Swimming While Eritrean

My mother only puts her head in water if it is coming from a faucet. My grandfather, haunted by the drowning of his twelve-year-old son, became nearly hysterical when driven past the Potomac River nearly thirty years later. My uncle, only a few years older than his six-year-old niece, was unable to save her as she also drowned in a river.

I have only once felt unsettled in water. While on a work assignment in Jordan, I signed up for a scuba diving course. I have been swimming since I was a little girl but the first time I descended into the Gulf of Aqaba I had this feeling that I had trespassed and that it would not go unpunished. The darkness below the water’s surface was made ominous by a quiet that I had never heard on land. While the other students drifted ahead, I treaded in place, flinching at the fish that swam on either side of me. I did not want to quit but the second time I descended my unease only intensified. It was irrational but I just had this feeling that I was not supposed to be there.

For Guernica, Bsrat Mezghebe writes about visiting family in Israel, where her cousin was getting married and many more relatives were staying while they waited for a passage to Europe or North America, and the fear of water that has developed in all of them. Read the whole thing here.

Photo via Flickr user dorena-wm.