BAGHDAD — When one of my Iraqi co-workers invited me to go swimming the other day, I wasn't sure what she meant. Sure, we have an outdoor swimming pool at our hotel, but it's pretty much off limits to us -- we're women.
It hasn't always been this way. I've heard stories from other female reporters about how in 2003 they would lounge by the hotel pool, drinking beers and taking afternoon dips as helicopters buzzed overhead. And Baghdad once had at least a dozen public pools where men and women swam together.
But Muslim religious leaders have clamped down on women's public attire. Just last week, the Iraqi parliament debated the morality of coed swimming, a U.S. State Department official said.
Given that environment, in the interest of modesty, most women don't use the hotel pool during the day.
Instead, we walk past, draped in scarves and ankle-length tunics, and stare longingly at the rectangle of aqua water or, if men are splashing around, avert our eyes. After dark sometimes, we creep down with friends and strip to one-piece swimsuits under long pants to swim a few laps. If men are eating on the deck near the deep end, they usually stare.
But my co-worker wasn't talking about our pool. She explained that Tuesdays are "family day" at the pool in the Babylon Hotel.
Women and children only. No men.
"Do the women wear head scarves?" I asked. No, she said, of course not. What about \o7abayas\f7, the ankle-length gowns I wear here? No. Maybe they wore the full-coverage swimsuits I had seen in the U.S., spandex body suits with matching head covers? No again.
"I know," she said, "I couldn't believe it myself."
And then she really shocked me: "Some of them even wear bikinis."
I imagined a pool deck full of Iraqi women reclining in two-piece suits, slipping on enormous sunglasses and sipping Diet Pepsis. I could just picture the eager men craning their necks from hotel windows above to get a look. An island of female liberation in the increasingly restrictive capital.
I had to see it.
So on Tuesday, we drove over wearing our head scarves and gowns, carrying a bag full of swimsuits, caps, earplugs and an inflatable pool toy shaped like a tire.
At the hotel, we followed stairs up to a long, carpeted corridor leading to the pool, passing under an ornate wooden archway that still featured a sign from olden days warning swimmers not to forget their membership cards.
