Swimming to Antarctica

by Lynne Cox

  Stalling, trying to psych myself up to dive into the water, I slowly pushed my short, chlorine-bleached blond hair into my yellow swim cap. I wondered if I was going to get sick if I swam in that water. Never had I swum in any water as filthy.

  From the steamboat’s deck, I watched Dave, Morad, and the rowboat captain discuss the positioning of the boat. Morad explained that the racecourse would be around two islands in the middle of the river, in the center of Cairo. The swimmers would travel a figure-eight course twice; each figure eight would be ten miles long. And there were to be two races held concurrently: an amateur race for men and women (the race I had entered because I wanted to maintain my amateur status in case I decided to swim in college) and a professional race for men and women.

  The steamboat and the start of the race were located in the Big Nile; on the other side of the two islands was an area known as the Little Nile. Later that day another swimmer would tell me that the Big Nile was where all the chemical sewage was discharged, and the Little Nile was where all the raw sewage was dumped.

  Dave motioned for me to get into the water. Holding my hand over my face so water wouldn’t shoot up my nose and possibly infect my sinuses, I jumped in. The water smelled like a sewer, and the stench was so strong I felt my stomach turn.

  Once you start swimming, I told myself, you’ll feel better. You always do. But this time I didn’t.

  Swimming with my head up, I moved toward the boat through an oil slick about a hundred yards wide. My swimsuit filled with goo. It never occurred to me that I was the only swimmer training in the Nile River; I just kept swimming until my right hand hit something rubbery. It was a dead Nile perch, floating belly-up. I shuddered and kept swimming.

  Some four hundred yards down river my hand hit something else. Instinctively, I turned to see what it was: it was a dead rat with one eye missing. A sudden current had carried it down, and soon there were a dozen dead rats bobbing around me, eyes missing, heads gnawed away. This river of life that Fahmy remembered was a river of death, and I wanted to run out of the water. But I couldn’t; I had to train, so I forced myself to stay focused. I sprinted forward, leery of what lay ahead.

  Off to my left was a large drain the width of a truck. Here the water became warmer and thicker, and the upper inches were covered with a crust of frothy brown scum. Trying to avoid smelling it, I breathed late and was suddenly choking on a mouthful. I felt my resolve begin to crumble. Dave was just as disgusted with the water conditions as I was, and so after only an hour of training, I climbed out, back onto the steamboat. I wasn’t keen about ever getting into the Nile again. But I knew that I had to, to be in the race.

  Dave and I discussed it on the deck. He thought I needed to work out at least twice more in the river so we could figure out our best course. I was wiping brown slime off my face when I noticed a group of male swimmers—mostly teenagers and some that looked as if they were college age. They were wearing the Egyptian team’s green-and-white sweats and were listening to one of the older swimmers, who had his back turned to me. He was taller than his teammates and had dark, wavy hair and the perfect V shape of a swimmer in top condition. Speaking excitedly in Arabic, using animated gestures, he held the entire group’s attention. A boy sprang up, grabbed his hand, and held on to it, and he laughed so delightedly that I started laughing too. The young man spun around. He had large, dark brown eyes and a wonderful smile. He extended his hand and said his name was Monir. He was the captain of the Egyptian team. I introduced myself, but he already knew who I was. He had heard that I was training in the Nile. He introduced me to his team, and the young boys stared at me as if I had just arrived from another planet.

  “They are surprised to see that you are not a man. They didn’t believe me when I told them that you held the record for the English Channel. They expected only a man could swim that fast. I told them to come and see you for themselves,” Monir said.

  I said hello to them and shook hands. Monir told me that there was a better place to train. It was called the Gizara Club. The club had once catered to the British elite, but now it was where the Egyptians trained, with an American coach named Rick Field. Monir said that he thought the girls on the team would like to meet me too, and perhaps I could come by during the afternoon workout and encourage them. I said I’d be very happy to meet them.

  That afternoon I convinced Dave to accompany me to the Gizara Club instead of returning to the Nile. By the time we arrived, Monir was already in the pool, so we introduced ourselves to Rick Field. I watched Monir train. He was a strong swimmer, and each time he took a stroke, the water flowed down his biceps and deltoids, then rippled past his lats and along his streamlined bronze torso. He looked as if he was about the same speed as me. I was eager to get into the pool and have someone to pace with, but Rick asked if I would talk to the girls on the team. He made a point of telling me that there was an equal number of girls and boys on the team. Only two girls had qualified for the Nile race, though. Most Middle Eastern teams, he explained, had few female swimmers. Rick had me talk to the girls about my swims and training. And they shyly told me a little about themselves.

  After the workout was over, Rick invited Dave and me for a tour of the city. I wasn’t feeling very well, so I decided to return to the hotel. Just as I was about to fall asleep, there was a knock on my door. It was William Amen, the reporter who had been following me. He asked if he could come into the room and interview me. He opened his writing tablet, sat on the bed opposite mine, and pretended to read old notes. Patiently I answered him, until he suddenly got up and shut the door, saying that with all the noise in the hall, he couldn’t hear me. Feeling uncomfortable with this arrangement, I got up and opened the door halfway, making an excuse that Dave would be back shortly and didn’t have a key.

  “Do you like Egypt?” William asked.

  “Yes, it is a very exotic country,” I said.

  He reached out and touched my arm. “Your muscles are tight,” he said.

  “They’re just fine,” I said.

  “You know the Dutch swimmer, I give her massage. I give you one?”

  “No, thank you,” I said, sensing that something weird was going on and it wasn’t just cultural differences.

  William unbuttoned his shirtsleeve and rolled it up, and pointed to his forearm showing a large blue tattoo on his biceps. “I am Christian,” he said.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  He reached over and grabbed my hand and declared, “I come to see your father in three years.”

  “What for?”

  “To marry you,” he said.

  “No, thank you,” I said, and thought, You’ve got to be out of your mind.

  He looked dumbfounded. “You must marry me.”

  “You had better leave,” I said, slipping free.

  “You will change your mind,” he said angrily.

  “Not in this lifetime.”

  Dave and I were so sick that in the morning Morad drove us to see a physician who worked for the swimming federation. The doctor, a plump man in his late forties, let us into his office.

  Pickled frogs, unidentifiable organs, animal embryos in jars, and medical books lined the shelves of his office. We sat around his desk while Morad described our symptoms. The doctor said confidently in broken English, “Yes, I have pills. They will cure you. Don’t worry.”

  He turned to a counter covered with large bottles of unmarked pills, located one containing blue pills, unscrewed the lid, counted out eight, and dropped them into an envelope. Then he found another containing pink pills and counted out eight more. He handed David the blue pills—presumably because he was a boy—and me the pink ones, because I was a girl. He instructed us to take one every day for the next eight days. Neither David nor I had any confidence in the medication. Instead we decided not to eat anything and to give our stomachs a rest. But it was Easter Sunday and, as a surprise, Morad had arranged for us to celebrate with his wife, daughter, and extended family.
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  Morad welcomed us into his home, where we met the family, and we moved into the dining area. We had never seen so much food. Platters were piled two feet high with kabobs, pilaf, a ham, Easter eggs, and countless holiday specialties. The last thing we felt like doing was eating, but we were guests and didn’t want to hurt our hosts’ feelings. The feasting lasted from noon to midnight, and by the time we’d finished we felt like we would explode.

  When we returned to the hotel, the Sudanese swimmer hurried over to talk with me. They had forgotten to tell us that all the swimmers in the race were supposed to participate in a demonstration race. While we were out, everyone else had completed the race, and then the swimmers had been taken through the streets of Cairo in open horse-drawn carriages. Thousands of cheering spectators had lined the parade course to get a glimpse of them, throw flowers and streamers, and shout good wishes.

  When the parade finished, the race organizers had tried to find me for television interviews; when they couldn’t, they’d had a swimmer from the Netherlands impersonate me on the air. It seemed very bizarre. But Dave and I were beginning to understand that we had entered a very different culture, and we weren’t sure how to handle it.

  The Sudanese swimmer was very angry, too. He said that the journalist who had been following me around had written a very bad story about me, and it had been on the front page of the Cairo paper. The gist of the story was that Dave and I had been out partying all night long and had been ever since we arrived in Egypt. The reporter was waiting in the lobby for me, so I went with the Sudanese swimmer and we talked. The reporter said that he was sorry but he’d had to make up a story to explain why I wasn’t available for the parade and the interviews. I explained to him that I understood, and I would not be speaking to him ever again.

  For the next seven days I trained in the swimming pool at the Gizara Club. Both David and I grew increasingly ill. In an attempt to replace all the body fluids we were losing, we drank large amounts of bottled water. One morning, though, I discovered a waiter in the hallway standing over a sink, refilling the bottles with tap water and resealing them. The water wasn’t purified, and it no doubt was contributing to our problem.

  Two days before the race, the Egyptian team and all the guest swimmers were bused out to a restaurant near the Pyramids for dinner. Monir was sitting with a friend on the bus, and I managed to get a seat behind him with Dave.

  Monir was a pharmacy student at Cairo University. He said that he understood that we were both sick. Dave explained the symptoms, and Monir diagnosed the problem as dysentery. When Dave showed him our pills, Monir shook his head in disbelief. They were placebos, just sugar pills. Dave told him that we had been given them from the Egyptian Swimming Federation doctor. Monir grimaced with disgust. He said he had friends at the university who were physicians and he would get some real medication for us.

  “How quickly do you think it will work?” I asked.

  “It depends upon your condition, the strength of the medication, and how fast your body responds. It could take effect within twenty-four hours,” he added optimistically.

  “That would be great,” I said, hoping it would be soon enough.

  A Sahara wind was gusting around the Nile River, unfurling the flags of the twenty-five nations whose swimmers were about to compete in the twenty-mile race. This race had been held since before Fahmy was a boy, always in spring, and had always been regarded in the Arab world as a swim of great honor and prestige.

  Monir was standing on a hill above the Egyptian Swimming Federation’s boat, studying the river below, ablaze with brilliantly colored flags with interesting crests and insignias and designs. There were over one hundred rowboats on the water, and there would be at least a dozen swimmers from the Egyptian team competing in the race. Monir was having a difficult time locating his boat.

  Below was a scene of chaos; with the strong south-flowing current, none of the boats could hold their positions. They were slamming into each other, jockeying for position. Tempers were flaring, crews were screaming, and everyone was using expressive hand gestures. Finally Monir found his boat.

  I had no difficulty finding mine. It was the only one with the American flag, positioned a hundred yards ahead of the starting line.

  Monir noticed me and hurried over. He wanted to know how I was feeling. I told him much better, but it wasn’t true. I had lost nearly twenty pounds in ten days, most of it from dehydration, and my stomach was cramping and killing me, but I didn’t want to tell him that. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Just a bit nervous,” he said.

  “Oh, don’t worry—so much can happen in eight or nine hours. Just take it as it comes. Sometimes it seems like a lifetime can pass in eight or nine hours,” I said to exaggerate the point.

  That was exactly what Monir needed to hear, and he repeated it and visibly relaxed.

  Thousands of people lined the racecourse, many waving small Egyptian flags and shouting the names of their favorite swimmers. A loudspeaker was blaring; an announcer was introducing the athletes’ names as if a horse race were about to start. More people kept arriving.

  A few moments later I lined up with the other swimmers, and the announcer shouted something in Arabic. It must have been “Go!” because all the swimmers were running into the water except me. Pulling on my cap and goggles, I dove into the river.

  The pack was already heading north, toward a buoy in the center of the Nile. All one hundred swimmers were trying to squeeze around that buoy and locate their crew. It was more crowded than Times Square at rush hour, and more competitive. Someone kicked me in the stomach. Someone else elbowed me in the ribs. I felt as if I were back on the water polo team. Looking up, I found a hole in the pack and zigzagged toward it, then crossed to the opposite shore, where the current was weaker. Dave was calling me, and when I looked up I saw the American flag, the beautiful white stars and red stripes reflected in the wavering brown water. “You’re right on pace and in first place. Good job!” he shouted so I could hear him above the cheering crowd.

  We rounded the northern tip of the north island, then turned south. There we moved into the middle of the river to take full advantage of the current. The city, the crowds—people washing clothes, fishing, and defecating in the water—flew past like a video on fast forward.

  We cut back across the center of the eight and entered an area where I had not practiced before. Dave had tried to convince me to swim there, but the stench had made me gag. The water was stagnant, hot, and as thick as engine oil, and it was filled with chunks of brown sewage. It got worse. We came to an area about two hundred yards long where large metal barrels had been strung together and placed parallel to the shore. During the war, the Egyptians had placed the barrels in the Nile in an area where the current slowed so that if the Israelis mined the river, the mines would collect in this area and unexploded mines wouldn’t explode on shore. The Egyptians admitted that the chances of this happening were remote, but the barrels were still in place. They also believed that the mines would drift into the barrel area and this would help protect ships from exploding mines.

  Two men were standing thigh deep in the water, pushing the barrels aside so we could swim through a narrow opening. Here the water was so shallow that every time I took a stroke my arm sank down into the heavy, thick brown muck, to my shoulder. Waste swelled in clouds around my face and filled my swimsuit with putrid water. On my next stroke my hand sank more deeply into the goo, and I cut my fingertips on some broken glass. Knowing the water was like a test tube filled with virulent bacteria, I just about lost it. I didn’t realize at the time that the other swimmers had built up a resistance to the microbes in the water, or that those who hadn’t had stayed clear of the river until the day of the race.

  Finally we cleared the barrels and moved offshore. Rounding the bottom loop of the figure eight, we turned directly into the current. Here my speed was cut in half. I was feeling weak and dizzy, but I was still in first place.


  Stroking along at seventy strokes per minute, faster than my normal speed, I tried to compensate for the current and push ahead. Something large hit my arm. Then my hand hit it. It felt soft, spongy, and bony. The smell made my head spin.

  “What was that?” I shouted to Dave.

  “You don’t want to know,” he said, having turned away in disgust.

  “What was it?”

  “A dead dog. Your hand punched through its rib cage.”

  Dave kept talking to me, encouraging me, saying that I was doing really well, that I was strong, that I’d never looked better, but I knew he wasn’t telling me the truth, and I knew he knew it too. I told him I was having a rough time. I didn’t feel good. I felt really cold in the water, and I was starting to shake. That made no sense at all, since the water temperature was in the high seventies. Dave urged me to continue. He suggested that I drink some canned apple juice. I tried it, but I had to fight to keep it down. Good coaches know when to push a swimmer and when to back off. David knew, and he understood that I was almost at my limit. “You’ve got an Egyptian swimmer about one hundred yards behind you,” he said.

  I turned to breathe, and on that breath I could see it was Monir. Putting my head down, I tried to snap into gear, but he continued gaining on me. I pulled faster and deeper, but my arm strokes had no power behind them. When I glanced back, Monir had closed the space between us. He pulled alongside me so quickly that I felt as if I were going backward. Then I understood that he had the strength to fly right by me, but instead he slowed down and moved closer so I could ride on his slipstream. Matching my strokes with his, I paced with him. His arm strokes were long, smooth, powerful, and beautiful. Water flowed over him like a second skin and magnified the smooth contours of his body as he glided across the water’s surface. He grinned at me reassuringly and I smiled back at him. Finally this was fun. Pulling a little more strongly, he egged me on, and I met his strength, quickening my pace by a notch. He increased his pace, extended his arms out farther, dug deeper, and pulled more water. I tried to snap into my next gear, but I couldn’t. I tried again, but it wasn’t there. He waited and moved closer so that our arms were nearly touching. We breathed at the same moment and he smiled, letting me ride more of his slipstream.