Stepping up on the block,
I wait for the whistle that
commands my body to get in
a diving position. Next to the
five other swimmers lined up
on the blocks, I curl my toes
and squeeze my hands on
the edge of the block when I
hear the second whistle. Go.
I push off in a horizontal dive
into the water and immedi-
ately start dolphin kicking
to the surface. As my head
comes out of the water, I re-
alize something is missing:
my swim cap.
I’ve loved the water since I
was a kid. My dad threw me
in the pool when I was nine
months old and suddenly, I
could float. When I am sub-
merged in the water, it feels
like time stops. It comforts
me to be surrounded by
water, knowing that it was
there to support me even if I
couldn’t support myself.
I was 12 when I decided to
start
swimming
competi-
tively, and that’s where I met
my first swim coach: Kwame.
When we were too slow to get
in the water, Kwame would
yell “SPARTA!” and kick us in
the pool. When I fell asleep
doing dryland workouts, he
poured a bucket of water on
me to wake me up. He always
made us play soccer because
it would help us with our
kicking skills — although
sometimes I think Kwame
just wanted to play soccer.
Kwame not only taught me
how to swim all 4 strokes —
freestyle, backstroke, breast-
stroke and butterfly — but
most importantly, he taught
with a tough coach who was
known for molding champi-
on swimmers.
Joining this new team was
a wake-up call for me in the
swimming world. I swam
year-round, so when high
school season was over, the
club season began. Even
though I was able to score
points for my high school
team, I never ranked high
enough on my club team to
even compete for points. All
the swimmers were consid-
erably faster than me and
I was always delegated to
the last lane, the slow lane.
These swimmers had started
swimming as early as five
years old and their parents
spent the extra time and
money on private coaching
and the best training equip-
ment on the market. I was
years late to the game and I
qualified for free lunch in my
school district, which did not
always make the most nutri-
tional meals for high-inten-
sity swimming. Any time I
tried to rest, the main coach
— an old white man — and as-
sistant coaches would scold
MiC
Confessions of a washed-up
Black swimmer
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Thursday, August 5, 2021 — 13
JASMIN LEE
MiC Columnist
me how to have fun even in
difficult situations.
I met my closest friends, Dur-
ga and Eva, at the community
swim team. During practices,
we would encourage each
other to go faster and com-
plain about how sore we
were afterward. We declared
ourselves the “Mermaid Sis-
ters” and would practice our
backflips in the water as if we
were magical — no one could
tell us otherwise.
In the water, I was both
weightless and powerful all
at once as I glided through
the water and barely broke
the surface to reach the oth-
er side. And I only wanted to
get better. I never felt lonely
or the slightest out of place,
because I was surrounded by
my closest friends and swim
coach, who were all people of
color. Although most people
I practiced with looked like
me, this was not the case out-
side of my community team.
Whenever I told my Black
friends in high school that I
was on the swim team, they
would respond with some-
thing along the lines of,
“Girl, I could never! I don’t
even know how to swim,
and I don’t want to mess up
my hair.” As a young BIPOC
swimmer, I was looking
for role models to follow in
swimming — a field domi-
nated by white athletes in
America — and that’s when
I looked to social media. In-
stagram had introduced me
to Lia Neal years before she
became the first African-
American and Asian-Ameri-
can swimmer to compete in
the Olympics for the United
States, but even then, I saw
myself in Neal: a mixed-race
athlete who aspired to great-
ness. Since I also come from
a mixed-race background,
Neal was my swimming idol
and I wanted to break re-
cords just like her. At the
same time, I learned about
Stanford University swim-
ming commit Simone Manu-
el, who would go on to be the
first African American wom-
an to win an Olympic gold
medal in swimming. Seeing
Neal and Manuel succeed in
swimming made me believe
I could, too, thrive as a com-
petitive swimmer.
After a couple of years of
swimming with Kwame, I
realized swim practices were
not challenging me as much
as I wanted. If I wanted to
get faster, I needed to make
a change. As I entered high
school, I decided to join a
competitive club swim team
How can I extend an
olive branch?
Palestine. The Holy Land. An
ancient motherland, where
every nook and cranny pos-
sesses a piece of sacred his-
tory. Home of the olive tree:
a renowned symbol of peace
and tranquility yet trampled
in the face of oppression. A
centuries-old fruit bearer,
ripped from its roots, as
though it holds no weight, no
meaning.
I’ve been lucky enough to be
allowed entry into my beau-
tiful homeland four times be-
fore. I was very young the first
time and didn’t know much,
but I could see the guns and
tanks everywhere we went
MARIAM ODEH
MiC Columnist
me for missing even one set
despite not knowing my limi-
tations. “Why didn’t you go?”
they had said. “Everyone else
is making the set, why aren’t
you?” This unhelpful criti-
cism and more like it felt like
personal attacks on my work
ethic as an athlete. As a re-
sult, I pushed myself past my
limits to make the interval
times — even when I would
be so behind that I had no
breaks in between sets — in
hopes that I would get faster.
Ultimately, this effort back-
fired on my mental and phys-
ical health. I ended up hav-
ing a panic attack every time
I went to practice and, in
order to prioritize my well-
being, I had to quit the com-
petitive team and join a team
that was less rigorous. How-
ever, the cost of this club was
much more than I could af-
ford. I ended up working for
this club as a swim instructor
in order to afford the cost to
practice with the team, but
the work-life balance was
not ideal. I was so tired most
days I could barely muster
up the energy to go to prac-
tice after a full day of school
and work.
In high school, I was swim-
ming almost 20 hours a week
during the season, which in-
cluded daily 5 a.m. practices,
dryland workouts and week-
end practices. After my high
school swim season finished,
I would have swim practice
for three hours every day af-
ter school and on the week-
ends when there weren’t
swim meets. I tried to love
swimming in its competitive
form, I really did. But while
swimming used to be an ac-
tivity associated with joy,
friendships and community,
it now brought about memo-
ries of panic attacks, asthma
attacks, several muscle inju-
ries and regret. And, amid all
the emotional and physical
labor, my swim cap would
never stay on my head.
When I put my hair into a
bun, a regular-sized swim
cap would stretch to its lim-
its and then slide off the
more time I spent in the wa-
ter. After one lap, I would of-
ten have to readjust my cap
or dive to the bottom of the
pool to retrieve it. Once, at a
swim meet, I was swimming
the 100-yard butterfly — a
very difficult race — and my
swim cap slid off my head.
All of my hair fell out onto
my back and weighed me
down as I desperately tried
to reach the other side of
the pool. As this became a
regular occurrence, everyone
would joke about swim caps
not being able to stay on my
head. My new coach even
jokingly told me that I should
get my cap “stapled to my
head” so it would stop falling
off. I tried everything from
using fewer hair products to
buying an extra-large swim
cap — which broke as soon
as I put it on — but nothing
seemed to work.
and hear the innocent chil-
dren as they screamed at
soldiers to put them down.
After crossing the Allenby
bridge at the Jordanian bor-
der and waiting for over a
day at military checkpoints
in the occupied West Bank
with nausea sweeping over
me through the countless
bumpy bus rides, we had fi-
nally arrived at my grand-
parents’ house in the small
village of Kifl Haris. They
immediately greeted me: my
sitti with her warm embrace,
and my sido lifting me up into
the air while screams of joy
escaped me, my fatigue su-
perseded by the excitement
of seeing my estranged fam-
ily. When he finally put me
down, the sound of a small
kitten drew me near the back
of the house. In an attempt
to follow the soft purrs, I
stumbled upon their colorful
garden, pervaded by plants I
did not know the names of.
Treading through the greens
with careful steps, the leaves
of the fruits and flowers
brushed over the back of my
hand, tickling me as though
they longed for the presence
of a child among them. Us-
ing one of the purple plas-
tic chairs lying on the back
deck, I stood to reach grape
vines hanging above me and
climbed trees to pluck sweet
figs and bitter pomegran-
ates. My arms overflowing
with fruit and with a kitten
in tow, I emerged 15 minutes
later with the biggest smile
plastered onto my face. See-
ing how much I adored their
garden,
my
grandparents
were excited to introduce
me to their eminent glory:
their olive tree groves. After
freshening up, we all piled
into my grandpa’s 10-year-
old Volkswagen that rattled
at every turn. As we drove
the short distance together, I
was awestruck by the majes-
tic mountains that crowned
the landscape and the palm
trees that lined the streets.
Children played soccer with
a makeshift ball while sol-
diers strapped with AK-47s
loomed in the background.
As we approached our desti-
nation, I nearly jumped out
of the moving car as I got a
glimpse of what awaited me.
The beautiful earthy green
field was filled with olive
trees standing tall, laden with
olives and stretching beyond
the corners of my eyes. Wav-
ing at me in the breeze, they
begged me to climb up their
strong limbs and pluck their
olives gently. For the second
time that day, I was com-
pletely blown away by the
scene that surrounded me.
As I ran towards the first tree
I laid eyes on, standing on
my tiptoes to reach the tall
branches, my sido hauled me
up on his shoulders. While I
struggled to grab as many as
I could, my sido grabbed my
wrist and set me back down.
He explained why we don’t
pick olives one by one — there
are simply too many of them
on each tree. Instead, with
his instruction, we spread
out a few white cloth sheets
underneath the tree. As my
sido beat the olive tree with
his wooden cane, the sheet-
covered ground beneath us
quickly filled with black and
green olives. While I sorted
through the ripe black ol-
ives and put away the firm
green ones that still had to
be cured, the olives gleamed
under the scorching sun. I
suddenly wondered if my an-
cestors also experienced this
feeling of inner peace at this
very spot while they sorted
through olives like me.
While we worked, my sido
told me stories about the
history of the land: ancient
prophets who roamed the
lush fields centuries ago, the
religious significance of the
monotheistic faiths associ-
ated with the region and the
Crusades that were fought
not far from where we were
standing. His face was over-
taken with a childlike marvel
when describing the spiri-
tual aura surrounding the
Al-Aqsa mosque and golden
Dome of Rock, but the light
in his eyes dimmed when he
mentioned the Gaza Strip,
which was still under com-
plete siege. This meant that
little kids like me had re-
stricted access to clean water
to wash their favorite shirts
or take baths with their
toys. They were forbidden
from getting too close to the
beach, even on a bright sum-
mer day. They were denied
usage of electricity to watch
TV as their family shared
breakfast or stay up late to
play computer games. They
were barred from traveling
for vacations or leaving Gaza
to visit family. They were
stripped of the opportunity
to grow up and attend col-
lege or carry dreams for their
future. As I listened to my
sido in silence, blood rushed
to my head and tears welled
up in my eyes. I gripped each
olive harder, afraid that they
would fall out of my trem-
bling hands and smash on
the ground. How could the
world remain silent as chil-
dren suffered under such
brutal conditions?
“
How can I remain
silent when an
apartheid power is
actively profiting
off of the conquest
of my land? How
can I be asked to
“understand both
sides” when a colo-
nizer still denies
me access to the
land my ancestors
called home less
than 73 years ago?
Mariam Odeh, MiC Columnist
MICHIGAN in COLOR