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.
Symbols & Motifs
The Sky, Its Other Side, and the Stars in Between
The title of Ahmedi’s memoir is also the single most enduring motif of the book. The title comes from her childhood memory of her second-grade teacher. Ahmedi recalls wondering what would happen if she climbed up a long ladder to touch the sky and peer through to the other side. When she learned that the world was not flat, that you cannot touch the sky, and that the stars are bigger than the earth, she was inspired more than ever to reach the other side of the sky. The difference being that from that moment, the other side ceased being a literal destination and became metaphorical. The other side represented connection to a wider world, with all of its diverse peoples, cultures, and possible ways of living life. In an immediate sense, the other side of the sky propelled Ahmedi towards her education. Her exposure to Western society during her stay in Germany enhanced this hunger for education. Her yearning for education and her knowledge that the world held more in store for her than she had yet experienced, sustained her during the dark years as a refugee in Pakistan.
The sky is also a metaphor for Ahmedi’s connection to Allah. It was through the night sky, in the glow of the stars, that she first fully surrendered to Allah. Throughout her memoir, the night sky held Ahmedi in its heavenly embrace, with a warm reassurance that the harsh light of day could not provide. The night sky dropped a veil over the ugliness of the present, making it easier for her to envision the glorious unfolding of future possibilities. The motif of the sky and its many other sides, littered with the glittering star-jewels of hope to remind you to keep struggling, illustrate that faith creates perspective, and perspective can keep you alive until those stars become reality.
The sky and its other sides also imply a dichotomy between Western and Middle Eastern societies. Although not quite conflated with heaven and hell, Ahmedi’s sky motif positions the West on the way to heaven, while the Middle East is construed as something akin to, or along the path towards, hell. At the very least, they are opposites. Just as Ahmedi learned as a child that the sky is not a fixed barrier, but a continuous atmosphere, an always receding horizon, so too the distance between Afghanistan and the US is not finite. It is not natural for Afghanistan—or any national community—to be mired in war and suffering, any more than it is natural for places like the US to amass great wealth and conveniences. The latter realized success through hard work, Ahmedi observes, and the former can get there too.
The Hero’s Journey
The Other Side of the Sky highlights the plight of the Afghan refugee by narrating Ahmedi’s experience through the literary trope of the hero’s journey. The scholar of comparative mythology and comparative religion, Joseph Campbell (The Hero With a Thousand Faces, The Power of Myth), showed how many world traditions were replete with their own versions of the journey of the archetypal hero. Despite the many culturally specific differences, each mythology shares common features.
In the hero’s journey, the hero is called to purpose in a manner that singles her out from her people in some fashion. In this case, Ahmedi is exposed to a worldly awareness at a young age that fuels her hunger for knowledge and a broader understanding of humanity than is normally possible for a young girl in late twentieth-early twenty-first century Afghanistan. Though called, the hero’s journey is filled with trials meant to test her faith and to reveal her true character. Ahmedi faces numerous trials as a refugee, from the dangerous journeys to and around Pakistan, to protecting her mother’s health and providing her with shelter and food.
In addition to the dangers in the environment, the hero faces tests of a physical and mental nature. For Ahmedi, her leg injuries were an early test of her mettle for leadership. Once this test is passed, her prosthetic leg serves as a marker of the hero’s difference in spiritually extraordinary ways. It is likely that she and her mother would not have made it to the US without her injury, for that is how the World Relief agency staff identified her out of the thousands of refugee applicants.
The mental trials, too, came in many forms. In Pakistan, Ahmedi had to fend off the nay-sayers who told her that she could not go to America and that the refugee program was in fact modern day slavery. She continued to endure such trials as a teenager in America. With each trial, Ahmedi’s faith is tested and strengthened, revealing a character worthy of her anointed status as a hero. Her re-settlement in America allows her to realize the hero’s return to peace and stability. In this case, Ahmedi’s mother’s health vastly improves, and for her part, Ahmedi is able to progress through a number of the typical American adolescent rites of passage—but with an enlightened appreciation of humanity’s fragility that is wise beyond her years. This insight is the true fruit of her journey.
From the perspective of the hero’s journey, Ahmedi’s story shifts from one of victimhood and helplessness to one of overcoming and self-determination. Even though she relied heavily on the charity of others, as all refugees must do, her story reveals that her strength of character and belief are what allowed her to make it where so many others do not. The hero’s journey, therefore, makes her relatable to an American audience deeply and unconsciously invested in cultural notions of individualism, hard work, and overcoming the odds. It is just as likely, however, that Ahmedi un-self-consciously narrated her life experience in a way that simply dovetailed well with the hero’s journey. Indeed, Campbell himself would probably pronounce this scenario as the more likely one. Campbell would explain that the hero trope is so deeply ingrained in cultural mythology, including in Islam and Afghan history, that it would naturally frame Ahmedi’s recollection of her own experiences. Interestingly, this hero’s journey is common to secular and Christian American mythos, on the one hand, and to Islam and Afghan mythologies, on the other hand—making these two cultures much more similar internally than they often appear.
High-Heeled Shoes
The high-heeled shoes appear twice in the memoir. First, they function as encouragement from the Afghan doctor, who tells Ahmedi the Germans will have her in high-heeled shoes in no time. Here, the shoes represent some form of commonality for Ahmedi. As a young child who has lost the use of both legs at this point, the doctor encourages her to think that she will be back to her former self with the help of the Germans. Later, Ahmedi recalls the high-heeled shoes when she participates in a fashion show in America. While she is never the same as before the accident physically, the way she presumed the Afghan doctor was suggesting she would be, she feels a sense in this moment that the doctor truly meant that she would find some kind of femininity and beauty, even with her physical difference. Her understanding of the high-heeled shoes changes with her character development—she is shifting from the idea that she’s a victim and is coming to embrace her body with its abilities and limitations.
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