Nothing, however, has made my father as proud as his role as the family swim instructor. In Iran, people learned to swim on their own, if they learned at all. My mother, like most women of her generation, never learned to swim. Neither did four of her five sisters, or her brother. This was the norm. My father, always the progressive man, decided that every one of his children and his nieces and nephews would learn to swim. Abadan, having been built by the British, contained many luxuries not readily found in other areas, including a clubhouse with a large pool. Every summer my relatives came from all over Iran to stay with us, and, sure enough, it was always some child’s turn to learn to swim. Like a game-show host announcing the next contestant, my father would say, “This summer, it’s your turn, Mahmood!”

My father had a perfect track record, a topic he loved to talk about. “I have a gift,” he’d always say. We had all resigned ourselves to having to listen over and over again to his description of the exact moment at which each niece and nephew learned to swim and the spellbinding tension leading up to it. “Mahmood said, ‘Uncle Kazem, I can’t do this,’ and I said, ‘Yes, you can,’ and he lifted his arm like this and I pushed him a little bit and he kicked like this and he started to swim like a fish, so I said, ‘Hey, you never told me you knew how to swim!’ ” He’d always end these riveting tales by telling us, “You should’ve been there!” We were all glad we hadn’t been. The stories were interesting the first fourteen times, but beyond that, they became the equivalent of the neighbor’s vacation slides showing the cathedrals of France from all angles. Unfortunately, there just wasn’t much anyone could do to put an end to these tales. Each new swimmer represented a victory, and talking about it made my father relive his moments of glory over and over again. The twinkle in his eye, the excitement in his voice, the pride in his face all made it clear that my father would never stop retelling his stories.

History, however, has shown us that even the greatest of generals must eventually face defeat in battle, and thus was carved my destiny. I was my father’s Waterloo.

My father, an engineer, had an entirely logical approach to teaching his students to swim. In a methodical manner, he would explain all the necessary ingredients in swimming. “Your head goes like this, thus creating buoyancy; your feet go like this, thus propelling you forward; your arms go like this to steer you. You put it all together and you’ve got it!” Hearing him explain it made swimming seem as easy as baking a Betty Crocker cake from a mix. You just add water and there you go.