Today I didn’t die. Going out further to sea following Zayche, who swam up ahead, looked down through surprisingly clear water at plumes of current-eddied sand beneath, clearly visible through the rolling water. Snapping my red scrunchie around a wrist like a good-luck charm, letting my hair down in the water with a morbid pang of news-headlinery: Male Drowning Victim Identified By Hair Accessory. Quickly as it set on it subsides, just another wave as I settle into this unsteady, slapdash crawl stroke I have, out of practice I’m thinking, rusty, entirely unsuited to sea conditions, though it's calmer now than yesterday. Or the day before, high violent whitewater crashing over the rocks serrating the shoreline. So patently unswimmable, the Gypsy mother hovered urgently up and down the Butamyata waterfront, poised and tense as she watched over these little kids from the Mahala, ready to order them out at the first sign of any turbulence endangering that sheltered lagoon.

In all my 3 months now at this small coastal village, just off the closed Turkish-EU border, it’s been at most a half-dozen times I’d actually swum in the Black Sea, a fact I’m shy to admit. Had all these beaches at my unlimited disposal, my routine had coalesced into an elaborate avoidance. Going to the beach mid-afternoon with my djembe on arm, or a yoga mat in the morning, or taking longish jogs along the hilly coastline. Arriving to a halfway-stop sitting on a rock to stare out to the horizon in a kind of a meditative trance, talking out loud completely at ease there with no-one to even hear. Talking to the clouds, the sky, the sea, the ants.

Steady reports seeping in, of swimmers and surfers last seen going out onto the menacing or innocent-looking waves, these almost invariably being young white males I didn’t have to check to know, and never to return. Jogging past, there is a memorial stone with a plaque inscribed in Cyrillic overlooking a nondescript, secondary little cove of the coven of strung-together baylets and undeveloped natural beaches. The plaque commemorating the 2 men lost to sea as they rescued a pair of children, little boys who made it out alive. Zayche is nine, and has been taught to swim by her dad at age 3 or something like that, very well too, I saw as I watched the pair of them from shore, two bobbing blotches like a pair of dolphins at play. Now he’s gone on a long lap around the bay, and as the two of us venture out riding over the rolling shoulders of the big, robust waves, it reminds me of the outdoor wave pool at Gellért spa, the way it started small and increased in strength until the strong undercurrent could easily upend you into the chlorinated poolwater, and how I’d swim right up to the grates at the deep end, back when I was a kid.

‘You’ll need to be careful you know,’ I tell her, feeling water beneath my feet, ‘I’m not sure I could help you if there was any trouble.’ She acknowledges this, waving us further out, fearless and nine, and after a few more meters more I say, ‘No, let’s get back now.’ She’s good about this, though obviously unconcerned with all this heaving force around us, humoring me while floating like a butterfly, me managing a steady crawl toward the waiting shore. Minutes go by, I lift my head up to check for the beach umbrellas up ahead and the people and sand and it all looks very far, Lipite beach viewed from the wrong end of some opera glasses perhaps, a twinge of alarm that segues neatly into another bout of swimming. Draining, bobbling from wave to wave, but still no progress as far as I can tell, even as I ride beachward smooth over every surge, the waves pull me back irresistibly. Overall the illusion is of working way too hard to remain entirely stationary, fighting just to stay where I am and not drift further out. Peaks roll over me as I find occasional foothold underneath, just far enough to keep my nose above the surface.

Salt water slapping across mouth and nostrils, I wheeze and splutter, a flash flood of fear bringing up an article from this morning’s Google surfing, looking up Waterboarding.  Strikingly clear and simple: confinement and intermittent but steady water exposure. Death by drowning, so unreasonable, as I’m probably miles off being exhausted of all strength, yet every thwarted effort at propelling myself shoreward winds up the panic and paranoia. I switch to my auxiliary backstroke, fearful of breakwater damping me out, willing calm and composure upon myself for another eternal minute or two, contemplating Zayche’s safe return to shore and appalled at the notion of having to ask help myself. Then I’m over the brink somewhere, over embarrassment and mortification and all scruples, compelled first to moan to myself, repeatedly, and then with no guardian spirit or salvage-dolphin materializing, bouncing along to pluck me away from full immersion, just an inarticulate bawling admittance of failure and defeat.

Vocalizing something along the lines of ‘Oh, no,’ and then ‘This is bad,’ a leaden irony not lost as I tread water, just about capsize into ridicule. Zayche will be fine I tell myself, a little minnow as much at home as you’re out of your depth, she’ll breeze straight over the breakwater. And I finally start screaming in earnest, even as no immediate threat to my life is forthcoming, but certain that I can’t possibly navigate to safety. Burdening Zayche with my incompetence is a far more horrifying perspective than to merely make an inane spectacle of myself, going so far as to imagine for a second that she too may be fighting for dear life. Mounting fear amplifies my cries, and though the wild hippie-beach has no lifeguards, I’m confident my high-strung, raucous yelling will carry to the people on the beach. Relieved, I see she’s reached shore already, and all fear now is for myself only. A familiar scenario overall, for I am no stranger to the closeness of my own impending doom, like an unpleasant old shadow-friend showing up again, anticipated. On the edge of my vision a swimming figure comes closer, broad and mustached, and stopping quite close to my warbling form to look somewhat incredulously at a grown man such as myself apparently yelling his head off in some weird language, and so close to shore. For a moment it seems conceivable for him to turn back, but I do not will him turn away, whatever the justifications may be.

Another young man is coming in from right up front, holding a swimming aid of some sort, and I keep right on bawling, though less in alarm now, more in relief and encouragement. It is one of those half-surfboard shaped flimsy foam floaty things, the kind with straps on, a perfectly solid-looking rescue token. Relaxing into the inevitable, I welcome their assistance, suddenly feeling tired and drained, almost weightless as I clamber onto the plastic raft, making some feeble efforts to stand in the shallow, but reasonably letting myself be dragged ashore. Minutes possibly are spent trying to communicate, gratitude, explanation, even a small joke, and I encourage introductions, immediately forgetting the names of both my two therapists. Footing regained, clambering for my bearings, curling my toes over firm, rough, almost gravelly sand, I can see she’s huddled under the parasol there, probably frightened and confused, amends are waiting to be made. For now, I can think about nobody at all.