Through The Ring Of Fire

There is a man who I see quite often in Siem Reap. He wears a dour expression on his face, and no shirt. His grey pants are rather dirty and worn, and he pulls a cart behind him by hand. Even during the heat of the noonday sun he does this, and a loudspeaker powered by a car battery announces his presence. One song is repeated over and over again through the piercing monotone it produces through the plastic cone. At certain intervals he stops, takes his equipment of the cart, and sets up his show. Sometimes it is in front of the tourist restaurants on Pub Street. Out of the cart comes a large metal hoop attached to a wire frame stand. Rusty kitchen knives, about the size you would use to cut tomatoes , are attached to the ring pointed inwards. Some are bent and twisted outwards. When I first saw him, I thought he was selling knives or sharpening them. However, I could not understand why anyone would want to buy these blackened, dull knives he had. Then I realized he was not selling them. The man places it delicately on the ground, making sure it does not tip over. Finally, he takes a bottle of lighter fluid and douses the whole thing before lighting it on fire.

Is he really going to do what I think he is going to do? Surely he is mad! The man’s expression does not change as he steadies himself before the ring. The muscles on his stomach tense and become rigid (an involuntary reaction). In one quick movement he is in the air, through the hoop, and standing back on the ground again. He does this trick three or four times. The policeman and the waiters nearby cheer him on while the tourists watch with open mouths. The people who know him have watched this feat done a hundred times. The man's technique is absolutely flawless. He is a machine. Sometimes people give him money. Other times he does his trick in front of no one. I have seen him do it in both situations. The face is the same, the jump is the same. There is virtually no change.

I cannot imagine what drove him to this line of work in the first place, but it must have been terrible. And this is a place where many terrible things happened.