Farah Ahmedi - The Other Side of the Sky

I want to express my gratitude to:

World Relief, for bringing my mother and me to the United States, and particularly to Liz Delquest, my education advocate at World Relief.

Love INC and its local affiliate LOVE Christian Clearinghouse and its board president, Alyce Litz, for helping me get an eye exam and eyeglasses, and for so much more.

Dr. Chris Gossett for taking care of my teeth and getting me a wonderful car, and to Dr. John Murphy for his assistance with my orthodontic needs.

Jason Easley, Patricia Juodka, Stacy Shelley, Nancy Sindelar, Adrian Buchanon, Leah Gonella, Christine Johnson, Nancy Dietz, Rose McGowen, and Katie Hubble, my volunteer tutors: I dont know where I would be without all of you.

Dr. David Watt, Dr. Joe Nemeth, and Dr. Dojna Barr for their pro bono assistance with my medical needs.

The employees of Crown Mortgage, who adopted my mother and me for Christmas in 2003, and the employees of Marianjoy Rehab Clinic, who adopted us for Christmas 2004.

Lorraine Thompson, Catherine Fitzpatrick, Joy Stroup, John Litz, Terry Litz, and the members of the Kiwanis Club for all their loving kindness and generous support.

Aquila Tsamir for her help and patience with us in those early days after our arrival.

A LYCE WANTED ME TO SHARE THE STORY OF MY LIFE. I told her that I wasnt ready, that it was too soon. Im not even nineteen years old, and I havent achieved anything yet. But Alyce said that with a life like mine, surviving itself is an achievementjust surviving.

I dont know if shes right. When I look back at my childhood in Afghanistan, it seems so far away and long ago. Back then I thought I would grow up and grow old in the city of Kabul, surrounded by my big, complicated, loving family. Little did I know I would lose most of them before I turned fourteen.

As a child, gazing at the high walls around our home compound, I longed to see what lay on the other side of my city. I never dreamed that I would see our home reduced to rubble and would end up living on the other side of the world, in the suburbs of a city called Chicago.

But in the end, I have decided to tell this story because it is not mine alone. It is the story of many people. Probably, you have read the numbers. So many people have stepped on land mines, so many have gotten hurt by war, have lost their families, fled their homes. Each of us has a story. What happened to meboth the bad and the goodreally does happen to people.

I say the bad and the good because 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.

I have seen my dreams crushed, but new ones have sprouted in their place, and some of those dreams have even come true. I have lost loved ones but not love itself. Thats what my story is about, I think. Thats the story I want to share with you now, the story of my life, so far.

E VEN THOUGH TEN YEARS HAVE PASSED, I STILL FIND it difficult to talk about the land mine. I dont like to think about it either, but on that score I dont always get to choose. One time last summer my new American friends, Alyce and John, took me to a carnival here in the suburbs of Chicago, where I live now with my mother. What a dazzling sight it was for a seventeen-year-old girl who had lived most of her life in Afghanistan and in the refugee camps of Pakistan. I had never seen anything like itthe colors, lights, noise, and spectacle. I ate cotton candy and tried my luck at a few sideshow games, and then we went to look at the rides.

We came to one called the Gondola. It was shaped like a large boat suspended from two long poles. It had many rows of seats, all facing the center. The boat was swinging back and forth when we arrived. Each time it swung in one direction, the seats on that side lifted way up, maybe a hundred feet into the air. Then it swung the other way, and the seats on the other side lifted up. It was kind of like a massive swing that went from side to side instead of forward and backward.

As the ride got going faster, people started screaming, but Alyce told me they were having fun. She said the ride scared them, but they wanted to be scared. That was what they enjoyed about the ride.

I told Alyce I wanted to try it. Alyce wasnt so sure about that, but I insisted I could handle it. So she bought some tickets, and we both climbed aboard. We went to the very end of the boat, to the seats that rose the very highest, because we wanted the full effect, the biggest scarethe most fun. The man came through and locked down a bar in front of us. That bar keeps you from falling out when the ride is going. Of course, you can still get out by climbing over the bar, but when the Gondola is swinging back and forth at full speed, who would want to?

At first the ship swung slowly. It didnt go very far in either direction. But gradually, the boat went faster and swung farther. Each swing took our seats higher, and when the boat reached the top of its swing, it seemed to pause. For an instant I felt weightless. Then, when it swung the other way, I felt as if I was falling fast. My heart came into my throat, and my throat dropped down into my stomach. It was scary but exhilarating, and I was loving that feeling of speed and of the wind in my hair.

But then at the peak of the ride, just as the boat reversed direction and our seats began to fall, the machinery sent off some kind of spark. And when that spark flashed in my eyes, it triggered something. I dropped through a trapdoor into some other reality. Suddenly, I wasnt in America on a carnival ride. I was on the ground, looking up into the sky and the sun. I had fallen out of that day and into a moment ten years in the past. Above me what I saw was that ring of faces, the people who had gathered around to gawk at me after the land mine went offit was as real to me as the clouds overhead.

So I started screaming, right there on the Gondola ride, just like I did on that terrible day. Why dont you help me? Why are you all just looking at me like that? Help me, someone help me!

It was that scene, exactly. I tried to get up, as I had that day. I wanted to be whole again. I scrambled to get away from the horror of what had happenedexcept that I was not really on the ground in Afghanistan. I was at a carnival in Wheaton, Illinois, on the Gondola, struggling to get out of my seat on a ride that was going a hundred miles an hour, back and forth, up and down. Thank God Alyce was there by my side, as she has been by my side so often in these last few years. Thank God she knew at once what I was about to do, and she flung her arms around me and kept me in my place and shook me and called into my ear, Wake up, Farah! Wake up!