The
Story of My Life:
An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky by Farah Ahmedi, Tamim
Ansary
"I
was late to school, and that's all I could think about. I started
across the field. And then suddenly a fire flashed in my face and the
earth seemed to move beneath my feet. I remember a shower of soil and
then nothing. I woke up on the ground, surrounded by a crowd, men and
boys...no women. They were all staring down at me with huge eyes.
Their lips were moving, but I could hear no voices. All I heard was a
loud ringing in my ears."
How is that for a gripping opening?
All the more if you realize that this novel is nonfiction. It is an autobiography.
Farah
Ahmedi is born at a time when the war between the mujahideen
and the Soviets reaches its peak in Afghanistan. Bombs are falling
all over the country, and her native city of Kabul is bursting at the seams with hundreds
of thousands of people looking for homes and jobs. The sounds of
gunfire and fighter planes are as normal to Farah as the sounds of
traffic or children playing are to a schoolgirl in America. When
Farah steps on a land mine on her way to school, her world becomes
much smaller than the dreams and hopes in her heart. She begins to
learn--slowly--that ordinary people, often strangers, have immense
power to save lives and restore hope.
"The
Story of My Life: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky"
recounts an epic journey. It shows what a childhood in
Afghanistan is like, where classrooms are bare spaces with only
chalkboards on the walls and are filled with more students than seats
(and no books). In Kabul, they
cancel school because of rockets and bombings; in Chicago, Farah
might have a snow day. In Kabul, a schoolgirl wears a black dress and
a white headscarf; inAmerica, girls need the right jeans and trendy
tops.
Thanks
to a number of good people who crossed her path at critical moments,
Farah is thriving. She may be haunted by her past, but she is no
longer enslaved by it. Farah is now a proud American citizen and, in this time of new refugees coming from another country, this might be timely read.
