Run For Your Life by Jane Mitchell

Azari's life has been split in two. The first part of her life was in her village in her home country with her mother and father, her older sister Sharnaz, her younger brothers Kashif and Musa, and her friends Iman and Ruba. The second part of her life is in Ireland where they arrived after hiding among the containers on a ship. 

After being brought to land, Azari and her mother go to the International Protection Office where they are interviewed by a man. In Azari's culture, women do not speak to strange men. Her mother who cannot read or write, refuses to be interviewed by him, leaving fifteen-year-old Azari to answer his questions. Although it is irregular, they allow Azari to tell her story, one that brings up powerful memories, ones she is scared to remember, scared to forget.

After filing an application for asylum, Azari and her mother leave the Centre where they have been staying and go into an old, dark house that is part of the Direct Provision. Azari's mother spends most of her days in bed sleeping, leaving Azari to figure out things on her own. She arranges to meet Sheila from legal aid, who reviews her story. Sheila is not happy that she has to interview Azari rather than her mother.

Weeks pass, Azari begins to learn English and begins to consider resuming running. She purchases leggings, running shorts, and running shoes, after traveling by herself to a nearby department store. But her mother is frantic because respectable women don't go out alone and they don't run either. Soon Azari and her mother are moved to another Direct Provision Centre in a small town. They are placed in a room on the first floor that has one large bed and a broken wardrobe. Azari begins running as a way to cope with these changes, giving her a feeling of control. Although this upsets her mother, a black woman named Princess who also lives in the building, encourages Azari.

She starts school in January, in a class with girls two years younger. Azari finds reading English difficult and has never studied geography, history, science or advanced maths. She also attends what the Irish girls call "Black School", a mix of students from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East to help catch up. In gym class, Miss Cullen encourages Azari to join the runners club but she has no means to travel there and there are other issues as well. Azari begins to gradually make friends: an Irish girl named Emer invites her to join the school's lunchtime book club, and Robert, a boy who is part of Miss Cullen's running club, asks her to join him for runs around the village. Running with Robert brings Azari great joy but at the same time she knows this will not meet with her mother's approval. 

As their application for asylum moves forward towards the interview, Azari and her mother must also deal with increasing racism from the villagers, that eventually puts all the refugees in danger. Nevertheless, Azari's taste of freedom, helps her to stay focused on moving forward in every part of her new life in Ireland.

Discussion

Run For Your Life explores the plight of new immigrants to Ireland, the Direct Provision Office which handles immigrants to the country, and the practice of honor killings in some countries. The main character, Azira narrates events as they settle in Ireland, but in flashbacks, also reveals why they had to flee their country, leaving behind family and culture.

Mitchell tackles a large number of issues in this novel including honor killings, forced marriage, domestic abuse, the education of girls, garment factory workers rights, and even acid attacks on women. These issues are significant for the girls and women in Azari's home village. For example, Sharnaz is to be married off, against her will, to an old villager to pay off the family debt. When she runs away and is recaptured, she is to be stoned to death to restore the family and village honor. Sharnaz and Azari, like many girls in the developing world, are taken out of school and sent to work long hours in poor working conditions in a garment factory. Their father frequently beats their mother, who has little say in anything that happens to herself or her children.

Once she arrives in Ireland, Azari is exposed to views that are quite different from those in her village. For example, she has been told by her mother that she must never be alone with a boy or a man, that they will hurt her and bring shame to her. "Boy's aren't safe.", her mother warns. As a result, Azari, doesn't know if she is safe to run with Robert, or even to spend time with him just talking. To do so in her culture back home is shameful. "Then of course, there's the boy in the library. He had a friendly face. I liked talking to him. I liked his smile. But Mother, Sharnaz, Father, the village women, the Farooqs, in fact, probably every person I have ever known, would tell me no respectable woman should be alone with a boy. Men take a woman's honour." However, Princess challenges Azari, telling her, "Sure, some men are not safe...but not all men and boys are not safe and not all the time."

Azari also encounters a much different perspective about her body and menstruation. Azari has been told by her mother that during menstruation she is "impure and unclean" and she is given a set of rules to follow: she cannot attend school, cannot cook food, and must keep her period a secret. Significantly, she is sent to forage in the village rubbish heap. The pamphlets Azari finds in the library change everything. "They tell me things I never knew about my own body. How it works. How I'm not unclean or impure, although that's still how I think of it.  I open the packets and wrappers. Look at the products. Think about how this changes everything I thought I knew. And how I might change what I do from now on."

Mitchell emphasizes the difficulty refugees have in settling in Ireland. Not only are they faced with differences in culture and beliefs as mentioned above, but they also enter a system, called Direct Provision in Ireland, that sees them languishing for years as their application for asylum is processed. In the meantime, they experience poor, crowded living conditions, have limited access to higher education and are often isolated, affecting their mental health and making integration more difficult. In Run For Your Life, Azari faces racial discrimination at school and outright hostility in the small community where they are re-located. Eventually, their Direct Provision house is attacked and set fire to, forcing them to be moved again. 

Despite all the challenges Azari has encountered, she is courageous, and determined to live a life of her own choosing. Run For Your Life ends on a hopeful note, with Azari excited for the future and the possibilities it holds.

Run For Your Life offers a unique perspective on the refugee situation in Ireland. The colourful cover design blends together images from Azari's home country (possibly India??), colourful and sunny, and her new home in Ireland, rainy and green.

Book Details:

Run For Your Life by Jane Mitchell
Dublin, Ireland:    2022
251 pp.