The Story of My Life
Subtitle: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Published: April 22, 2005
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9781416906704
Subjects: Personal Memoirs; General; Biography And Autobiography; Emigration And Immigration; Biography & Autobiography; Biography / Autobiography; United States; Biography/Autobiography; Refugees; Land mine victims; Biography & Autobiography / General; Biography; Women; Afghanistan
First sentence: EVEN THOUGH TEN YEARS HAVE PASSED, I STILL FIND it difficult to talk about the land mine.
Description: Ahmedi was born just as the war between the mujahideen and the Soviets reaches its peak in Afghanistan. The sounds of gunfire and fighter planes were as normal to her as the sounds of traffic or children playing are to a schoolgirl in America. When she stepped on a land mine on her way to school, she began to learn--slowly--that ordinary people, often strangers, have immense power to save lives and restore hope. She was taken from a childhood in Afghanistan, where the classrooms are naked chambers with only chalkboards on the walls and are filled with more students than seats (and no books), to a Chicago adolescence, where teenagers struggle to decide whether to try out for school plays, whom to take to the homecoming dance, and where to go to college. This story was selected from hundreds submitted to ABC's Good Morning America.