Guess What I Did Yesterday?

Seeing as I was bummed out about the war in Lebanon and other various and sundry things, when my friends (who happen to be Lebanese) asked me if I wanted to go SWIMMING!, I uttered a faint, "Yes...."

Aside from what was on my mind, I was also a little hesitant to go swimming in Qom because someone had told me about several women who had been in a private pool here and died of chlorine inhalation. But someone else later correct her and said that they had merely been hospitalized. Neither option seemed appealing to me -- but, as it turned out, the trip to the swimming pool was much more treacherous than the destination itself.

We got to the swimming pool visa Qom's famous female-run taxi service. (See http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2002/sep/06/irans_first_female/) Since I tend to get more than my fair share of stares and date invitations from male taxi drivers, I was looking forward to an uneventful ride. Was I mistaken. I should have realized we were in for something when I saw the driver. The first thing I noticed was that she had an ATTITUDE. Not an attitude, but an ATTITUDE. It wasn't just the bright red scarf the size of Rhode Island, or the chador draped loosely off of one shoulder, or even the Southern California Persian pop music blasting out of the taxi. It was the way she walked, the way she talked -- and, most alarmingly, the way she drove. Lanes had no meaning for her. She would speed up and slow down for no good reason and cut off poor men who would flip her off from behind their car windows. For the first time in my life, I felt a true sense of fear on the road here, and it occurred to me that maybe the occasional pick up line was not so bad after all.

After some impromptu prayers on my part, we made it to THE POOL! (Forgive me for sounding un-hawzah-like, but I have to share my excitement... we're allowed to have some fun, aren't we?) The pool was not just A POOL. It was a pool with DIVING BOARDS and a WATER SLIDE!!! I wanted to run straight in, but the caretakes made us go through not one, not two, not three, but FIVE salty showers as well as a foot washing pool to enter. (Hey, at least we know we were clean)

It was great... for a while. And then, the masses arrived. Hordes of Iranian women -- some young, some old, but, surprisingly, mostly old -- descended on the showers. Suddenly, someone pulled out a boom box and began blasting vaguely familiar American music and leading the crowd in water aerobics. I was doubly shocked. For one thing, I had no idea you were allowed to blast music in public places in Qom, and I had somewhat naively assumed that all the amplifiers they sold in the bazaar were for religious gatherings. And I also had no clue that people did water aerobics in Iran. But the good thing about water is, you can escape. All you have to do is go down... and it is the quietest place in the world.

It could only last so long though (especially the chlorine was rather strong), and eventually we had to go back to reality. But if I had to rate the experience, I'd give it a 10, and I'd recommend it to all!