March
2015
March
2015

How Lucky You Are
When you live in a country, as privileged as either England or Denmark, it is easy to get caught up in the insignificant details of your everyday life. Being forced to get out of bed at 7AM every morning can feel like the purest form of torture. And losing your mobile phone, at a party last Friday, is certainly a close equivalent to the end of the world. It is very easy to forget how grateful we truly should be, just to have a place to call our home and this is exactly what Debi Alper illustrates in her short story “How Lucky You Are” from 2010. In the story we meet the rebellious 16-year-old by the name of Max, who is tired of being told what to do. Instead he spends his days ditching school to smoke cigarettes outside the UK Borders Agency Building, where he one day accidently bumps into the Iranian girl called Ishraqi. They end up spending an eye-opening day together, where they quickly grow quite fond of each other. Ishraqi is however ripped out of Max’s life, as quickly as she originally entered it, when she is deported from England leaving Max behind with nothing but a photo to remember her by.

The end is the beginning of this particular short story, as its outcome is revealed to the reader in a reverse chronological order. Max is sitting in his bedroom looking at the photo of him and Ishraqi, unsure of whether she is just another “figment of his twisted imagination”. There is no way of knowing what events have transpired prior to this moment, but the mysterious nature of the situation surely manages to pique the reader’s interest. The term for this literary technique is called a nonlinear narrative and writers often use it to lure the reader in, as we become curious to know the story behind the relationship between the two. The actual plot unfolds in a flashback to the moments before the picture was taken, which provides the reader with the answers to the questions created by the opening in medias res.
The story is told using a third person narrator, with a main focus on Max’s point of view. The perspective changes briefly between Max, his mother (p.5,l.200) and the social worker Alexsa(p.4,l.154), but our knowledge of the situation is always restricted to one person at a time. The way that the point of view changes throughout the course of this story could be interpreted as a reference to how Max’s life is figuratively put into perspective, when he meets the beautiful Iranian girl, by the name of Ishraqi. Prior to this moment, the narrator describes him in the following way: “Max was sixteen and was focused inwards, unaware of anyone else unless they made a direct impact on him” (p.2, l.42). This description of Max illustrates the fact that he is a young guy, who lives his life like he is the centre of the universe. It could easily be construed as an actual critique of western teenagers in general, as the individualised nature of our society has resulted in a tendency to be very self-centred. Just like any other teenager, living in the western part of the world, Max has all the prerequisites for achieving great things with his life. The people around him truly believe in his potential and instead of accusing him of being lazy, when he cuts classes to smoke cigarettes, they call him “creative”(p.1, l.5) and send him off to one of the best schools in Britain. Here the so-called “boring stuff like Maths and English” will hardly take up any of Max’s time, but he still manages to focus on this one negative part about his new school, which makes him seem extremely ungrateful. As we come to learn quite early on, his behaviour cannot be excused, but maybe explained by the fact that his father left him and his mother no longer than a year ago, in the search to “find himself”(p.1.,l.12). Max remembers how he was “full of enthusiasm for his new school”(p.1,l.10), before any of this happened, which at least helps the reader to understand what might have initiated his recent destructive behaviour. Compared to the life of Ishraqi however, the severity of Max’s problems begins to fade, as we come to learn of the hardships of her upbringing. She was originally born in Iran, where she was expected to be “covered up from head to foot”(p.4.l,141) and her parents where arrested for demonstrating against the government(p.3.l,80). As she explains everything about her Iranian heritage to Max, he tries to search for something “sensitive and intelligent to say”(p.4.l,144) and he thereby reveals a more sympathetic side to himself in contrast to the harsh façade that he puts up. He finds the tragedies of Ishraqi’s life quite difficult to comprehend and it seems to be the first time that he has ever heard of the life of a refugee: “Max asked trying to wrap his head round what it must feel like to be a kid and leave everything that’s familiar and everyone you know to go to a strange country where you don’t even understand the language”(p.3.l,81). It is needless to say, that nobody can imagine how it must feel to be a refugee, before you have actually experienced it yourself. Nonetheless, Max seems to be extremely surprised, that any people actually live like fugitives, which tells us that he might not be very enlightened. His ignorance on the other hand accentuates the fact, that he lives his life in an isolated bubble, unaware of the suffering of others and how truly grateful he should be. Ishraqi is fighting a battle against deportation, in order to get her twelve GCSE’s in England, whereas Max is doing his best to avoid school by taking as few subjects as he “can get away with”(p.4.,l.134). This demonstrates the fundamental difference between the two of them and their ways of making the best of a bad situation. Max may not have a father around to help guide him “onto constructive paths”(p.1,l.6), but he has a loving mother, who supports and pays for his expensive education and that is already much more than Ishraqi could ever say. All the odds are stacked against her, but she still does her best to learn the English language, be polite to the people she meets and to utilize the possibilities of the British School System. The remarkable nature of her determination seems to have a real impact on Max, as he begins to re-examine the way he treats his mother, by attempting to imagine a world without her: “[…]what if she disappeared and he didn’t know if he would ever see her again? The thought was too awful to contemplate.” (p.4,l.130).
This quote also illustrates what seems to be the recurrent theme throughout this short story and that is the importance of appreciation: appreciating what you have, before it is gone and making the best of life’s infinite possibilities, instead of focussing on its limitations. Even though, Ishraqi is ultimately deported at the end, her determination and desire to learn still functions as a reflection of the important message behind this story. The title “How Lucky You Are”, is a reference to what Alexsa tells Max, when he realises that he will never see Ishraqi again (p.5,l.199). And it is also a piece of advice, we all could benefit from remembering from time to time, as it is easy to forget just how lucky we are to be born in a place of safety and peace.