Ahmedi was born in Afghanistan in 1987, at the height of the war against the occupying Soviets. During the war, she stepped on a landmine and lost one of her legs. She also lost her father and sisters to the war, and when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, she and her mother and brothers became refugees. Her brothers attempted to leave Afghanistan for Pakistan, but she has not heard from them since. Ahmedi and her mother later came to the US in 2002, when she was 14. Despite not speaking English or knowing how to read, write, and do mathematics even in her native language of Farsi, Ahmedi graduated, high school in suburban Chicago.

Ahmedi was 17 when Simon & Schuster published her memoir, The Other Side of the Sky, as part of its Simon Spotlight Entertainment imprint in 2005. Ahmedi’s memoir was published as a result of winning a contest sponsored by ABC-TV’s Good Morning America to find a first-time author with a compelling American memoir. There were over 5,000 entries in the contest. Ahmedi appeared on Good Morning America and 20/20 as one of the three finalists and went on a 10-city publicity tour.