Jan-Juba Arway’s young life was marked by periods of flight.
When she was a baby, her family fled from South Sudan to Sudan. There, Arway fled to a nunnery to avoid ending up like her peers: married and pregnant. Her family came to collect her.
When she was 14 years old, they fled again to Egypt. There, a man followed Arway home and asked her family to marry her. They said yes; she was soon pregnant.
In the U.S., she ran again, this time from her house and husband in Arizona. She packed her four children in the back of a car and drove 2,300 miles to a women’s shelter in Syracuse, far from her husband and far from those she loved: her mother and sister.
For all refugees, the culture they carry from their home countries can be both comforting and constraining. Women, especially, experience those two realities in their extremes.
JULES STRUCK 