“How Lucky You Are” is a short story by Debi Alper and was published in 2010. The story begins with in medias res which means that the story is starting in a midpoint and it is about a boy named Max and an Iranian girl named Ishraqi. Max has a crush on Ishraqi. The situation between max and Ishraqi changes the way that Max treats his mom. The story takes place in Britain and the plot of the story takes place in one day. The story is told in a third-person-view, and has an open end.
The story has 3 parts:
The first part is based on a flashback, where we get to know when Max’s dad left the family. The story takes place in South London in Croydon where Max and his family live. They live nearby the UK Border Agency in Croydon Town Centre, and the UK Border Agency becomes the central setting in the story. In the story the area where the main action takes place is illustrated as grey and without much color and “life”. The building of the UK Border Agency is a large building made of concrete, which also makes the atmosphere at the building a sad and grey environment. Max is a student at the creative “Brit School”, but he doesn’t appreciate that he is a student at the school. Max is a sixteen-year-old boy who speaks slang, smokes cigarettes and “bunks of school”.
But one morning, changes Max’s view in life, that morning Max skips a class and smokes outside the UK Border Agency, and accidently a girl knocks into him. It shows that she has a meeting at the agency. Max can’t stop staring at her eyes and her hair. He thinks she’s beautiful, and he starts talking to her. The girl’s name is Ishraqi. She tells that she is at the agency to seek asylum, she goes to the meeting but doesn’t come back. She was send back to Iran. Max was so crushed that he began to cry.
The relationship between Max and his parents is very problematic, because he is very angry at his father because he left him and this part of Max’s life has had a huge impact of how he