From Fire, by Water
By Sohrab Ahmari
Ignatius, 240pp, £18/$22
My first thought when reading Sohrab Ahmari’s From Fire by Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith was, “Did he write his memoir too soon?” Sohrab only converted three years ago and he’s even younger than me (which, trust me, makes him very young), and some biographies do suffer from a lack of hindsight. Justin Bieber’s First Step 2 Forever: My Story was written when he was just 16, and it shows.
Sohrab, thankfully, is wise beyond his years and has led a life that is both exotic and surprisingly universal. He grew up in the Iran of the 1980s, a theocracy that tried to turn the clock back, an Islamic republic in which the heroes were suicide bombers and being caught with alcohol could get you lashed. And yet, when the police weren’t looking, Sohrab’s family debated, drank and even provided custom for a huge black market in pirate VHS tapes. Whenever you try to impose an idea on a populace, no matter how good, you generally turn them against it. If the regime should fall, jokes the author, it will leave behind the largest concentration of atheists on the face of the planet.
