The Half-Year Off

For eight years, Karim had been the kid in his school who got up at half past five.

He was a swimmer. He had been a swimmer since he was seven. He had been an almost-good swimmer since he was eleven, and a genuinely-good swimmer since he was thirteen. He had won a regional medal at fourteen. He was, his coach said, on track for the national squad by sixteen. His timetable was: pool at six, school at eight, pool again at five, dinner, homework, sleep. Saturdays were races. Sundays were a long swim and a short run. There was no other shape of week.

On the first Monday after the New Year, Karim's alarm went off at half past five.

He turned it off. He lay in his bed in the dark and looked at the ceiling.

He did not get up.

He thought, very clearly: I am not going.

He did not know where the thought had come from. He had been swimming, technically, well that autumn. His times had been good. The pre-Christmas regional had gone fine. The coach had been pleased. There had been no obvious tipping point. There had been only a long, slow, eight-year accumulation of mornings when his hair was wet at school. Of meals where he had been too tired to talk. Of weekends where he had not, ever, gone to a friend's house on a Saturday because Saturday was a race day.

Karim was fifteen. He did not, in that moment, have any of the language a fifteen-year-old needs to explain a decision likethis. He just had the thought. I am not going.

He went back to sleep. He woke at seven-thirty when his mother called up the stairs to ask if he was alive. He got up, ate breakfast, went to school. He did not say anything to anyone, all day, about not having been at the pool.

He did not go on Tuesday morning either. Or in the evening. Or on Wednesday.

By Wednesday afternoon, his coach had phoned the house. Karim's father took the call in the kitchen, with Karim listening from the hallway. His father's voice was measured. I'll talk to him. Yes. I understand. Yes. Tomorrow.

When the call was over, his father came into the hallway. He did not look angry. He looked tired.

"Karim. You want to tell me what's happening?"

"I quit."

His father waited a long time before answering.

"You quit something you have done for eight years, and you weren't going to tell me?"

"I was going to. I just hadn't got round to the words."

His father sat down on the bottom step of the staircase. He looked, very briefly, like a man who had been holding something heavy for a long time and was now allowed to put it down for a moment.

"Are you sure?"

Karim thought.

"I'm not sure I'm right. I'm sure I can't keep doing it."

His father nodded slowly. He did not argue. He did not try to talk him out of it. He said, after a long pause: "Okay. I'll tell your mother. We can talk again at the weekend, properly. In the meantime — what do you want to do with your mornings?"

Karim, who had not thought that far, said honestly: "I don't know. I have never had mornings."

His father almost laughed.

"Then maybe that," he said, "is what the next bit is for. Finding out what you do with mornings."