Book Review--The Story of My Life: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky, by Farah Ahmedi with Tamim Ansary

This is an amazing book. It is the story of an Afghan girl, Farah, who overcame amazing hardships in her life. Born in Kabul in 1987 during the height of the war between the mujahideen and the Soviets, Farah nonetheless describes her early childhood as quite happy. She knew nothing about the war. Sure, rockets landed in distant neighborhoods and there was always the sound of distant gunfire, but everyone was used to that. She did not often leave the family compound on her own, and when she did, she didn't go far, just to relatives' houses if they lived close by, the bakery, or to her father's tailoring shop. She learned little about the city of Kabul itself.

When Farah was six, she started school. School was much less intense in Afghanistan; she started at 8 am and went until 10:30 am, and that included recess. They had no books, and not even enough benches for all the students (about 30 in a classroom). They just had a teacher and a chalkboard. Farah loved school because she learned about the world beyond her own family.
It was her love of school that led her to make a nearly fatal mistake. One morning she overslept, and in her rush to get to school, she took a shortcut and stepped on a landmine.

To get medical care, she had to go to Germany. A German organization came to Kabul every three months or so and took wounded Afghan children back to Germany for medical care. Her family wasn't permitted to come, though, so she had to go to a strange country alone at the age of 7. There one leg was amputated and she got a prosthetic leg. Her other leg was also injured, but it didn't have to be amputated. She did have to have surgery on it due to infection, though, and can no longer bend it at the knee. Her knee was removed, and her thighbone fused to her shinbone. Her injuries had also affected her digestive system, and she was unable to eat solid food for several months. Farah stayed in Germany for two years. She was well enough to go home after a year and a half, but she could not go home. The war in and around Kabul had intensified, and all flights were canceled. She was sent to a youth hostel to live with other children waiting to go home. There she got a sense of what it would be like to live in Germany, how free the women were and how modern the place was. She felt conflicted about returning to Afghanistan. Of course she missed her family terribly and wanted to see them, but she felt that life in Germany was much better.

At age nine, she returned to Afghanistan. The culture shock was hard. For starters, she wanted to wear her German clothes and had actually forgotten some Farsi, since no one spoke it to her in Germany. No one went to school much. When she had been in school before, it was sometimes closed due to a "bad rocket day"; now every day was like that. A few months after Farah had returned home, tragedy struck. Farah's sisters and father were killed when a rocket struck their family compound. Farah had been out shopping with her mother and brothers. It was only a few days later when the Taliban gained control over Kabul.

Farah notes that the Taliban had been "just another army" to them at first. When they gained control, they were just voices on the radio in the beginning, broadcasting their rules, since no one dared to leave their houses. One rule was that women weren't allowed in public without a chadari (what we call a burqa) and a male escort. Many didn't even own burqas anymore. Furthermore, the Taliban hated Farah's ethnic group, the Harzaras. Boys as young as 10 or 11 were being drafted for the Taliban army, but in the case of Farah's brothers, there was a real fear that they might be executed rather than drafted, due to their ethnicity. In the end, fearful for their sons, she and their Hazara neighbors sent their sons off together, to try and escape to Pakistan. They sent them all off together for protection, but they weren't even sure how to get to Pakistan or what the boys would do when they got there. Contact was also difficult. Kabul no longer had phone service, nor did the country have any real mail service anymore. Usually only hand-carried letters got through. Farah never saw or heard from her brothers again.

Several months later, Farah and her mother also escaped. They hadn't gone with her brothers for fear of slowing them down, with Farah's prosthetic leg and her mother's asthma. They managed to get into Pakistan despite difficulties in getting across the border. They stayed with her mother's cousin, but there really wasn't room. They tried to find a room on their own, but since there was no man with them and they had little money, it was difficult. They got evicted from one place and ended up in a refuge camp, where Farah's mother's asthma got worse. So Farah managed to find another place for them to stay, where they could get free room and board in exchange for doing housework for the family. It helped her mother's asthma, but Farah and her mother were treated more or less like slaves. Farah wasn't attending school, and there seemed to be little hope for getting out of their situation.

Then one day, they heard that 1000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan were going to be taken to America (through a private Christian organization called World Relief). Farah was overjoyed and determined to sign up. She had to convince her mother, though. Her mother was convinced that they would be sold into slavery--or worse. She had actually heard that old people in America were sent to the soap factory and made into soap! Farah convinced her that it was like Germany. There were so many other refugees that they had to fight their way to the front; there was no real line. On their third day of waiting, a man came out and said they were taking the wounded and disabled first, and he happened to see Farah. He asked what had happened to her, and she told him about stepping on the land mine as a child. Farah and her mother were allowed inside to apply to go to America.

They had gone through the entire long and arduous process and were set to go to America when September 11 happened. They were then told to forget it, that because of Osama Bin Laden, they might never be able to go to America. But several months later, the program was back on, and they were able to come here. They were placed in Chicago with an American family, because the organization had not been able to arrange housing for them yet. But this news was terrifying to Farah and her mother; they were convinced that their worst fears were coming true and they were going to be slaves. Even the Farsi translator could not convince them that things were going to be okay, that these were good people. It didn't help that the American family with whom they were placed did not speak Farsi. For example, when they showed Farah and her mother the bathroom and kitchen, they assumed the couple was showing them not so they could make themselves comfortable, but because they'd be expected to clean them. They would not eat any food they were offered, figuring that at best it broke the dietary rules of Islam and at worst might be laced with poison. The stress led to a severe asthma attack for Farah's mother. She was rushed to the hospital, where she had to stay for a week. Farah stayed with her and slept on a cot by her mother's bed every night.

Fortunately, World Relief had secured housing for them in that time. They were finally able to relax in their own apartment. Their first few months in America were spent securing refugee status, getting public aid, and so on. Farah started summer ESL classes, which exhausted her--four hours a day of having to concentrate really hard. A couple of volunteers came by to help them with their English, and Farah developed a close relationship with one, a woman named Alyce. Alyce also helped them get some things they needed, like American clothes. It was a relief not to stand out in their Afghan attire.

School has been difficult for Farah, though she has done well. She hadn't really gone to school since stepping on the land mine in the middle of second grade, so she didn't learn to read until coming to America, where she learned how to read and write in English. She basically skipped grades 2-8. Farah wants to go to college, though she is still deciding what she wants to study. She also hopes to see Afghanistan again to help people over there. She considers herself both Afghan and American. Her mother has had a harder time adjusting, but she has been doing better, too. She is taking an English class and socializing with some other Afghan women in her neighborhood. Finally, her mother has told Farah she is glad that Farah brought her to America.

One thing that made me sad is that Farah mentioned that she has no American friends her own age. Most of her classes are non-ESL classes now, but the other kids, though friendly enough, haven't really reached out to form friendships. She says she understands it is hard for the American kids to reach out, but it's harder for refugee kids, who are often ashamed of their poverty and relatively poor English skills and just generally being out of place. She wishes more American kids would take the first step in starting friendships. Maybe things will be better for her in college, where people are more open about making new friends.

This book was so inspiring to read. It was certainly one of the most interesting books I have read in awhile, since her experiences are obviously so different from mine, and my knowledge of Afghanistan was (and still is) quite limited. And Farah and her mother have overcome so much. It puts my relatively mundane concerns into perspective, that's for sure. It's something I think everyone should read, both for the learning experience and the inspirational message.