The Other Side of the Sky

The comparisons between home before and home today is perhaps inevitable in a refugee’s story. Although Ahmedi missed her family during the almost two years she spent rehabilitating in Germany, she feared returning to Afghanistan because she noted how modern and peaceful life was in Germany. She wondered why Afghans seemed destined to fight each other, while Germans lived peacefully. She longed for the educational and career opportunities that German women enjoyed. Comparing Afghanistan to Germany, Ahmedi writes about Germany: “This is better. I want to have a life like this—getting educated, working, supporting myself, making my own choices” (68). The contrast between Afghanistan, Germany, and the US is sharp primarily because of war. The instability of war and foreign interference has been a steady feature of Afghanistan since at least the nineteenth century. Such instability has a cumulative negative effect on social and economic development that contributes to the contrast portrayed in The Other Side of the Sky between Afghan life and that of Germany and the US

Ahmedi’s comparisons come from a child’s vantage point of wartime conditions, without the benefit of historical, political, or global perspective. Germans, of course, are notorious for having fought each other to the point of genocide recently; and American society continues to be riven with racist violence.