Aspire Tower

This guide to Doha's Aspire Tower follows the flame lit for the 2006 Doha Asian Games, drawn from sunlight by parabolic mirrors in New Delhi, fused with a second flame lit by Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani at a Doha golf club, and carried by more than three thousand runners across thirteen countries and fifty-five thousand kilometers, the longest torch relay any Asian Games had run. It traces how the flame crossed open water aboard a Qatar Amiri Airbus, burning the whole flight so it would never go out, and the old desert custom the relay's announcer invoked to explain why Qatar was lighting so many fires at once.