The following is the first chapter of Chas Smith’s new book, Welcome To Paradise, Now Go To Hell: A True Story of Violence, Corruption, and the Soul of Surfing.
Beirut, Lebanon, 2006
There is a gun pressed to my temple, and I have a horrible haircut. I don’t know which is worse, having my head shattered by a bullet or living another moment with this truly awful coiffure en dégradé. Why did I do this to myself? Why did I ask the stylist to make me look like Ellen DeGeneres circa 2004?
The gun pressing is a handgun because a Kalashnikov, the sort of rifle all Arabs love, would not fit in the backseat of this Mercedes sedan. Or, rather, it would fit but not comfortably enough alongside me and my best friend, Josh, with our T-shirts pulled over our heads as makeshift blindfolds, three captors, a driver, another man riding in the passenger seat, and all their beards. I am also wearing horrible jeans. They were already bad, a sort of way-too-light acid wash but then they got caught in my motor scooter chain, the one I was riding not fifteen minutes earlier when we were captured, and now they are too-light acid-washed bell-bottoms. What was I thinking? And why was I riding a motor scooter instead of a proper Peter Fonda–worthy motorcycle? Why had I failed so badly, stylistically? This outcome, this getting captured at gunpoint, had certainly been in the cards for the last five years, and had probably really been in the cards since I was ten years old. That was when the idea of adventure, of living a cinematic life, grabbed my heart and refused to ever let it go. I remember the exact moment very clearly. I re- member sitting in Uncle Dave’s faux Tudor-style san Diego home and him turning off the lights, then turning on the slide projector. I remember the warm whirrrrrrrrr of the projector fan and the first image that danced on his wall. It showed an oddly bearded Uncle Dave; he was normally clean-shaven, standing in a dirty moonscape with a slight smirk on his face. He was flanked by two exotic men, tall with much bushier black beards and bandoliers crossing their chests, clutching ancient-looking rifles. They did not smirk. Their faces were resolute. In front of the group there was a mule with an oversized load strapped to its back. The mule was expressionless. Uncle Dave, watching my wide-eyed reaction, said, “Those men are called mujahideen. They are freedom fighters who are trying to push the Soviet Union out of their country. We are in Pakistan about to cross the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan.” “What is on the mule?” I asked. Dave, wearing the same slight smirk as in the image, replied, “stinger missiles.”
Uncle Dave never admitted to being in the CIA, or working for the government in any capacity for that matter. He ran a Christian nonprofit that, theoretically, brought medicine and food into war zones. This, in fact, was the only image I ever saw of him with military apparatus, aside from the picture of him shaking Ollie North’s hand in his sitting room, but this image was all I needed. It was a revelation. My favorite movies ever were Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the lost Ark and Lawrence of Arabia, and Uncle Dave made me believe that it was completely possible to actually be Indiana Jones or T. E. Lawrence.
To make matters even more awesomely adventurous, his two sons surfed. I lived on the Oregon coast, which is not surf country, but San Diego is and cousins Danny and Mikey surfed every day. They were the surf archetype—sun-kissed with bleach-blonde hair tips, always in the latest surf gear. I would stand on the beach during family visits, and marvel at their skill. Cousin Dan gave me a surfboard one sunshiny day, and I was hooked. There is something magical about surfing. Dreamy, floaty, sexy, fairytale-ish. Magical. Sliding across the ocean powered by nature herself. Getting a gorgeous tan. Delicious babes on the sand. I brought surfing back to the Oregon coast, even though the water was freezing and the rain was endless and there were no tans or hot sand babes, because when I surfed, I felt California cool. Surf and adventure became my identity. I had fallen forever in love with both of them.
The years passed but the ideal of living a cinematic life did not fade. I went to university in Orange County, California, so I could surf before class. I spent semesters in Cairo, learning Arabic, and at Oxford, because T. E. Lawrence had gone there. I became obsessed with fashion, realizing that the cinematic life demands amazing costume design. Looking good — next level good – always opens doors. It opens them in New York City and in Damascus, Syria. Why do you reckon Indiana Jones cared so much about his hat? Why do you reckon T. E. Lawrence always had perfectly coifed hair? Fashion is the highest art and so I delved into Esquire and Vanity Fair and even Women’s Wear Daily, taking notes and crafting an overall aesthetic that matched what I wanted to be.
And then jumbo jets crashed into the Twin Towers. I was lying in bed when my mother called and told me to turn on the television. She was crying, like the rest of America, and trying desperately to understand how this could be happening. Was this terrorism? Who could hate us so badly? I didn’t have answers and continued watching the coverage all day. It was such a tragedy, and as it became clearer that it was a terrorist act perpetrated by a man named Osama bin Laden who came from Yemen, I stopped caring about the tragedy itself and started to wonder about Yemen.
Yemen was on the Indian Ocean and the more I looked at maps the more I figured it must have surf. Some of the best waves in the world are found in the Indian Ocean, but no one had ever surfed mainland Yemen. So I drove over to my best friend Josh’s house, whom I had met hitchhiking in rural cartel country Mexico, and we looked at more maps together and concluded, yes, it must have surf. Six months later we landed in Sana’a, Yemen, and spent the next three months driving up and down the coast, surfing. We found waves. We were chased by Al-Qaeda. We shot old Kalashnikovs in the desert and laughed. We lived a wild adventure and wrote about it for Surfer and Australia’s Surfing Life magazine. It was my first taste of surf journalism, though it was not a normal taste. It was not palm trees and cocktails in a setting sun, which is what I assumed surf journalism was. It was desert and bullets.
The stories were well received by the surf community, but even better by hip culture magazines so, before we knew it, we had abandoned surf writing and were doing more wild adventure stories in Lebanon, Syria, and Colombia for the likes of Brooklyn’s Vice magazine. I would pitch the most outlandish ideas possible, like finding corrupt gangsters in Damascus or searching for the roots of grime music and its relation to piracy along the Somali coast. Somehow the magazines would bite and then we would go and make it all happen. It was a great ride, always with Josh and always on edge.
Television eventually came calling and Fremantle Media, makers of American Idol, signed us to an option deal. They wanted to develop a show based on our travels but their ideas were dumb. We’d sit in endless meetings listening to producers blather on and on about how cool it would be for us to go to the Timbuktu Music Festival or Lima, Peru, for its exotic cuisine. Eco/foodie/aural travel is never cool.
