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By Root 379 0

ahead and organized a guide and a rowboat for us. While Dave, Morad, and the boat captain discussed the Nile River currents, I took off my sweatsuit apprehensively and looked across the river. Fahmy had described the Nile as the river of life and the birthplace of the world’s ancient civilization. With dreamy eyes, he had said, “The Nile is very, very beautiful. It has its very own shade of blue.” Sixteen years had passed since Fahmy had lived in Egypt, and much had changed. The river was not any shade of blue; it was dark brown, thick, and opaque, and it stank like something old and dying.

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 row-boat 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,