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