Sonderbooks Book Review of The Story of My Life

Reviewed September 13, 2005.
Simon Spotlight Entertainment, New York, 2005. 249 pages.
Available at Sembach Library (MCN B AHM)

Farah Ahmedi has lived an incredible life in only seventeen years. When she was seven years old, she took a shortcut on her way to school across a field and stepped on a land mine. She survived by being flown to a hospital in Germany, with thirty other Afghan children, but without her family. She stayed there two years and recovered, but she lost her leg.

When she came home, she had to get used to being in Afghanistan again, with her family. She even had trouble remembering how to speak Farsi. The Taliban had taken control, so there were changes for everyone. Months later, as she was beginning to adjust, a bomb fell on her house while she was at the bazaar with her mother and two brothers. Her father and two sisters were killed, and they lost everything they owned.

Later, her brothers left to try to make it to Pakistan for fear of the Taliban. The Taliban had a special hatred toward Hazaras, the ethnic group they belonged to. So they were afraid the boys would be executed if they weren't drafted. Farah and her mother never heard from them again.

With no men to "protect" them, Farah and her mother didn't dare even go out in public. Farah only had one leg, and her mother was very sick with asthma. Farah tells how they escaped Afghanistan to Pakistan, and then managed to get visas to go as refugees to America.

She describes their terror at coming to a new place where no one spoke their language. Rumors convinced Farah's mother that they were being sold into slavery. But they got to America and began adjusting. Farah started high school, even though she had only completed second grade in Afghanistan.

Farah's is an amazing and moving story. She has had to show great courage to get this far. She says, "Out of my losses have come tremendous gifts as well. Looking back, I see that my life could have ended so many times, except for unexpected strangers who reached out to me in loving kindness. After I lost my leg, I thought I could never know happiness again, and yet that very loss opened the world to me in strange ways and showed me wonders that I had never imagined."

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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

*****The Story of My Life*

An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky

by Farah Ahmedi

with Tamim Ansary