"The Boy in the Churn" by Malath Mohammed

Photo by Greg Rosenke

I hated swimming lessons. All the other kids swam faster than me. I was always doing something wrong, and each time I did, the swimming instructor yelled at me. Right arm, then left, and kicking my feet. It was a lot to coordinate for a kid like me.

My parents also didn't know how to swim. Swimming wasn't part of their culture in Iraq. The rivers there are polluted and no one saw the need to swim. My dad was living through a war with Iran during his childhood, and my mom was growing up during the sanctions following the Gulf War. They did anything and everything to survive, so swimming just wasn't a priority for them. When you have a million other things going on, who wants to swim?

But there I was, watching all of the other kids in the lesson. Many of them were younger than I was. I guess for a kid growing up in the U.S., I was a little late to lessons.

It was my turn to tread water. I jumped into the deep end of the pool and used all of my strength to push myself up, gasping for air and trying to avoid drinking water. My energy was gone after a few seconds, and I was trying to get the last bit of air. But then I sank.

I felt two hands cuff around my arms, and I was being pulled up by the instructor.

After I was back on the deck, she turned to me. “We’ll go over treading water again tomorrow.” She waved her hands in a way that made me feel like she didn’t seem to care.

But the thing was, I cared. I cared because of what had happened at Baxter State Park.

***

The river that past July had looked big—really big. People were sliding down a large, slanted, flat granite rock, and the stream seemed to carry them after they slid. My dad and I ran to give it a go, careful not to slip on the layers of algae covering the rocks. We sat ourselves on the rock. It felt cold and clammy as if I were seated in mud. I looked at the current. It looked strong. I started to feel light-headed and cocoons were starting to hatch in my stomach.

“Three! Two! One! GO!” My dad yelled as he let go. We both slid down fast. Suddenly my whole body was sucked underwater, and my grip I had on my Dad separated. I was on my own. I waved my arms in the water, trying to resurface. The current was too strong and I was being dragged down the river quickly. I pushed up with every ounce of strength in my body. My head quickly bobbed up. Everything was blurry. “Baba, help!” I screamed, as if the world were slipping from my grasp. I took one last breath before I was churned back down underwater.

I felt like a ping pong ball being whacked from all sides by paddles. As I was getting slapped by the water, it jerked me back down. Deeper and deeper I went. I saw the light getting darker, but as I was going down I grabbed onto something. I was being pulled up with the thing I was holding. It felt like a warm hug. I didn’t know what it was, but I held on for dear life.

Almost there, I thought to myself, and that's when everything turned black.

“You could have drowned,” a woman said to my dad. I coughed water onto the shore.

“We could have both drowned, but luckily Malath had a hold on my leg,” my dad said between pants. “Thank you for pulling us to shore,” he motioned to the woman. “We would’ve never made it without you.” She was holding a wet dog leash. I lay on the shore staring at the beaming sun, trying to comprehend what had just happened.

So, in the autumn after the near-drowning event, I returned to my swimming lessons each day determined. I had a mission. I needed to learn how to swim. This was an opportunity to learn something my parents hadn’t gotten the chance to do.

In the blink of an eye, I was by myself, in the water doing the water treading test again. The 60-second timer had begun. I used all of my strength to push myself up, gasping for air. My energy was rapidly depleting. Then I remembered who I was doing this for: my parents. I couldn’t fail in front of them. I started getting calmer, standing vertically and waving my arms and legs slowly away from the water. My head was positioned high, just enough to get gasps of air. Before I knew it, the timer was over. I splashed the water with joy. I felt I could tread water for hours. My dad had been watching from the side, and he had one of those rare smiles on his face from cheek to cheek. He was proud of me, proud I had learned to tread water, proud that I had accomplished something he didn’t get the chance to do.

Malath Mohammed is 13 years old; he lives in Orono, Maine, and attends Orono Middle School. Malath participates in soccer, cross-country skiing, and baseball for his school teams. He is also an avid FC Barcelona fan. Malath was born and raised in Basra, Iraq, before moving to the United States in 2014.