was June 2, ten hours after the massacre and the last sunny morning before monsoon. The bright sun somehow made the news impossible—even when it stared at me from the front page of the New York Times Web site.

The monsoon, at least, has honest harbingers. The murders, in a country where information about the royal family consisted of tributes by court poets, struck like lightning from blue sky. After 30 years as a journalist in Nepal I knew that the fine morning weather would soon turn to something else. But there was no warning for the murders-not when every published word about the family for 30 years had been impossibly cheerful. The royal family was an icon of nationalism for a nation of peasants—not some lurid headline—so I did the first thing that came to mind. I hopped on my scooter and headed straight for Narayanhiti Palace.

Members of government stared in disbelief at the flies crawling across the face of their dead king and the impossible wreckage of the queen's skull.

On my way to the Palace, a mad darting truck rushed down the middle of the road, horn blaring, shattering the Saturday calm. Royal Nepal Army troops swayed calmly too and fro in the rear. The red pom-poms on the tops of their hats were ridiculously cheerful, but their bewildered faces spoke of a night of horrors. At the palace, I saw that I was not alone in my impulse: Thousands of Nepalis had gathered outside.

Photo Gallery

To see photos from Patrick Symmes and photographer Seamus Murphy’s time in Nepal, click here

The gates were locked and guarded as always. The guards, safe behind 30-foot-high fences, stared back at the growing crowds. Nothing of the rumors that gripped Kathmandu was visible inside the deserted grounds. The life-size silver gods embossed onto the 30-foot-high doors gleamed in the sun, standing silent guard as always. A flock of pigeons circled the modern building's two fanciful cement "oriental" towers. The palace stood as ever: your typical 20-acre walled black box. It was so normal-in Kathmandu—that we drove by it every day without looking.

Within a week the commander-in-chief of the Royal Nepal Army, General Prajawalla, would tell the nation, as an aside, the essential facts about Narayanhiti Palace. Only the royal family was responsible for the 5,000 troops inside. Inside this black box, King Birendra put his son Crown Prince Dipendra in charge of security, making him responsible for a locker full of automatic weapons. The king and queen, like so many parents in the suburbs of the West, were ignorant of the fact that their beloved son was using drugs: Aides who should have reported the prince's habit to their superiors never did. Now everyone was dead and no one knew why.

As the morning faded, the crowd at Narayanhiti Palace grew larger. Nepal's state-owned radio and television outlets played somber music. No official news was available, even though CNN and the BBC were alive with anonymous reports from members of the royal family who had been present during the massacre.

Two local dailies printed those rumors. The palace crowd surrounded the paper-sellers that appeared, snatching newspapers from their hands and generating more rumors. Hundreds of bodies had been taken from the palace, it was said. The mood of stunned, sleepy disbelief began to change. Groups of young men in the crowd tried to block the roads. The police whirled their six-foot long canes-lathis-above their heads and raised their voices in a roar. They dashed toward the would-be street-blockers, beating anyone who did not run off. Some people laughed as they ran; older men stood back and watched the show.

As the people's mood curdled from lack of news and turned to riot, the elite, who had heard the facts from eyewitnesses, gathered in a guarded compound. On the edge of town, the corpses of the royal family were on display inside Chauni Military Hospital. Members of government stared in disbelief and horror at the flies crawling across the face of their dead king and the impossible wreckage of the queen's skull.

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Thomas Laird has lived in Nepal for the past 30 years. His most recent photography book is The Dalai Lama's Secret Temple. He is completing his first book of non-fiction, Into Tibet. He can be reached at laird100@yahoo.com