I first encountered Mr. Ahmari's writing in the pages of Commentary Magazine, the only print periodical to which I still subscribe. I do so because the writing is unfailingly excellent and about topics that interest me. Mr. Ahmari's contributions were no exception. In my mind's eye I pictured him as an old, wizened Iranian Jew, highly educated and long since exiled from his homeland.
So it was a shock to learn that he was born in Tehran in 1985, and raised in a nominally Muslim, mostly secular, upper-middle class family who imagined themselves to be "intellectuals." He and his mother emigrated to America when he was 13 years old, settling in (of all places) rural Utah. There he finished high school and attended college at Utah State, eventually graduating with a degree in philosophy from the University of Washington.
So I'm a sucker for the spiritual journey memoir. The first one I read many years ago was Thomas Merton's famous Seven Storey Mountain, a book describing his journey to a Trappist monastery. I even enjoy the genre in movies--among the few films I have watched more than once is the low-brow rom-com Finding Normal. While not explicitly churchy, the lady protagonist finds love, faith and happiness in small town Normal, Louisiana.
A spiritual journey typically involves a descent into "hell" (my term) followed by a climb back into the light. That is precisely the path followed by our protagonist, including a lot of drinking and loose living. Mostly it's an intellectual journey, beginning with the faux-intellectualism of his youth and bottoming out in dissolution.
Of specific interest to this blog's readers is his stop on the way down at Trotskyism. While a student at Utah State (must've been around 2003) he contacted a grouplet in Salt Lake City called the Worker's Alliance, supposedly affiliated with the Fourth International. They published a newspaper called Equity. I have never heard of this organization before, which given the plethora of Trotskyist grouplets is not surprising. But Google doesn't help--a search for Worker's Alliance or Equity turns up no relevant results.
My hunch is that our author has changed the names so as not to embarrass anybody.
Mr. Ahmari, now committed to his new ideology, moves to Seattle where the national headquarters was located, and to complete his education at UW. The only Trotskyist organization I know of headquartered in Seattle is the Freedom Socialist Party, along with sundry splinter sects therefrom. But that group is centered more around a bespoke version of feminism than Trotskyism--a topic never mentioned in the book.
One more odd thing: Mr. Ahmari refers to his comrades as "Trotskyites," a name that in our day we found insulting and derogatory. It was the term of abuse Stalinists employed against us. Accordingly we always called ourselves "Trotskyists." Though by 2003 the Stalin/Trotsky thing may have faded into history, and perhaps that bit of political correctness was no longer necessary.
Apart from walking a few picket lines, Mr. Ahmari didn't do very much. He never reports writing for their newspaper--a natural thing for him to do. Mostly he engaged in long conversations that he perceived as indoctrination sessions. For him, Trotskyism was an intellectual waystation--there was very little about it of practical significance. In my day we would have called him a dilettante--I don't think he'd disagree with that description.
Though the book is overwhelmingly intellectual, in one episode reality breaks through. Our author is locked in a room with a bunch of very poor, very desperate men about to embark on a dangerous and illegal journey, and for whom there was no turning back. Naturally, in that environment some people behave badly. In his words:
[The] house was a kind of charnel pit or Sheol, though the people in it were yet alive. It was a void, though it existed within the boundaries of space and time. It was on fire with degradation--and sin.I wasn't there, so I don't know. But from his account I think he overstates the case. Yes, bad things happened. But there were also small acts of heroism and charity. There was degradation--but more because of poverty, panic and desperation than sin. Describing it as "Sheol" seems uncharitable.
Rather than spiritual journey, another way to read the book is as a coming of age story. In this it is remarkably similar to Hillbilly Elegy (my review here), authored by J.D. Vance. Unlike Mr. Ahmari, Mr. Vance didn't descend into "hell," but rather was born there. And the rise wasn't spiritual as much as sociological or political. Both of them found their calling at about age 30, which I think is when the (male) personality reaches maturity. (My history is similar.)
Mr. Vance, at least, is accompanied on his journey by other people, notably his sister, Lindsay. The book is as much about his grandparents as it is about him. But he acquires a wife only at the end--she arrives as a reward for successfully coming of age.
By contrast, Mr. Ahmari travels alone. His grandparents figure in the first chapter, and his mother also during the first years in Utah. But once he leaves home we barely hear from them again. I, for one, wanted very much to know how his mother made out. Unlike Mr. Vance, he gets married midway through his sojourn. The new bride makes a cameo appearance, after which he leaves her for London where he embarks on becoming a Catholic by himself.
Mrs. Ahmari must have been present (on the most important day of his life) when he'd "have the archdiocese convalidate my civil marriage." But she's not mentioned by name, and even the grammar of the sentence suggests she wasn't even there. She plays absolutely no part in his conversion, and behaves like she's a wooden post.
Weird.
There's probably an innocent explanation. Perhaps Mrs. Ahmari enjoys her privacy and doesn't want to be in the book? Or maybe he's convinced that conversion is an internal affair of the heart--solely a matter between him and God? Whatever--he comes across as a selfish cad.
How different this is from the movie Finding Normal, where the beloved is not only a suitor, but also an agent of transformation. It's the romance that makes the movie, and the movie can then carry the underlying message of faith, hope and love.
I have one more nit to pick, and only because I'm a certified geographical pedant. Mr. Ahmari's knowledge of our country's geography is simply appalling! Brownsville is not anywhere close to the Texas panhandle, nor is California north of Texas. I'm astonished that such obvious errors got by the book editors.
The above paints too negative a picture. I actually enjoyed this book--a lot. Mr. Ahmari is a good writer, it's an engaging read, I'm a fan of the genre, and it's not too long. I read it over two or three evenings just before bedtime. Beyond journeys, spiritual or otherwise, you'll learn a lot about both Iran and Utah. My review leaves out the good stuff. In part that's on purpose--go read the book for yourself.
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