Celine's First Swim Lesson
Fadwa took Celine to her first swim lesson yesterday. She sent me a video.
28 year old Fadwa Kassab is urgently seeking funds to evacuate her family from Gaza who are facing constant threat to their lives. Please consider contributing to her fund at the link here. Any contribution helps. Please share her campaign and story widely. And reach out to me at abigailtulenko@gmail.com with any inquiries or ideas to support the campaign.
Fadwa took Celine to her first swim lesson yesterday. She sent me a video. The video is better than anything I could write, but I’m writing anyway because I can’t contain the words that seem to splash out of my heart in chlorinated bursts of joy.
Fearless Celine has her head bent back, eyes bright as the sparkles on the water’s surface, smiling wider than I would have thought possible for her little face. She leans back and glides across the water, arms extended in total peace. She skims the sapphire expanse, laughing in delight as crystalline droplets shoot out at her will. There is something luxurious about it, something powerful, something free.
Words won’t do it justice. It looks like you’d expect: like a baby learning to swim. It looks like so much more. It looks like hope.
Fadwa shared with me that before October and the months that would upend their quiet life, Celine loved the ocean. At just a few months old, she was happy to bob along in a swim tube, a little human at home in the immensity of the sea. This was the place their family gathered to be together. Fadwa has shared countless family photographs taken against the glorious backdrop of a breezy morning or seaside sunset. There is the treasured photograph of Celine held in her Grandmother Amal’s lap- Amal who’s name means “hope” and who was brutally taken from them in the flash of a bomb (Amal who can never be taken from them because she is in Fadwa’s every feature, in Celine’s love of the water, in the way Fadwa cares for her daughter, in their laughter and most of all, in their hope).
There is the photo of all of Fadwa’s siblings together, just months before they would be splintered by life and death and other borders. Abood stands the tallest- tanned and full of vitality. In one photo that seems to have caught him off guard, he looks down at his sister Nermin with a smile of adoration. Nermin’s daughter Karmen, his niece, clasps his hand; she hardly stands to his waist- a little princess with her beloved Uncle. Karmen is Nermin’s eldest daughter, as Nermin is the eldest of her sisters. You can see Nermin in Karmen; she has something of Nermin’s elegant, almost regal presence. As Fadwa says, Nermin is her “always radiant sister.” Nermin and Abood were both murdered in bombings. Karmen is still in Gaza trapped behind the border. I wonder if in yesterday’s water, Celine can feel something of the water Karmen played in that day, if something deep and elemental can still bind them, if that stream can flow through the flimsy walls of land and empire.
I think about my summers spent playing in the sea with my cousins, how these were the most magical days of my life, how it seemed to stretch on into infinity, how it felt like a place beyond place, like some new form of spatiality altogether. I pray for the day Karmen and Celine will be in that other space together, though I know also in some sense they still are, that it’s a space you never leave once you’ve been.
Fadwa confessed to me that she nearly drowned as a child, and since has had a complicated relationship with the water. She loves the ocean for its beauty, but she’s a hesitant swimmer. How miraculous then to see Celine be so fearless, so trusting that the water will hold her. We joke she’ll be an Olympic swimmer someday. I’m not really joking; I think someone with Celine’s joy can do anything in the world.
I am always in awe at the life Fadwa provides for her daughter. She is less than two years older than me, grieving her own parents alone in a foreign country, and yet, she possesses an indomitable courage. Before she found these lessons, she knew Celine was missing the sea she’d spent her first days surrounded by. So, she brought the sea to her; she filled a bath with cool water and kept her happy splashing around in their Egypt apartment. Ever striving for better, she managed to find Celine swim lessons and ventured out to take her. She dressed her in a cherry-patterned swimsuit and braided her hair with care.
I made this cyanotype today using ocean water- it’s a picture of Celine in the sea of Gaza. I dipped it in the water off the Jersey shore and thought about a baby learning to swim on the other side of the world.
The occupation takes Celine’s family, her home, her toys, and her sea. And yet, she floats and glides, bobs and dips, splashes and smiles. As small men stick like sediment, a sea is rising around them, and Celine is on its surface, laughing.
If you’re interested in purchasing the cyanotype mentioned, I am donating all proceeds to Fadwa’s campaign. Reach out via instagram at @abigailtulenko. And please consider contributing to or sharing Fadwa’s fund at the link here. Thank you.