In the water, you can't hear their words.

In the water, you can't hear anything at all.

Reshma was a swimmer. You couldn't tell by looking at her. Her walk was a little too ambling to be athletic, her body a little too curvy to be fast. But the minute she hit the water, she transformed into a graceful, streamlined creature. She loved it. The water embraced her like an old friend and her limbs responded in kind, reaching out to clasp at it, again and again.

In the water, nobody stared.

In the water, everyone was the same, moving just to stay afloat.

When Reshma was nine years old, Sydney was gripped with an Olympic fever that made them all sweat with anticipation. For just over two weeks, Sydney felt like a different city. Tourists, journalists, sports fans and party hunters stormed the hotels. The pavements were jammed with people looking lost, clutching maps in their hands and with cameras strung about their necks.

Reshma and Zahara skipped past them, squeezing through the gaps between the slow-moving islands of bodies. These two little girls knew where they were going.

Even though the Olympic village was just a couple of suburbs away from Auburn, Reshma and Zahara didn't get to see any of the events live. Her ma refused to let them go.

- Too many people, we will lose you. Someone will say, look at these beautiful little girls. They are so pretty, we will take them home as a souvenir.

So Reshma sat glued to the television at home, her heart beating wildly at the thought of those famous people being so close - just down the road!

Zahara didn't get as excited about the sports. She shrugged her shoulders.

- What's the big deal? I wish the trains weren't so packed.

But Reshma was excited because she got to see the swimming. That was the year that Ian Thorpe seemed to be breaking world records every time he dove into the pool. Reshma watched him step up onto the podium and step down again, over and over, until finally he'd collected three gold medals and two silver medals. He was her hero.

To her mum's horror, she bought a big poster of him and papered it across one wall of her bedroom. He stood there with his arms crossed, larger than life, unapologetically half-naked and still wet from the pool.

Zahara wouldn't stop laughing at her.

- He's so ugly! Why do you want that on our wall?

But Reshma didn't care. She loved his broad shoulders and his hair bleached blond from the chlorine. She loved how when he first dove in, he would swim nearly half a length of the pool before surfacing for air. She wanted to be able to swim like that. She wanted to be able to stay underwater forever, without ever needing to surface, without ever needing to come back onto the land.

In the water you can hold your breath and listen to your heartbeat.

Reshma's family did camp out at the Opera House to watch the closing ceremony of the Olympics. They arrived five hours before the ceremony was due to start and sat there with a picnic.

An endless stream of people seemed to come into the forecourt until the whole area was finally sealed off and nobody else was allowed in. When the sun set, the air turned so cold that goosebumps made their way across their faces. Their ma started fussing.

- We should get the girls inside before they get sick.

But her abba held up his hand and shook his head.

- We are staying here. This is a once in a lifetime! They will never forget this.

So their ma wrapped Zahara and Reshma up in the picnic blanket and they huddled together, blowing hot air into their numbed fists.

A woman sitting next to them smiled and offered them toffees from a bag. Ordinarily, they wouldn't have been allowed to accept them but that day, their ma only smiled and nodded. The toffees were soft and chewy and stuck into the back crevices of Reshma's teeth, releasing their sweetness slowly over time.

And when the closing ceremony finally started, Reshma didn't feel cold any longer. The crowd around them generated a warmth that engulfed her, that seemed to flow out from the little peninsula they were standing on and flow out to sea.

Reshma couldn't remember the ceremony itself very well, but she could still remember that feeling very clearly. They'd all stood up to sing the national anthem together and she'd never felt so close to the people around her. For that one evening it seemed as though everyone had forgotten themselves, lost in something that felt bigger than all of them.

In the water even the quickest intention is slowed to a meditative act.

Walking into the Aquatic Centre now, the flush of the Olympics was like a far-off dream that had never happened. The edges of Ian Thorpe had yellowed with age and peeled off the wall. The entire poster was too heavy for the gobs of blue-tac she'd pressed it onto. It had fallen off one afternoon, and she hadn't seen any reason to put it back.

Homebush itself struck her as a vision of what Australians thought they should be. Neatly trimmed lawns, large concrete expanses. It looked clean, sterile, oversaturated in primary colours. Like toys in a child's sandbox - big chunks of smooth plastic, no sharp edges. Everything pretty, until little Junior's friends bury him in the sand and won't dig him out.

On weekends like this, when big events weren't on, it was like a ghost-town. Reshma had a sneaking suspicion that this was why Thorpie quit. He couldn't stand the silence of the everyday, returning back to being just one small man in amongst these epic buildings. How empty it felt when dreams had been lost and achieved.

When she entered the changing room, Reshma noticed a girl looking at her sideways from across the room. She pretended she hadn't seen, and tried to focus on getting into her swimmers, but she felt sluggish today. She didn't know what to feel. Narelle had disappeared without saying goodbye. She'd left a note saying that she'd call. They weren't sure whether to believe her or not.

The girl was still looking at her. As she stripped down, Reshma felt self-conscious about the roll of fat across her belly, the cellulite that dimpled her legs. She snuck a glance at the girl across the room and it made her shrink back, she wished she hadn't looked. The girl looked like a model in her bikini. She had a flat stomach and long legs.

Reshma bit her lip and tried to remember her ma, with her matter-of-fact approach to things.

- You have a beautiful body, made to bear children. Those skinny women, when it comes to give birth, they will be cursing their narrow hips. You, you have a body that is a real woman's body. And you will find a man who loves you, not because of your body, but because he sees how beautiful you are inside. Just as I do. And you will meet this wonderful man, and together you will have lots of beautiful children.

Reshma didn't like wearing her swimsuit. It was unforgiving in the way it clung so tightly to her. She had friends that told her to ignore it.

- No one's looking at you, nobody cares.

But Reshma knew they were wrong. When she was at the beach she spent a lot of time picking out the flaws in the women around her. All the women who were kidding themselves, wearing swimsuits that cut awkwardly into their bodies and were too tight for them. She was under no delusions that those women were looking at her in the same way.

She'd been reading a lot about the burqini lately, a swimsuit made for Muslim women which looked similar to the special wetsuits that Ian Thorpe wore in competition. She liked to idea of getting one. But for now, she made do with her own makeshift swimgear. She wore dance leggings and a rash top over her swimsuit, and she tucked her hair carefully away into a tight swimming cap. She made sure to wear the swimsuit underneath just in case someone asked her to remove her leggings. She'd heard of people making trouble before.

Lifeguards who refused to let women swim if they were too covered up. They argued that wearing clothes in the swimming pool wasn't clean, but Reshma didn't see how people naked with all their bits hanging out could be any cleaner.

The girl was still there, on the other side of the room. Standing there and staring at her blatantly now, without shame. She reminded Reshma a bit of Narelle, with her long, straight brown hair. The same little ski-jump nose that made her look a bit stuck-up.

- What are you looking at?

- I'm sorry. I just - I didn't realise you could go swimming.

The girl was turning crimson now, embarrassed.

- I'm not blind you know? I'm just Muslim. I can see you goggling like some sort of weird deep-sea fish that's never seen light before.

- I'm sorry.

The girl looked away, but Reshma didn't want to let it go so easily. She was angry that this girl with her flat stomach and pale eyes and scrawny arms could look at her that way, as though she was an animal in a zoo, as though there was something wrong with Reshma's shorter legs and her curves.

- You don't think I can swim, is that it? You don't understand what I'm doing at a pool, right?

- No, no, I-

- Well, come on. Let's swim. You want to challenge me? Let's go out there and we'll see who's faster.

The girl was frantically looking around the changing room now, looking for someone to help her. But the changing room was empty. Reshma smiled now, watching the girl squirm.

- No?

- No, no. I didn't mean anything.

- No. Because you're the sort of girl who goes to the beach just to get a tan, isn't it? Because you're the sort of girl who comes to a swimming pool because you're hoping to score some hot swimmer boyfriend. Well, guess what? I don't have time for someone like you. You, skeletor-woman, can go home to where you came from.

And with that, Reshma left the changing room, walked out to the pool and plunged in. The cold water stunned her, made her feel clear.

In the water, there was no need to make sense of things.

One stroke after the after, one lap after the next.

There was no need to think, no need to question.

She was going to keep moving back and forth, and at the end she would find herself in the same place she always was. But that didn't mean she hadn't gone somewhere. That didn't mean she hadn't done something important.

Reshma swam, and thought about the journeys her grandparents had made to get to India. She swam and thought about the journeys her parents had made to come here. She swam, and she thought about Narelle, and she wished her well.