'Fire' From the World's Front Lines

Events have overtaken Sebastian Junger’s new book Fire with the same uncertainty and rapidity of the wildfires that raced across the western United States in the title essay. What was originally supposed to be a book about dangerous professions and later remade into an compilation of essays has turned into a book tour on the fears and unknown variables of America’s expanding war in Afghanistan.

Junger has spent much of the last decade travelling the world and investigating some of the world’s trouble spots. In his new book—the first since his award-winning debut novel The Perfect Storm—he brings together previously published essays from the world’s front lines in a stunningly rich montage of people and death. In essence, it is a book about voyeurism—about our need to watch from the front lines of a war or to stare transfixed at dancing flames of fire—but the underlying messages go far deeper.

Junger touches on everything from the war in Kosovo to the deadly diamond trade in Sierra Leone, the dispute between Greece and Turkey over the island of Cyprus to the moving tale of the last living whale harpoonist, Athneal Ollivierre, from the Caribbean island of Bequia. In doing so, we learn little about the greater geopolitical issues involved. Instead we see the men and women who are left behind when war ends and those who view forest fires less as an uncontrolled fire and more as a chance for employment and overtime.

As rich and compelling as Junger’s prose is, the gathering of articles from Vanity Fair, Men’s Journal and Outside Magazine hardly seem a worthy sequel to his expansive Perfect Storm. What makes the book worthwhile though, are two messages for America in the wake of last month’s terrorist attacks. The first pure happenstance, the second more obvious.

Because it takes months for a book to go to press, it is entirely coincidence that Junger’s last chapter, the most recent essay, narrates his time last year with Ahmed Shah Massoud, then the leader of Afghanistan’s rebel Northern Alliance. Last year, when Junger spent a month with Massoud in the mountains of the Afghanistan, Massoud was an unknown in the western world—despite orchestrating some of the most brilliant warfare waged in the 1980s and 1990s and holding off first the Soviet Army and then the Taliban regime for years. Many people now, however, know him as the man assassinated by Al Qaeda terrorists just days before the Sept. 11 hijackings. (Terrorism experts believe Osama Bin Laden meant to prevent him from participating in any retaliatory action led by the United States.)

Since Fire came out only days after the attacks, Junger’s book tour has less been about fire, whales or diamonds and more about trying to offer his perspective, having seen first-hand the conflict and turmoil of Afghanistan. “Events now seem so important, so delicate.... Every so often, my publisher has to call and say, ‘Hey, you’re trying to sell this book,’” he explained at a reading for WordsWorth Books last week. As an inquisitive audience grilled him on Afghanistan, his time there and the lessons he learned, his humanity spilled out and he spoke as someone who lost a cherished friend in Massoud. He discussed the “patchwork quilt of control” in Afghanistan and how the United States left the country to rot and fend for itself after the Russians pulled out in the 1980s: “We supported the war, but not the peace.” Junger now sees his tour as a chance to bridge the two cultures.

And, to a country whose people could hardly locate Afghanistan on a map a month ago, Junger has important lessons to teach, having written one of the few western accounts published about the current state of the country. If one is familiar with The Perfect Storm and Junger’s other writing, it is easy to see that his books have little to do with the often violent and harrowing situations that he covers: His writing is the story of people and their fight to live their lives, whether it be preserving a centuries-old whaling custom or trying to live amid war and ethnic strife. Massoud fought so that he could live in his homeland as he wished without brutal oppression (the same can be said of the subjects of his essays on Kosovo and Cyprus), just as the Taliban soldiers who faced him across the miles of battlefield are mostly not Islamic fanatics but young conscripts who want only to go home alive.

Although his Afghanistan essay, “Lion in Winter,” might appear to be the most relevant and timely, his most important point resides in his other essays, primarily the title essay on forest fire-fighting and a historical essay on a nineteenth-century fur-trapper. Junger offers a valuable lesson for life in post-Sept. 11 America: what heroism really means.

At his reading last week, Junger said he had originally hoped the book would portray real heroes and discount the harrowing tales of thrill-seekers and those who participate in extreme sports. “The fact that someone can free-solo a rock face or balloon half-way around the world is immensely impressive, but it’s not strictly necessary. And because it’s not necessary, it’s not heroic. Society would continue to function quite well if no one ever climbed another mountain,” he writes.

As Junger sees it, there is much more dangerous work—like working an oil rig or fire-fighting—that is necessary and therefore heroic. A month ago, that was a lesson worth teaching, but as New York continues to bury its fire-fighters and police officers at a rate of 20 to 25 a day, the country hardly needs reminding now. Nonetheless, Junger’s point is one that always bears repeating. His writing may not fully elucidate the issues of Islam fanactism, the Cold War and other global issues, but it is also important to hear the stories of the people who live those issues on a daily basis. In Fire, Junger takes us as close as we can get to the front lines to watch real heroes without being able to smell the gunpower ourselves.

FIRE

by Sebastian Junger

W.W. Norton

256 pp., $24.95