generalspeaking

Thursday, January 09, 2020

Afghani Women Finding Comfort in a Pool

"In Kabul, women can't go anywhere. But here, I don't have to cover up and pretend anything. I am just myself."
"When I come here, I forget about everything else."
"It is just me and the water, and it is safe."
Fatema Saeedi, Kabul, Afghanistan

"When we first opened [pool facilities for women] and started allowing women to swim, we also received many threats [from Afghan men]."
Mohamed Rahim, manager, Amu pool

"Since I was a kid, I wanted to learn how to swim, but there was no place to go and learn."
"I thought to myself, 'Maybe our customers won't come back' [after a Taliban rocket attack in the neighbourhood, frightening female swimmers]."
"But the next morning, they did."
Arezo Hassanzada, 28, trainer, Amu pool, Kabul

A woman flips back her long hair at the Amu swimming pool, one of only two where women can swim in the city of Kabul, Afghanistan, Nov 4, 2019. Though the city has become markedly more progressive in its nearly two decades as a Western-backed democracy, Kabul is still steeped in a conservative culture that relegates women to hidden or subjugated roles. The New York Times

As a landlocked country, there are no beaches, no natural and casual access to water for residents of Afghanistan. In the nation's capital there was one pool, opened just before the U.S.-led invasion and like all public facilities, including hospitals, women were not permitted entry. Now, like hospitals specializing in treating women, where even surgeons must wear burqas while operating, there are two pools that women have access to.

Women like Fatema Saeedi, who value the use of a pool, where they can lose themselves in the leisure comfort of swimming, blocking out of their minds the chaos of the city, where thoughts of suicide bombings, of Taliban attacks, can be momentarily vanquished. At age 26, she views the swimming pool as a refuge where the sparkling water and the women-only environment sealed away from male patrons give respite from the city.

Governed by a Western-backed democracy, Kabul has changed in the last several decades, but the culture remains immersed in the conservative Afghan tradition relegating women to subjugated roles in society, the more discreet and hidden the better. Swimming and the luxury of going to pools attracts a growing number of both men and women.

Now, the Taliban that had once ruled Afghanistan and denied women any presence in the public sphere is a bad dream. But a nightmare that most women in the country despair may one day return.

Omar Sobhani / Reuters

Visitors enjoy a water park in Kabul No women allowed

Pool membership is expensive, at $75 monthly for women, $20 more than what males must pay to access the 23 public and private pools that have opened in the city of close to five million people. Only two of those pools allow women to access their facilities. In Amu, entry is accessible from an entrance leading to a basement; the area a third the size of the men's. Women must lock up their cellphones to enter.

Women may eat food ordered and delivered to a collection of tables. The food is ordered from the male side which has a snack bar in the strictly segregated area. The other women-only pool opened in the middle of the city a year ago. The manager of the Amu pool cannot provide an accurate number of the women who regularly swim there, since no one tracks attendance, but it ranges from 15 to 70 a day.

Arezo Hassanzada is a swimming trainer at Amu, helping other women into life jackets before entering the pool on their first visit. There, in the pool, the women splash about and laugh together at the unaccustomed freedom from male scrutiny. Their attire, of course, reflects the 'modesty code' of Islamic culture; no two-piece bathing suits, but full body cover. But there, they sigh with the relief of a feeling of freedom.