And then Israel invaded Lebanon in response to Hezbollah rocket attacks and the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. Just like after 9/11, this aggression was the impetus for a creative response. Josh and I told Fremantle to fuck off and Al Gore’s Current TV assigned us to cover the war for them. We covered it as we thought wars should be covered, treating all of Lebanon like a giant playground, renting the finest car we could, eating steak dinners in Beirut’s tony Christian neighborhoods, and generally watching the city burn to the ground. This real, declared war felt wholly surreal. It felt like life might end at any moment and there was the requisite sadness but there was also a party atmosphere. We lived it up.
We had spent much previous time here so we knew where to party, how to get around, and how to get deep into trouble. Hezbollah controlled a sizeable chunk of central Beirut called the Dahieh, which was very off-limits to Westerners of any sort and especially reporters. Yet one cloudless day as Josh and I were riding our unfortunate motor scooters we heard bombs raining down on the Dahieh and we knew we had to go in. We were speeding through a rubble-strewn street toward a plume of smoke when another bomb exploded a block away. It blew us off our scooters, catching my awful jeans in its chain, and broke our ears. We sorted ourselves out, restarted our scooters, and tried to race away but got shot at by either Palestinian or Hezbollah militia and then got grabbed by a mob of dirty youth who handed us over to official Hezbollah. That was that. My whole cinematic adventure rushing toward a fitting but bummer end.
And now I am in the back of their Mercedes sedan with a gun pressed to my temple and pouring with sweat. My T-shirt is soaking wet and all I can hear is rapid-fire Arabic, which I am piecing together one out of every ten words. My ears are still ringing. The gun is pressed so firmly to my temple that every sudden jerk of the Mercedes makes it dig in farther and the sweat is dripping off the end of my nose.
I am fucked. Josh is fucked. We are fucked. My hair is shit. My jeans are too. I always think I look good, but right at this moment I am having a life-flashing-before-eyes epiphany. I look like shit. I should have worn trimmer jeans. I really should have.
The Mercedes screeches to a halt and I hear car doors opening and feel the pressure of the gun releasing momentarily, and the captor who was sitting on my lap, I think, or at least on top of me, getting up and off and dragging me with him, barking Arabic. “Imshi! Imshi!” Imshi means “walk,” but it is derogatory in the Egyptian Arabic that I’m familiar with. The kind of dismissive word used to wave away a bothersome street urchin. And apparently I am not walking quickly enough because I feel a boot kick my ass so hard that I see stars. I have never been kicked that hard before. My ears are still ringing from the bomb. How exactly are they going to kill me? Will they torture me first? Will I be a headless YouTube celebrity?
I hear metal roller doors being opened and I am pushed forward into a darker room that is also cooler and I hear many more Arabic voices, some confused, some angry, and they are shouting to each other. I am marched downstairs — “Imshi! Imshi!” — and hear a heavy key in metal and the hinges creak as the door is pulled open and I am kicked inside a room darker still and the metal slams behind me, too quickly for the hinges to creak again, the heavy key working backward, locking, and then I hear nothing but my own breath.
I am breathing heavily.
Heavily. Fuck.
I don’t know if Josh and I are together anymore. I don’t know if he has been left in the car to be taken somewhere else. I am afraid to take the T-shirt off of my head. I don’t know if we are slated to die alone or together. It doesn’t matter, I suppose. We will die and our families will cry. Whatever. I hate my wife.
Breathing.
I don’t hear anything except my own breathing and so after a sweaty eternity, I take my T-shirt slowly off of my head and when my eyes adjust to the dark of my cell I see a bloodstained mattress in the corner. I see the silhouette of Josh, T-shirt still on head, sitting next to it. I whisper at him. He whispers back and then makes a joke that our shirts had stretched out so much that they now look like dresses. They are our Hezbollah dresses and we are going to go to the Hezbollah dance. Outside, our guards yell at us in Arabic to shut up and that George Bush is a dog. Josh laughs. I laugh too but inside my heart I think, “Fuck me. No more failed-state journalism. No more sleeping in the dirt, under rocks in the dirt while bombs are dropping. No more getting chased by al-Qaeda. No more Somali pirates. No more Hezbollah. No no no no more. If I get out of here, I am going to go back to the softest thing ever and this time I am going to do it properly. I am going to party and drink and stay out late with cute girls and surf and drink and look at palm trees swaying in the setting sun and feel salt water on my skin. I am going to have the best tan. I am going to get a very good haircut. I am going to get new jeans. I am going to write fluff. It will still be a cinematic, adventurous life but more Tequila Sunrise and less Lord of War. I am going to become a surf journalist. I am going to become a surf journalist. I am going to become a surf journalist.
Welcome To Paradise, Now Go To Hell is available at Harper Collins and Amazon.
