This paper explores the historically elevated and gendered rates of self-burning among young, poor, married women in the Persian belt countries of Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Drawing on original field work in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, upwards of 150 qualitative surveys, as well as over 50 semi-structured interviews with survivors of self-immolation, their burn doctors, nurses and civil society actors in all four countries, I challenge the gendered and pathologizing language of the state that dissimulates these acts through the familiar language of ‘suicides’ and discuss the culturally-embedded and conflictual language of affect forged via the incineration of the body. Based on the findings of a grounded theory analysis, I explore how the material and symbolic power of women’s self-burnings defy both cultural forms of patriarchy at the family level and its refracted power in structures of the state. This, I argue, speaks to the broader importance of centering embodied acts of resistance occurring within the confines of the private sphere in the study of politics. Offering up the image of a ‘spotting fire’ – one that travels from the western most regions of Iran (in Iranian Kurdistan) eastward, through western and central Afghanistan, southern Tajikistan and the eastern borderlands of Samarkand, Uzbekistan – as a way to conceive of the historical emergence of self-immolations as a common signifier for women’s resistance to the harsh demands of gender apartheid, I challenge the narrowness of predominant views which insist that social movements and political resistance are to be found ‘out on the streets.’ As I demonstrate, these approaches neglect to consider the structural and subjective realities shaped by gender, ethnicity and class and their impacts for how political resistance is articulated across various cultures and political landscapes.