97 pages • 3 hours read
Farah Ahmedi, Tamim AnsaryThe Other Side of the Sky
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2005A 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.
Chapters 10-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “Living as a Refugee”
Escaping Afghanistan began Ahmedi’s life as a refugee. She and her mother relied on the kindness of fellow travelers in Peshawar, but then they took a train for two nights and days to Quetta. The train went slowly and stopped every few minutes; every moment was trepidatious. They were the only females without male companions surrounded by strange men. In that region of Pakistan, the men all dressed in the style of the Taliban, leaving Ahmedi and her mother on edge the entire trip. They reached their cousin in Quetta, but there was little room for them, and soon they had to move out. They found a small room to rent, but could not earn enough money to keep it, and ended up in a United Nations refugee camp set up outside of Quetta.
The camp was simply a large collection of tents out in the open, and with winter came howling winds and freezing temperatures. Ahmedi’s mother lost weight, and her cough grew worse; Ahmedi repeatedly had to take her into town to the hospital, where she got better having shelter. Her health deteriorated again once they returned to the refugee camp. By the following winter, her health was in decline again, and Ahmedi’s spirits were low. They both felt hopeless. After her mother survived another coughing attack, Ahmedi decided that she probably would not make it to spring if they did not find a place to live in town. With no prospect of finding work, they made arrangements with a family to exchange room and board for work.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Talking to God”
They lived with a well-to-do merchant family, and Ahmedi had to take care of the five children and clean the entire house, including scrubbing the paved courtyard on her hands and knees. On top of all of the work, one of the girls in the family would torment and taunt Ahmedi. Since Ahmedi could not risk getting in trouble with the girl’s parents and losing shelter for her mother, Ahmedi felt she was at the mercy of this girl’s manipulations. Later, once she was living in the US, Ahmedi saw the movie Cinderella. In the middle of the movie, Ahmedi started crying because she saw her own situation in Quetta reflected in Cinderella’s. Ahmedi was almost despondent with her situation.
One night, after everyone in the house had gone to sleep, she went out into the courtyard and gazed up at the stars. All of the buzz tormenting her inside her head—her eroding prosthetic leg, her ailing mother, the girl’s daily torments, her lost brothers—began to recede as the same stars that used to hold so much wonderment for her in second grade again captivated her. With her face turned up to the night sky, she spoke directly to God. She spoke from her heart, and for the first time in her life, she totally and truly surrendered to Allah. And with that surrender, Ahmedi writes, a change began. She felt it in that moment, and the feeling grew stronger in the days that followed. One night, she looked up into the heavens and saw a single shooting star. She knew that Allah was with her and that the star meant something. Sure enough, a few days later, she heard the news that a thousand Afghan refugees were to be resettled in America.
Chapters 10-11 Analysis
In these chapters, Ahmedi emerges as both her mother’s protectorate and the protagonist in her own life’s story. Her mother’s deteriorating health, coupled with her grief and her fear that further loss was around every corner, left her virtually helpless. It was up to Ahmedi to not only work to support her mother, but also to make the decisions necessary for their survival. It was not mere necessity that occasioned Ahmedi’s emergence as virtual head of household. Drawing upon her early experiences in Germany, she was driven to not simply survive but to find a better life for herself and her mother. At times, the stark contrast between what she knew life could be like in places like Germany, and what she was enduring as a refugee in Pakistan, made her angry, resentful, and depressed. Turning the unknown—how would she be able to reach the life she had glimpsed in Germany—over to faith, released her heart from fear, and she was thus able to navigate the remaining obstacles in her path.
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