Since arriving in Afghanistan I’ve been asked a dozen times if I know how to swim. This happens more often than being asked what I think of Obama or if I’ve been to New York City or how an Afghan can study in America. “Yes,” I say, and leave it at that. In the pantheon of questions it is hardly one I expected. It is asked, there is a momentary gleam in the eye, a point duly noted, and then the questioner move on. Is it envy, that gleam? Calculating? Or is it something else more practical? What use, after all, is swimming? I’ve known men who fish the dangerous waters of Southeast Alaska who never bothered learning to swim. A pearl diver, I suppose, and rescue teams. It is a place to begin a conversation about perspective. Do you know how to swim?
I am not comfortable in water, but I cannot resist it. Where I grew up there is a muddy-bottomed pond infested with snapping turtles and snakes. Hot August days I would time and again follow my German shepherd companion, push off the bank and pump across the pond like I’d seen the giant bullfrogs do after they slipped from my little hands. To stand in that pond would be to sink into the muck up to my knees. I loathed the darkness of it, what lurked that would at any moment pull me under for good. Later it was a deep and cold lake, too far from shore, treading water and shivering and swallowing tablespoons of steely water, just this side of panic, making it safely to shore only by settling into the last refuge of a tired swimmer, the sidestroke. Still later it was off the edge of an ocean beach in Westhampton, body surfing in white rolling Atlantic muscle, taking a turn on the “spin cycle”, my forehead jammed into the gravely bottom like a pier. For several budding years I was on a swim team, the nastiest of sports in terms of training, giving summer mornings over to six am laps, sets of ten, sets of twenty, thirty. My coach was merciless. I was plugged into backstroke, the only way I might ever place (and didn’t) because most teams only had one or two swimmers in that category. One summer, I don’t have the slightest idea what for, I was required to take lifesaving. Diving for coins is one thing, hauling up a cinder block from the deep end of the pool is something entirely different. I remember having to “rescue” my instructor, not a pretty college girl, but a barrel (and hairy) chested wrestler. He took his role seriously and elbowed me in the eye. I sank, swallowed chlorinated water. He had to rescue me.
The list continues. Hand over hand I shimmied along the girders under a bridge thirty feet above the Roxbury River in Western Connecticut, dropped into the small section of the river just deep enough to absorb the impact. I dove through a waterfall in Hidden Valley of the Philippines, water-skied across the choppy currents of Puget Sound, swung from a rope dangling above an eight foot drop into the Green River of Vermont, skinny-dipped the murky waters Sun Moon Lake in Taiwan, Polar Beared it in the fjord inlets of Sitka, Alaska. Swimming has been as much a part of my life as the full moon; but always as an adversary, never a friend.
After all these years to be asked if I can swim is a bit like being asked if I can walk, and a bit like being asked if I can fly.
There are things I’ve learned around here. When sitting in a group, drinking tea or eating nan, it is not necessary for there to be conversation. Nor is it necessary to know exactly what will happen tomorrow. I’ve read about tribal cultures where things planned never happen and unmentioned things happen as if they were on the calendar for months. Many of these things may be a matter of life or death. Where death due to a seeming lack of planning is imminent, life is miraculously accomplished. Isn’t this a little like swimming?
Yesterday I woke up early, five o’clock, to the sound of the girls floating about the house excitedly. Sosan knocked on my door. I quickly dressed and opened it. She had put on her new dress and wanted me to take a picture. She was radiant. The violet flower pattern was a new color for her. I saw three other girls pass in the hall wearing their nicest clothes. I realized then we were going somewhere. There had been talk of a picnic but that is like talking about who will get the quarter in their slice of cake. In an hour we piled onto the same buses that had in the spring carried us up to Paghman. This time we headed north into drier, rockier mountains, more sheer and fewer trees. The staff had out of nowhere packed the pickup truck full of provisions, collected all the children in the three orphanages, and even arranged for a pit stop to load up on blocks of ice, some of which to be delivered to a friend in a municipality along the way. The kids were happy to be on their way, but a little subdued. They didn’t seem to know any better than I where exactly we were going or what we would do once we got there. As the bus climbed higher, turned off the paved road and wound its way around narrow cutbacks through narrower mud brick mountain village lanes, it became clear we were not heading to a public park. I had stupidly sat up front in full view through the windshield. This was not the time to be cavalier about exposure. I traded with Ulfat who had sat next to a pulled window curtain. We were crammed in together like monkeys in a barrel, but nevertheless content. Many of the children stared at the landscape and houses as if they too were strangers in a strange land. We followed a river higher into the mountains. Goats, cows, sheep waded aimlessly in the water. Stonework adorned every aspect of the countryside, embankments and foundations and pastures. Dikes formed swimming pools and in some places diverted water for irrigation. These were all hand-built. Having done some stonework myself I was in awe. I would just once like to see the hands of these in some cases ancient masons. Ahmad Zair crooned from the tape deck, softening the edges of the drive. We dropped ice off at what turned out to be the last village on the road, waited for any traffic descending a one-lane path and the driver crunched the bus into first gear. A few hundred feet higher in elevation we arrived at a blue gate to a private homestead. Our driver deftly backed up the driveway and pulled the brake. We unfolded our legs and emptied from our tin can. It was almost ten o’clock, hot, cloudless, but the air was clean, the sky terribly blue. Down the side of the hill a stream had been diverted into stone troughs carrying the mountain water to a series of three pools, a round tub-sized, a kiddy sized, and then a full sized in-ground cement pool. No bats and balls and cards and kites this time. The kids and I were going swimming.
Razia was first in, my wild six-year old emerald-eyed favorite. The big pool was filling slowly, but the little one up top was plenty enough for her, pants, dress and all. She then grabbed my hand, pulled me in as well. I dunked my head under the little waterfall. Six other of the smaller children followed suit. There was no hesitancy to involve bystanders. Everyone was splashed or dragged into the silt brown water. Many of the girls in their fine brightly colored new dresses threw propriety to the wind. Soon we were all soaked through, but the high altitude sun would dry us out for another round, and another throughout the day. The boys were oddly shyer, or they were waiting for the big pool to get deeper. When it reached four feet they stripped to their long shorts and fishnet shirts, or simply leapt in as-is. The thing of it was, not one of these children knew how to actually swim.
All day the Mehan girls and I teased Sadoff, one of the few who refused to go into the water. Her friend Adila, a tomboy thirteen-year old, entreated me to help her “coax” Sadoff toward the big pool. I went for her ankles and Adila her arms. It was clear she was not struggling for fun. She was truly scared. I begged off but the die had been cast. Adila recruited Nafisa and together tossed a screaming Sadoff in. After a brief outcry, Sadoff swung her arms and kicked her legs and moved about the pool without drowning. She like everyone else, though growing up far from lakes and oceans, did not need to know how to swim in order to swim.
Later, after a full lunch and another hour in the water, the children were summoned to the top of a grassy knoll that was shaded by old chestnut trees. The sun was sinking into the tips of the southern Hindu Kush, gateway to the Far Pavilions, the rooftop of the world. One mountain looked like a pyramid, nestled in the shoulder of another so huge as could not be taken in one view. Not painted, not photographed, not even beheld standing there on the edge of its own valley. A very slight breeze picked up. Down the hill and out of sight the bus drivers could be heard shouting and whistling as they took their turn at swimming. I put my camera away in my vest. Time to record with the mind’s eye. Some instructions were tossed about and names called and a flurry of activity buzzed in the midst of this peace. Two of the boys had birthdays this week. Carpets were unfurled, cups, thermoses, plates. A huge white cake appeared, magically as everything else had appeared, and a song was sung. Dried fruits and nuts and chi, the warmth of sun soaked skin, cosmos blooms heralding August, brightly lit in the slanting light, children of all ages in a circle on the ground too tired to recount the tales, the dunkings and diving and slipping and death defying, the first time evers and did you sees. That would come later, before bed, in a final burst of energy. Almost as satisfying as the adventure itself is the telling of it, in some ways more so. Madena filled my cup with chi and I walked a ways from the party, stared out across the vastness and imagined the snow to come. I looked back and there were Fatima, Shogofa, Sadoff and Zainab, their orange and blue and violet dresses exploding in the sunlight just at the edge of the shade, flapping their wraps in the breeze, drying the last of the river water from their thin fabric. They were like beautiful flags waving, embracing the air. Further over sat Farzna Nori, who one day wants to be an actress. To see a child looking off, thinking her private thoughts in concert with the beauty surrounding her, I felt I had landed on something even a poet would best leave alone. I turned and walked further along the knoll, softening in my awareness, emptying of thoughts, when suddenly from behind a thick tree a large red dog appeared. I froze. Completely. In the next moment a million pages turned. Then, half interested the dog wagged his tail, leaned onto his hip and yawned. Sosan called my name. I’d strayed too far. I gladly turned back.
That evening after returning to the orphanage Nafisa and Adila were designated storytellers, recounting the events of the day to Khawla Nasifa. Dinner was a mix of remnants from the picnic, chips and beef tenders. We nibbled but mostly drank chi. I laid back onto an elbow and listened, trying to fashion meaning from the barrage of Dari crisscrossing the room. It was easy enough to tell once they began exaggerating the story of when I finally dove into the big pool. In my view it happened like this: they had patiently waited, but I had felt all morning their expectations; I was to show them how I swim. I didn’t want to appear like a showoff when showing off is exactly what they wanted me to do. At any rate I knew I was incapable of anything truly impressive. It would take some serious coaxing to get me in. Eventually it happened, all the staff had been thrown in but me. Eyes were no longer averted. I calmly removed my watch, my waistcoat, my shirt, rolled up my pant legs and descended the path to water’s edge. About four feet away from the pool was a seven-foot stone wall. The kids had been climbing all over it. I felt white, skinny, and weak. But my heart was full. I climbed the chinks in the wall and stood over the pool for less then ten seconds before I dove. It was a decent dive; though my legs were bent my arms were straight and my head tucked just so. I cut shallow in the already shallow pool and for added flair swam underwater a little ways. When I surfaced I was greeted with a ring of delight in the kid’s voices. Several immediately tried to dunk me. I could have gone for more; there was a higher spot on the wall, a tower close to ten feet. I may have been scared to try, or too humble. What a blow to a perfect day if the stupid American cracked his head open on the bottom. I’d like to think the reason I didn’t try is, even though I was later asked to, for once I felt water not to be my adversary, but my friend.
A better reason to swim.
