It is a distant smudge of gold.
This is the thought that comes to her first—that the shore is now a blur—and panic begins to squeeze her. She realizes the voices and laughter and splashing are barely audible from here, that the slapping of waves means she is far, really far away. Even the other swimmers are distant, their heads dots in the waves. She squints toward the shore and sees the yellow of her family’s towels. This calms her and she takes a deep breath.
“O-kay,” she says to herself in the singsong voice she uses with children. “Time to swim.”
She takes another breath and begins to kick, one-two-three, strong thrashing motions, knowing in the back of her mind she must look so stupid, thankful that no one can see her. Her breath comes heavily, moistly, water bubbling against her lips, and she tries to part the water with her arms like two knives, as she’d been taught years ago in this very sea. She holds her breath until her chest explodes, then lifts her head for air.
It is then, as she is gasping for air, that the second realization comes, far worse—she is not getting closer to the shore. No. She is being pulled away from it, trying to slice the water when, in fact, she is lashing against it uselessly. Something invisible in the waves is pulling her quietly but urgently back into its arms. She feels her body being eddied, the water around her warmer now, and she begins to panic in earnest.
With the panic comes motion; Riham begins to kick and claw and fist at the water. She forgets the knives, the graceful diving; her body—her arms and legs—and her mind seem to fuse into one screaming thought: land. She feels the drag of the current and remembers dimly someone once telling her, years ago, in another lifetime, that if you felt the ocean pulling, you should never fight against it, but wait until you were out of the current. But whoever said that had never been here, Riham thinks, had never felt this terrible, magnetic tugging, as though there were nets and she was being swept up into them, swept into the water’s mouth.
Riham hears distant screams. She tries to blink as she looks toward the shore, but the sun is too bright, and she cannot see anything but the sea, the salt in her eyes, the rush and pull of water.
There is a flare of blue, and she is suddenly under the water, her head beneath it. Riham opens her mouth but gargles salt, sputters. Up. She needs up. Her thoughts come in brief, choppy phrases. Up. Lift head. Kick.
Her head surfaces and Riham gulps air, her ears full of her rattled breath. She will break, she knows, she will flop and sink to the bottom of the sea if she doesn’t move. Her arms are so tired, heavy as stone, but she knows she must lift and slice, lift and slice, even as her body shakes.
“Now, now,” she yells to herself, but it comes out hoarse. She forces her legs to kick and hears the screaming once more, falling and rising above the waves.
She sees herself, a flimsy string floating through the water. Then another image—seeing herself from above, looking down at her struggling, airless body. A swath of light and some blackness, a splotch of it. Riham thinks to herself, conversationally, She needs to scrub that out.
Again there is the calling out, thudding against the waves: Riham. Riham. Startled, she recognizes that is her—Riham, Riham—that some essence of her is here, threading through the water, far from sand. She takes shaky gulps of air and tries to remember Riham. That was so long ago—why, she is an old woman now! It is a peculiar thought, but decisive, with the same conviction she would say yes, of course her eyes are brown, or yes, she loves her father—but she is certain, absolutely certain, that she has lived for decades, that she is an old woman dying now, elsewhere, and this is just a memory.
She doesn’t have a chance to dwell on this. Another undulation of the sea and she rocks with it, her shoulders knocking against the crested wave, her arms furious with pain, and she understands suddenly that if she doesn’t call out, if she doesn’t open her mouth and speak and say—anything, anything—then she will die, the old woman and the little girl, she will die and she will be dead, and the water will take her. And with that fear Riham opens her mouth and speaks against the salt water the only name that leaps to her lips.
Allah.
Him, oh, Him, oh, that warm rush at the mosque, that hope that quickened her heart when her grandmother fitted the veil around her head and they sat on the carpet, surrounded by the perfume of incense, the roof above her like a green sky. She thinks of it and is overcome with a hot, liquid love.
Someone is shouting, the sound reaching over the waves, but Riham is shaky with exhaustion, fatigue that petrifies her limbs. The arms rock her again but suddenly they are different arms, arms that are not water but, impossibly, human, and there is something warm, breath against her neck, someone saying, Hold on, hold on, and Riham rests her head—on the wave? on the arm?—and the water stretches and glitters and blackens.
There is a dark room where Riham is lying down and she can smell cake. Around her, she understands, is a magnificent party, and that is where all the noise is coming from, dozens of voices chattering. They sound scared, but Riham knows it’s a trick; they are just pretending to be frightened because they haven’t invited her. She wants to cry because now there will be no cake. All of a sudden, stinging sears her nostrils, and she is coughing, salt, salt, it seems like it will never end, the water in her throat. A light shivers and claps, stretching into a creature with many arms, an octopus, she sees, an octopus moving his body in a flashy dance and saying something. Qur’an, she thinks, recognizing the frantic verses, but the octopus is doing it wrong, garbling the words.
Riham opens her mouth to scold the octopus but before she can, salt shoots through her once more and she is coughing, arms are pulling her up, someone is slapping her on her back and she is retching, suddenly yanked out of the water, akimbo on the gritty shore, and she is vomiting, stream after stream, clumping the sand with globs of white. Cheese, Riham thinks, recalling the warm bread and cheese, her breakfast this morning.