Butterfly

2

Dad wants us to be the best swimmers. The very best. On Earth. Ever. He’ll do anything to get us there. His expectations are astronomical, and we’re expected to keep up. I start primary school a few weeks after Phelps’ miracle win in Athens. The school is in Mazzeh district in western Damascus, on a square with an adjoining high school. I just have to work my way up through the buildings. From the bottom rung it looks like a long ladder. Dad sits me down one evening just after the start of term.

‘Yusra, from tomorrow you’re going to be a professional swimmer,’ he says. ‘You’ll train every day for two hours from now on. You’re going to join the Damascus youth team with your sister. Understand?’

I nod. I’m being told, not asked. My stomach writhes with excitement and dread. I see the rungs on the swimming ladder stretching up before me like the school buildings. I’ve made it onto the Damascus youth team. The next step is the Syrian national team, where I’ll start swimming for my country in international competitions. From there, the Olympics will be in reach.

I fall into step with Sara’s rigid routine. Dad has us both living like soldiers. School begins early and ends at lunchtime. But for us work isn’t over. Dad waits for us every day at the school gates to take us to the pool. Some days after school I don’t feel like swimming. But Dad silences protests with a single look. In the car, he bans music and all non-swimming related talk. He lectures us on technique and drills until we know all his speeches off by heart. Every day, Mum meets us at the pool and watches our training sessions from the spectator gallery.

One day, Dad and another coach are stretching Sara’s shoulders before training. She kneels down while they pull her bent elbows back behind her head. We both hate that stretch. It can be painful, but it helps to get your shoulders supple and working. Dad tells us over and over again that we should stay very still. But this time, as Dad and the other coach pull back her elbows, Sara winces, jerks away and cries out in pain. She’s in agony, so Mum and Dad take her to the doctors. They do an x-ray and find that she has broken her collarbone. Sara is taken out of training for several weeks, but Dad doesn’t blink. One little accident won’t stop his girls swimming. She’s back in the water the moment she’s healed. Dad doesn’t go easy on her. He tells her to work harder than ever to make up for lost time.

That summer, I attend my first swimming training camp. Sara and I don’t have to travel far. All the best young swimmers in Syria come to Damascus in the school holidays to train. We stay with the others in the athletes’ hotel next to the Tishreen pool. Aged ten, Sara is already hanging out with the teenagers on the Syrian national team. I’m shy, so I stick with her. Gradually, the older kids coax me out of my shell. One of them, an older guy called Ehab, teases me and calls me ‘little mouse’.

Swimming camp is also where I first meet Rami. He’s from Aleppo but comes to Damascus often to train. He’s sixteen, nine years older than me, but we become friends for life. At camp, I’m the youngest, so he’s always nice to me. He’s handsome, with an open, symmetrical face and dark hair and eyes. All the other girls are jealous of our friendship.

There aren’t many older female swimmers in the camp. Many choose to give up swimming after they hit puberty. Some stop because they don’t see a future career in swimming, or decide to stop when they go to university. Still more give up because this is the age Muslim women choose whether to observe hijab, wear modest clothing and a veil to cover their hair. Hijab is the word we use both for the veil itself and for modest Islamic clothing in general. No one in Syria is forced to wear hijab and lots of Muslim women choose not to, especially in the cities. It’s completely acceptable as an observant Muslim to do either, as long as your clothing isn’t too revealing. That’s where swimming clashes with tradition. Wearing hijab gets complicated if you’re training in a swimsuit. It’s clear, as long as we swim, we won’t wear hijab.

A lot of people don’t understand about us swimming. They don’t see the hard work and dedication it takes to swim. They just see the swimsuit. Neighbours and parents of kids at our school tell Mum they don’t approve. Some say wearing a swimsuit past a certain age is inappropriate for a young girl. Mum ignores them. The summer I’m nine, Mum even decides to learn to swim herself. Because she wears hijab and covers her hair she can’t learn at Tishreen, so she goes to another pool and does a summer course just for women. Dad encourages her and eventually trains her himself.

Dad seems unaware of the gossip. He lets nothing get in the way of us swimming. His training programme is paying off. Dad wants us to prove ourselves in both sprinting and long distance and we’re getting fast in butterfly and freestyle. Sara has impressive muscles for a twelve-year-old girl. She’s showing promise and is picked up by the coaches of the Syrian national team. Dad is overjoyed, but it means she’s no longer his swimmer, only his daughter. I’m still both.

One day, not long after Sara starts with the national team, Dad takes my training group to visit them while they work out at the gym. We’re too young for weight training, so Dad explains the exercises while we watch. We gather around a series of pull-down machines. Without warning, a girl from my training group grabs the bar of the machine nearest me and yanks it down. It’s heavier than she thinks and she lets go. The bar flicks back and thwacks me just beneath the eye. I scream.

‘What now, Yusra?’ says Dad.

A thin trickle of blood runs down my cheek. My eyes well up with tears. Dad grabs my chin and lifts it to inspect the side of my face.

‘It’s nothing,’ he says. ‘Don’t overdo it.’

Dad ushers our group back to the pool to get on with training. I stand next to the start block, snivelling from the shock. Training starts again. I’ve no choice. I get in. The wound burns in the chlorine. I cling onto the edge of the pool. Eventually I’m saved by the father of one of the other kids in my group who tells Dad to take me to the doctor. Dad purses his lips. He’s annoyed. He waves at me and I climb out of the water. After training he drives me to the emergency room. The doctors sew my upper cheek back together.

After that, I’m terrified of getting hurt. Not because of the pain but because training wouldn’t have stopped. But there’s nothing I can do to protect myself against some things. Like ear infections, for instance. It’s agony, like someone is trying to inflate a balloon in my head. I get time off school, but not swimming. Dad doesn’t trust doctors, especially if they take me out of the pool. One time the pain is worse than anything I’ve ever felt before. I howl as my mother pleads with the doctor. The physician shakes her head.

‘It’s a perforated eardrum,’ she says. ‘There’s no way she can swim. Not for at least a week.’

I look at Mum. She raises her eyebrows and sighs.

‘Will you tell Dad?’ I say. ‘I can’t. I don’t want to.’

I cry all the way to the pool. I’m petrified about what Dad will say when he hears. Dad is waiting.

‘Well, what’s the verdict?’ he says.

Mum tells him. He’s furious.

‘What’s she talking about? A whole week? I want a second opinion.’

We get back in the car and Mum takes me to a different doctor. This one tells her nothing is wrong, no perforated eardrum, no break from swimming. Dad is happy. I swim on in pain. Not long after that, Sara and I are waiting for the school bus one morning when I suddenly fall flat on my face. I’m out cold for thirty seconds. Dad sees me collapse from our balcony and rushes out of the house. He drives me to the doctors. They’re baffled. Something to do with my ears. Or maybe my eyes. They send me to an optician who says I’m short-sighted. From that day on I wear glasses or contact lenses, but they don’t prevent me suffering from intermittent fainting fits. Around the same time, I develop red, itchy patches on my neck. The doctors say it’s psoriasis. Dad is happy as long as it doesn’t affect my swimming.

Dad may no longer be Sara’s coach, but he keeps a keen eye on her. The Pan Arab Games are approaching, and he wants her to go to Cairo with the rest of the Syrian team. For the first time, the Games will include a modern pentathlon event. Dad hears the team hasn’t yet found a female competitor for the mixed relay. The coaches ask Sara if she’d like to try out for the running, swimming, and shooting events.

Sara spends the summer in the Tishreen complex, running long distances and learning how to shoot a pistol at a target. I go along a couple of times to watch her. Once she lets me try with the gun. The weapon is heavy, cold, and unwieldy. I’m not sure I like it. Sara proves herself to the coaches, November comes around, and she travels to Cairo with the national team. She runs fast, shoots straight and storms down the pool. She and her relay team win a silver medal and help Syria come fifth on the medals table. When the team returns, Dad is beside himself with excitement.

‘Maybe you’ll get to meet the President!’ he says to Sara.

The following week, the team coaches call a meeting. It’s confirmed. President Bashar Al-Assad would like to meet all the medal winners. Sara is the youngest of them all. She gets the day off school and even manages to miss an exam, but is given full marks anyway. She comes back from the palace glowing.

‘So, what happened?’ says Mum.

‘We waited in a long line to say hello to him,’ says Sara, grinning. ‘I couldn’t believe he was real.’

‘Did he say anything to you?’ says Mum.

‘He told me he’s proud of me because I’m the youngest,’ she says. ‘And he said to keep going. He said keep winning and one day I’ll meet him again. He was just a nice, normal man.’

Mum and Dad beam with pride. The meeting is a huge honour for our family. A group photo of Sara with the President is hung up at our school. Dad has a copy blown up and framed. He hangs it in pride of place on the living-room wall at home.

A few weeks later, Mum sits me and Sara down and tells us she’s pregnant. I’m unsettled. I’ll no longer be the youngest, the smallest, the cutest. I say nothing and smile. In March, the month I turn ten, Mum gives birth to a baby girl, a tiny angel with huge, sky-blue eyes. She calls her Shahed. Honey. We all melt. Once she arrives, I’m overjoyed to have a little sister.

If Dad is obsessed with our swimming times, Mum worries only about our academic grades. Sara and I are both good at English, so Mum hires us private tutors to encourage us. Dad introduces us to American pop music. We’re big fans of Michael Jackson. We study his lyrics as if they were exam texts. We always have headphones on. On the way to school or to the pool, on the drive home from Grandma’s house in Damascus to Daraya. Sometimes I ask Sara what an English word means and how to write it. Sara keeps a notebook where she writes her secrets in English so that Mum and Dad can’t read them.

That summer, between training sessions, Sara and I sit down with Dad to watch the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Mum flits in and out, baby Shahed on her arm. This time, because of Phelps, swimming dominates the Games. I gawp, awestruck, as he snatches gold after gold, powering towards his record-breaking medal haul. The entire world goes wild for him. The Arabic press call him the New Olympic Legend. The Ultimate Olympian.

We’re all waiting for the final of the men’s 100m butterfly. The tension builds as Serbian swimmer Milorad Čavić says he’s going to deny Phelps his seventh gold. The swimmers line up on the start blocks. Crocker is there too. The camera moves along the line. I study the neck, the arms. Wow, Phelps is a man mountain. In our living room, the air is electric. Dad insists on absolute silence.

Beep. They dart into the water. Čavić and Crocker are ahead as the swimmers surface. Crashing, pounding, propelling forwards. At the end of the first length Phelps is seventh. I hold my breath, wait for him to call on his full reserve of power. Thirty, twenty metres to go. Phelps takes Crocker, but Čavić is still in front. One, two, one, two. On, on.

Surely Phelps is leaving it too late? Come on. Flip the switch. Sprint. Fifteen metres to go and Phelps brings it all. He gains. He’s exactly level with Čavić. They slam the touch pad together and I let out a squeal. No one can believe it. He’s done it. Gold. By one hundredth of a second. Phelps shouts and crashes his huge arms down in the water.

Dad is on his feet.

‘You see that?’ he says. ‘That’s it, girls. That’s an Olympian.’

Sara and I grin at each other.

‘But how do we get there?’ I say. ‘How do we get to the Olympics?’

‘Work,’ says Dad and turns back to the screen. ‘God willing, you’ll get there one day. If your dream isn’t the Olympics, you aren’t a true athlete.’

For a while, Sara is the young star on the Syrian team. She’s swimming strongly in both short butterfly races and long-distance freestyle. But the autumn after the Beijing Olympics, she begins to wobble. Her level yo-yos up and down and the team coaches begin to lose interest in her. It seems like she changes coach every week.

In Dad’s training group, me and another girl, Carol, are the fastest. We’re to be Dad’s very own stars. All the national team swimmers, including Sara, are his competitors. He organizes a head-to-head between Sara and Carol. 100m butterfly.

Dad has us all gather to watch the race. Coaches, swimmers, and Sara’s team mates. At the pool, Dad isn’t Dad. He’s coach. As Sara and Carol climb onto the start blocks, Sara isn’t his daughter. She’s his swimmer’s competition. I stare, keep my mind numb. I’ve no idea who to root for.

Beep. They dive. Carol surfaces first. Sara whirls out after. At the fifty-metre turn, Sara’s a full body-length behind. She powers on, but Carol sprints the last twenty-five metres and comes in a good five seconds ahead. Dad pumps the air in victory and grins over at the team coaches. His star won.

We drive home in awkward silence. Sara stares hard out of the window, headphones in. Once we set foot inside the house, Dad is Dad again. He rounds on Sara.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ he shouts. ‘You’ve let yourself slide. You lost all your speed.’

She glares at him. Her eyes flash fury.

‘That’s it, enough,’ he says. ‘No more going around to friends’ houses after training. No more playing basketball. I’ll have to fix you. I’ll coach you from now on. You’re coming back to me.’

Sara breaks down in tears. She jams her headphones on, gets up and leaves the room. I block it out. She’ll cry, then she’ll calm down.

After that, Sara joins me and Carol in training with Dad. One day, a few months later, Sara climbs out of the pool clutching her right shoulder.

‘I can’t carry on,’ she says to Dad. ‘I can’t move my shoulder.’

Mum takes her to the doctor. Sara is given four weeks’ rest and some muscle creams. Dad isn’t happy. A month later Sara is back in the pool, but the break means her level is right down again. It’s another two months before she battles back up to where she was.

Then, in spring, her other shoulder seizes up. The doctors look worried. They write her off for another month. Mum tries to help. Since learning to swim, she’s been teaching water aerobics at a hot-springs spa an hour’s drive south of Damascus, close to the city of Daraa. She’s branched out into massage therapy and tries her new skills out on Sara’s shoulders.

Before long, Sara’s back at training. She fights harder than ever to regain her former speed. She doesn’t confide in me, but I can see she’s no longer enjoying swimming. She’s distracted. She often disappears after training. In early summer, she starts wearing make-up. I suspect she’s meeting guys. Dad’s furious, but Sara doesn’t care. Home life deteriorates into a series of set battles and showdowns.

‘Look at your little sister,’ shouts Dad. ‘Why can’t you be more like her?’

It never works. The more he shouts at her, the more she acts up. She shouts back at him, swears in his face. It works on me though. Seeing the fury Sara provokes, there’s no way I’m going to step out of line. I give Dad no reason to get angry with me. I keep my head down, push hard in the pool, strive for those medals. I work hard in school to get the best grades. I’m so competitive that if another kid in class gets better grades than me, the psoriasis on my neck goes bright red and starts to itch. Sara thumps me and calls me a nerd.

That summer, Sara and I travel to Latakia, a city on the north-west coast of Syria, for a competition. Latakia is Syria’s holiday destination. People go there to stroll up and down the long beachfront, sit out in the restaurants or ride the rollercoaster at the fairground. Sara and I are there for the sea. The competition is in open water, a five-kilometre swim from an island back to the shoreline.

Standing on the beach, the sea is calm and glinting in the sunshine. We set off, all fifty of us. The competition is fierce, everyone battling to swim the most direct route back to the shore. Once we’re out in open water, I feel a little uneasy. Swimming in the sea is different from swimming in a pool. The water is so mysterious and deep. There are no sides, no chance to rest. I’m worried about getting lost and I have to swim with my head up so I can see the buoys and boats set out to mark the route. I’m relieved when we arrive on the shore over an hour later.

Not long after the sea swim, both Sara’s shoulders go at once. She can’t even do one butterfly stroke. The doctors refer her to a physiotherapist for intense massages. She stops swimming for another month. By early the following year she’s swimming again, but not at the same level as before. Sara doesn’t talk to me much, even though we share a room. I worry about her, but at home, between the battles, we retreat into our own worlds. If we’re miserable, we’re miserable alone. Our lives are totally separate. We swim separately, learn separately, our friends are different.

Dad’s attempts to change Sara’s behaviour aren’t working. She plays up in school, her grades suffer, the teachers mark her down as a troublemaker. She escapes and goes out after training, plays basketball, or hangs out at friends’ houses. Many of her best friends are guys. The arguments at home get worse. The smallest trigger from Dad will set Sara off. We’ll sit down to eat and he’ll make some comment about her gaining weight. Or he’ll start on about her grades. Or how she swam badly in training. Often, Sara just scrapes her chair back, stands up, and storms out.

‘Oh, so now you’re not going to eat?’ Dad shouts after her.

‘I don’t feel like eating,’ she calls over her shoulder.

I wince as the door to our room slams. I lower my eyes and shuffle food around my plate with my fork. Just obey and you’ll be ok. I know Dad will be happy if I’m the best swimmer. And I’m getting good. My butterfly is fast and strong. That autumn, aged twelve, I make it onto the Syrian national team. The coaches say I’m ready for my first competitions abroad in Jordan and Egypt. It’s a big step. I’m now a competitive swimmer, swimming for Syria, one rung further up the ladder towards my Olympic dream. As Sara falters and rebels, I’m Dad’s prize swimmer.