97 pages • 3 hours read
The Other Side of the Sky
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Key Figures
Farah Ahmedi
Ahmedi was born in Afghanistan in 1987, at the height of the war against the occupying Soviets. During the war, she stepped on a landmine and lost one of her legs. She also lost her father and sisters to the war, and when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, she and her mother and brothers became refugees. Her brothers attempted to leave Afghanistan for Pakistan, but she has not heard from them since. Ahmedi and her mother later came to the US in 2002, when she was 14. Despite not speaking English or knowing how to read, write, and do mathematics even in her native language of Farsi, Ahmedi graduated, high school in suburban Chicago.
Ahmedi was 17 when Simon & Schuster published her memoir, The Other Side of the Sky, as part of its Simon Spotlight Entertainment imprint in 2005. Ahmedi’s memoir was published as a result of winning a contest sponsored by ABC-TV’s Good Morning America to find a first-time author with a compelling American memoir. There were over 5,000 entries in the contest. Ahmedi appeared on Good Morning America and 20/20 as one of the three finalists and went on a 10-city publicity tour. She was invited to the White House in May 2005 and became a youth ambassador for the United Nations’ Adopt-a-Minefield Program. In January 2008, at age 20, Ahmedi became a US citizen. She gave the keynote address at the naturalization ceremony in Chicago. She is now a college graduate and a mother of two.
Originally published as The Story of My Life: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky, Ahmedi told her story to Simon & Schuster writer Tamim Ansary. Ahmedi’s narrative emphasizes hope and overcoming, themes that she continues to propound as a public speaker. Her comments in the years after the book’s publication, however, acknowledge complexities about being a survivor of war that the book only alludes to obliquely. In a Chicago Tribune profile written in advance of her keynote address at the naturalization ceremony, Ahmedi says that telling her story “refreshes all the pain and losses. I come up with questions: why me, why it happened. It kind of makes me depressed.”
Fatima Ahmedi
Ahmedi’s mother is a constant in her memoir. Ahmedi describes her early in The Other Side of the Sky as beautiful but modest, a traditional Afghan woman who rejected many of the modern ways but, at the same time, was skilled at money management. As Ahmedi’s father’s tailoring business grew in Kabul, Ahmedi’s mother managed the money side of the business, shrewdly covering the family’s household expenses and putting money aside for savings. After her father and sisters die during the war, and the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, Ahmedi’s mother’s conviction about the Taliban was strong. “‘[The Taliban] killed my husband and my daughters!’ she wept. ‘And now they want my boys to go fight for them? I can’t allow it! I would rather tear out my eyes than see my boys serving the people who killed their father!’” (99-100).
Ahmedi’s brothers left Kabul headed to Pakistan. Ahmedi and her mother have not seen them since. It was soon clear to Ahmedi’s mother that she and her daughter could no longer safely remain in Afghanistan either, and she decided that they would immigrate to Pakistan also. The arduous refugee journey took a heavy toll on Ahmedi’s mother’s physical and mental health.
Ghulam Hussein and Ahmedi Siblings
Ahmedi recounts a small legend about her father that secures his character as devoted to family. As a boy, Hussein left the family village to go to Kabul to find work. He returned to the village sometime later having earned enough money to reclaim the family lands that had been lost through debts. Hussein went on to be the most successful member of his family, supporting his parents and siblings. When Ahmedi returns from her hospital stay in Germany and decides that she will wear Afghan clothes again, Hussein tells her that he will make her a brand-new wardrobe of clothes. Ahmedi’s siblings do not play a large role in The Other Side of the Sky, other than to further establish the closeness of the family unit. Ahmedi recalls playing with her siblings, performing household chores and tasks, and how her older brother would look after the rest of them.
Alyce and John Litz
Alyce Litz is a volunteer with World Relief, the charity that brought Ahmedi and her mother to the US. She also serves on the board of directors for Love, Inc., a Christian clearinghouse that serves the poor and needy in the greater suburban Chicago area. Litz met Ahmedi during her first summer in the US, when everything in her new life was still very confusing and terrifying. What began as English language tutoring blossomed into a deep friendship. Ahmedi describes Alyce Litz as a second mother, and the Litzes as her surrogate family.
Aquila Tsamir and the World Relief Staff
Various World Relief staff members facilitated Ahmedi’s re-settlement in the US Tsamir was an Afghan refugee herself and remained close to Ahmedi, helping her throughout her transition. Tsamir’s presence was especially helpful for Ahmedi’s mother, who distrusted Americans and everything about American culture for a long time.
Doctors
Due to her and her mother’s physical health problems, doctors play an important role throughout The Other Side of the Sky. Although she doesn’t name them in her narrative, they nonetheless leave an indelible impact on Ahmedi because she encounters them at especially vulnerable moments in her life. Ahmedi describes the first, the Afghan doctor who tended to her in the Kabul hospital after the landmine explosion, as compassionate and tender, but helpless to ease her suffering or provide the care she needed. The doctors in Germany, by contrast, have ample medical resources available; they are kind to Ahmedi, but perhaps because of the language and cultural barrier, do not connect with her emotionally. She and her mother receive further care in Pakistan and the US. Unsurprisingly, as a result of these early experiences with medical care, Ahmedi harbored early aspirations of becoming a doctor herself one day.
Mujahideen and the Taliban
Although no individual mujahideen or Taliban are identified in The Other Side of the Sky, their influence is closely felt throughout the first two-thirds of the book. Told from the perspective of Ahmedi’s day-to-day experiences on the ground surviving war, the book does not provide much context for the mujahideen, other than as resistance to Soviet occupation. The Taliban receive even less contextual treatment, but due to their greater lasting impact on the daily lives of people in the region, Ahmedi describes them in starker terms. While the period of the mujahideen is chaotic, with daily routines like school or the bazaar periodically disrupted by gunfire or rocket explosions, Ahmedi states that the Afghan people did not fear or loathe them. By contrast, she describes the Taliban with great fear and ire. She notes that people in Kabul, in particular, regarded the Taliban as foreigners because of their aesthetic, their culture, and their proclivity towards violence. As Ahmedi and her mother travel to, and within, Pakistan, the reader also becomes aware that the Taliban is a regional phenomenon, not one distinct to Afghanistan.
Unlock all 97 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By these authors
