Gone with the Tides
Aram died because I could not swim.
We became friends three days ago at a summer camp that we both attended. He was a slim, medium height boy with coconut brown hair, warm black eyes and a permanent smile on his face. We were teamed up along with three other boys for a Q and A game at the end of the first day. Thanks to Aram’s fantastic knowledge in mathematics and acronyms guessing, we were each awarded with an Arabic-English edition of the Holy Quran. In the end, we had a tie with the other team when the game point “What does CEDAW stand for? was asked. The other five put their heads and every now and then one of them looked at Aram with fearful wondrous eyes who just then bid us not to worry. “We have been a wonderful team and thanks to all of you, I am having the best time of my life. Swara you get up and say ‘Convention on’, Faruq ‘Elimination of’, I ‘all forms of’, Soran ‘Discrimination’ and finally you ‘Against Women’” he widened his smile and said that final bit to me.
For the final day of the summer camp, we went on a picnic to Dukan Lake to spend some fun time together and rest by the calmness of the water. As soon as the barbeque was over, we dressed up Kurdish clothes and in groups of threes went exploring the area. I, with Ako and Bawar went up to the hill to see the ancient castle that was made by Pasha Kora some two hundred years ago. The royal blue river that stretched down all the way from the dam until it disappeared with the first right turn behind the hill, the little boats and rafts over the river looked like a child’s painting of mountains, the sun from behind and a river with visible fish inside and little bridges over.
Aram died. I couldn’t save him. If only I hadn’t been stopped by my brother when I was seven years old; Aram might have been alive now. We went to Nawroz swimming pool with my brother to learn how to swim. It was a hot summer afternoon and I wore my navy swim suit that I had bought the day before under my clothes. The breeze coming from the pool in that open area hit my face like the snowball that Halo, who was older than his twin brother by fifteen minutes, threw at me as I stepped out of my door last winter. The laughter and cries of the small children in the half a meter deep pool on the left, the sound of the lifeguard’s whistles on the stand, warning the boys in the one meter deep not to urinate into the pool and the splashing of the boy who plunged from the three meter high diving board shouting “incoming grenade”. “I will not go home until I swim in the three meter part”. Soon after I took a shower, I jumped into the one meter section just to adjust my body with the cold water and came out.
As I was passing the professional swimmers over my tiptoes near the adult area, I found a clear spot and slowly looked at the water. I saw my face in it and imagined touching the tiles underneath with my feet to push my body up over to the surface just the way I was instructed. “Do not let him away from your sight, and do not let him swim if you are not right in front of him” I remembered my mother’s words to my brother warning him to keep an eye on her youngest and favorite son. I moved back until my back touched the wall that was few yards away from the edge. I squared my shoulders, summoned up all the guts the body of a kid could hold and took a deep breath before running toward the blue liquid. I was one final leap away from the water when my brother shouted out “Stop, I am having a sandwich now”. I stamped my right foot on the floor to stop only to have it slip and end up with a twisted ankle. What bloody sandwich was he talking about? There I was finally trying to swim so as not to let Aram die.
Inside that roofless castle, we tried picturing how did Pasha Kora’s army fight the Ottoman Empire’s? Did they use guns or bows and spears? “Do you think the King got blind in his last battle and thereon people named this The Blind King Castle or what? I asked Ako.
“How could I know, I was not with him then… we better get down to the riverside and swim a bit before it was half past two” Ako said.
“Why can’t we swim then?” Brwa asked as we were coming out of the castle.
