“This is the first Chas Smith book I’ve read but I
already know it’s by far the best.”
Four years ago Chas Smith’s Middle East memoir Reports from
Hell was loosed into the world. As of two days ago, it was
re-rereleased. Here is the great Longtom’s original
review.
Fifty-five dollars I paid. Hard cover.
Ordered it in and had to wait weeks like a custom board for it
to show up, all the way from America.
“Fifty-five dollars hey,” the babe at the counter of the Lennox
book shop smirked at me. “What? You gone off your fuggen
Russians?”
“Nah, nah” I waved a little penguin copy of Dostoevsky’s “White
Night” at her as rebuttal.
“It’s just, Chas,” I pointed at the name printed in yellow under
the Title “Reports from Hell”, “is a kind of colleague, boss and I
wanted to pay full tick so the cunt wouldn’t feel I was treating
his book kindly because I got it for free”.
“Ah, yep” she nodded, “the reviewer’s curse”.
I paid overs because I wanted no bias.
If I got gypped, then I could feel justified in giving it to
Chas, full blast. Also knowing: when I take up my 80 grand (plus
benefits) package at the WSL he could go after me without kid
gloves. I hate kid gloves.
Reports from Hell is a very funny book, a rollicking adventure
yarn, geopolitical exposition and chronicle of a period in recent
history that already feels incredibly ancient. I refer to the post
2001 War on Terror, whereby the West, principally the United States
of America referred to by Al Qaeda as the far enemy, invaded the
Middle East as retribution for September 11 and caused a
conflagration that the World is still coming to terms with.
The basic narrative outline of the book follows Smith and his
pals as they make multiple journeys – more than journeys actually,
more like the Homeric odysseys of old – to the Middle East in
search of the well-spring of Islamic terror, or what his pal Josh
more accurately terms: the roots of violent, anti-state
radicalism.
The twist in the tale, as we all know, is that Chas combines the
search for the roots of Islamic terror with a surf trip. This leads
to some very funny scenes. Successfully pitching Surfer mag editor
Sam George to bankroll the trip is a highlight of the opening
chapters of the book.
The prologue where Smith both interviews and regales former US
commander David Petraeus with tales of surfing in Yemen is classic
Chas Smith. The prologue ends with a piece of prose which can be
regarded as peak Chas: “I have seen and experienced a world
vanished forever by an epic explosion, and as General Petraeus
starts to drone on about Saudi Arabia being our great ally and a
great investment opportunity, I put my Tom Ford sunglasses on,
slouch deeply in my chair, and stare into the burning klieg
light”.
The prologue hooked me, but one of my terrible weaknesses is
reading the ending of a book after I’ve read the first beginning to
see whether the juice justifies the potential squeeze, so to speak.
Reading a book is a substantial investment of time. Smith’s final
line is a classic too, a commitment to a life as a “violent
anti-state surf journalist”. I knew I would finish the book after
reading it.
That last line, and the book as a whole, can be read both as a
prequel to Smith’s surf journalism career and the modus operandi of
said career. It illuminates the rambunctious fixation on the
superficial which somehow uncovers the swirling morass of absurdity
below. Seen through that prism a surf trip to Yemen with a side
mission to discover the well-spring of Salafi jihadism in one of
the most violent countries on earth makes a weird but perfect
sense.
I spent the opening chapters with some unease about whether I
would find Smith’s travelling companions Josh and Nate likeable
enough to enjoy the book. Soon enough though these fellow young
Christian Americans revealed themselves to be perfect foils for the
main narrator.
That Christian innocence and lack of depravity did strike me as
odd through the opening stanzas, somehow I expected more sex, drugs
and rock and roll from our protagonists. Scenes where the guide,
driver and protector of the first trip to Yemen, Major Ghamdan is
keen on some whoring while the Americans shake their fingers at him
in moral disgust have a peculiar comic flavour from the inversion
of expected values.
You’d expect the young Americans to be the ones sucked down by
what Osama Bin Laden called “the most decadent culture in human
history…corrupted by a depth of moral licentiousness never before
seen.”
There are very many classic scenes chasing surf in Yemen with
Major Ghamdan, which I think justify the price of admission
alone.
Smith is very far from the only writer to employ provocation as
a chief rhetorical weapon, even if in the chummy world of surf
journalism back slapping, pocket pissing and mutual appreciation of
flatulences are the far more accepted methods. By the measure of
provocation, even if delivered in good faith, he is aligned more
with both classic American satirist/humorists like HL Mencken and
Mark Twain and more nihilistic European writers like Michel
Houllebecq.
Houllebecq stated, “I admit that invective is one of my
pleasures. This only brings me problems in life, but that’s it. I
attack, I insult. I have a gift for that, for insults, for
provocation. So I am tempted to use it,” adding in a later
interview, “My desire to displease masks an insane desire to
please”.
Without too much speculation, the same motivations could be
applied to Smith. The list of stinks his provocations have landed
him in is a long and legendary one. Mick Fanning, Rip Curl, the
WSL, former BG writer Rory Parker, the Ashton Gogganses, many more
I’ve forgotten and, most notably, Hezbollah.
A good chunk of the middle third of Reports from Hell is spent
detailing the adventures of Chas and colleagues as war
correspondents for an Al Gore internet channel when Israel invaded
Lebanon. It’s very good, very funny, very tense writing. A send-up
of classic war correspondents and a damn fine account of being
taken hostage by Hezbollah during an actual war.
What makes Chas relish for the stink so comic is his lack of
genetic gifts as far as the pugilistic arts are concerned. He
looks, as my Grandaddy would say, like a “long streak of pelican
shit”. Or, as my wife whose roots are in the swamps of Essex would
say, “he’s all prick and ribs”. Which makes Smith less physically
qualified to stare down Hezbollah bro’s or infuriated surf journos
than it does to embrace designer jeans.
His development of a new genre of non-fiction, war fashion, with
it’s delicate and detailed inventories of clothing and
accoutrements pays homage to Bret Easton Ellis’ infamous character
Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.
The final third of the book, carried out in an increasingly
melancholy tone as the three protagonists began to disentangle and
the various dreams and aspirations that had united their quest
began to fade bought forth weird and conflicting feelings in
me.
It took some time to identify them.
The War on Terror, as horrific as it had been, now seemed far
enough back in the distant past to bring on a strange feeling of
nostalgia. Nostalgia for a simpler time. And despite my intense
fear of Islamic mobs, I felt strange yearnings to be among the goat
herders and believers of Yemen.
Radical Islamic fundamentalism is the new alternative discourse
claimed Josh at the beginning of the book. Despite the tale being
told from the point of view of the Americanos it was increasingly
the Yemenis and the Lebanese who’s positions I began to identify
with.
That yearning for the pre-modern may be something more universal
than accounted for.
Smith runs through a potted history of Islam, up to the
development of Al Qaeda by Yemeni-Saudi Osama Bin Laden and
Egyptian physician Ayman al-Zawahiri. My ignorance of this
geopolitical as well as religious force had been as complete as my
lack of knowledge of the surf potential of Yemen.
In a real sense, Reports from Hell, with Christian gents
analysing the Middle East is a mirror image of the book the Father
of Salafi Jihadism Sayyad Qutb wrote after returning to Egypt after
two years in America. In his book, “The America that I have Seen”
Qutb found American life primitive and shocking; he saw Americans
as “numb to faith in religion, faith in Art, and faith in spiritual
values altogether”.
It’s hard to say what Qutb would have thought of Smith and his
pals but lacking in faith would not be a criticism he could level
against them.
Courage, insouciance and a true belief somehow unite Islamic
radicalism, surf culture, war, American decadence and the hunt for
true adventure in this very funny book.
This is the first Chas Smith book I’ve read but I already know
it’s by far the best.
