CHAPTER 2

I'm five and I'm bored. The beach in front of the hotel is divided into six long rows of sunbeds. When Nicola and I race from the water to the palm trees on the terrace, I'm usually faster. When we build castles on the muddy sand at the water's edge, mine often has the higher towers with beautifully dribbled peaks and more solid walls. One competition follows the next - we hop on one leg, do cartwheels or draw a line in the sand to see who can jump further.

I love competitions. But with Nicola, they're sometimes a bit boring. Not surprising - I'm a year and a half older than her. Nicola is not only my sister, but also my best friend. Nobody understands me like she does, nobody admires me more. Whenever I have an idea of what we should play next, she's thrilled. And even when I then run faster, jump further or climb higher, she is never disappointed; she always looks at me with her huge shining eyes and claps her hands. I love my little sister. If only she were as big and fast as me!

We are on holiday in this town with a strange name. There are very tall, modern houses everywhere right by the sea. It's a town where the men wear floor-length white dresses and chequered scarves on their heads, which I don't understand because after all they could play on the beach all day in their swimming trunks, just like us. There are a lot of things here that I don't understand. But I still like Dubai.

We've been here for three days now. I wake up by myself in the morning because I can't wait to get back to the sea. On the third morning, while Nicola is still asleep and Mum and Dad are in bed next door, I put on my swimming costume and sneak out of the room. I've deliberately made a mental note of the way to the beach - along the carpeted corridor to the right, down one flight of stairs, right through the hall with the reflective black stone floor and through the glass door. I walk this way alone, without Mum and Dad, to see if our castles are all right. And then to go for a swim all by myself. I slide open the glass door and start running, across the terrace, towards the palm trees. I can already see the turquoise water ahead of me - that's when Dad grabs my hand, he takes deep breaths and tells me that I should please never do that again.

"Only ever go to the water with Dad, do you hear?"

Yes, of course I hear it. But I'm a big girl, at least bigger than Nicola. And anyway, what am I supposed to do now that we've played everything and I've won every time?

The few other children in the hotel are older than us or stupid. On the first day, we tried to make contact with two deeply tanned brothers from Sweden. They looked at our ambitious sandcastles, then built their own next to ours, rather sloppily. They then laughingly trampled it down before it was anywhere near as big as mine. Completely idiotic. On day two, we played tag with an older German girl and her brother, who was the same age as me. But at some point he stumbled and bashed his knee on the terrace, and we haven't seen them since. There's also an older boy here with his parents, who spends most of his time sitting on a deckchair playing Gameboy. Every half hour he gets up, stretches, runs into the water and swims out to the line with the little yellow buoys. This yellow line, which bounces up and down, separates our hotel's swimming area from the open sea.

Nobody in my family swims. Well, that's not really true. Everyone can swim. But on every holiday, Mum, Dad, Nanny and Grandad prefer to lie in a deckchair and read or chat or talk on the phone. A few months ago, in a children's pool in Marburg, Dad taught me how to stay afloat: I have to play 'frog' with my legs and 'jumping jack' with my arms. And so I can stay afloat for a few strokes, four or five metres, from the edge of the pool to Dad and back again. That's more than Nicola can do; she still needs inflatable armbands. And to be honest, I've never seen anyone in my family swim more than four or five metres at a time.

As I said, we are not swimmers.

But while I'm getting bored on the beach between the deckchairs, my curiosity grows about what's shimmering behind the palm trees on the right. A pool. But not a round children's pool like the one where Dad showed me the frog technique. It's a huge, rectangular pool with deep, dark blue water. Long lines with small red buoys divide the pool lengthways into narrow lanes. The pool belongs to a fitness club that shares it with the hotel. And the atmosphere there is completely different from the one here on the beach. No children are trampling castles or screaming because they have fallen on their knees. Only teenagers and adults with swimming caps and goggles. They dive headfirst into the water and then swim their lengths for hours, back and forth, without speaking, like fairytale creatures, half human, half fish. Each at their own rhythm and with elegant movements that look nothing like a frog or a jumping jack.

A short, wiry man with a white polo shirt and thick black hair strides along the edge of the pool, casual but focused. Occasionally he blows into a red whistle dangling around his neck. Then he squats down next to the pool and exchanges a few words with one of the swimmers. The swimmers nod and then continue their laps, usually a little more elegantly than before. When the swimmers get out of the water, they nod to the man in the polo shirt as if to thank him. In the afternoon, when the last person has left the pool, the man in the polo shirt calmly clears the white plastic loungers into a neat pile and brushes the splashed water back into the pool with a squeegee.

I'm fascinated. And I think I've just found the antidote to my boredom.

Dad is there straight away, as always. Holding his hand, I walk towards the pool. The man in the polo shirt greets him and winks at me with a smile. The two of them speak a language I don't understand. The man nods, beams and gives me the thumbs up. Dad then squats down and explains: "The man's name is Ramesh and he's really nice. He wants to show you how to swim in the big pool."

It starts with Ramesh giving me a swimming cap and goggles. I almost feel like one of the hybrid fish-human creatures. Then we go to the shallow end of the pool, where Ramesh gets into the water with me - he can stand here. He gives me a polystyrene board to hold my upper body above the water. I show him how good I am at the frog movement. Supported by the board, I whizz across the shallow pool. Ramesh nods contentedly and smiles. Then he takes the board and lets me climb out of the pool. He shows me that I should do something I've never dared to do without my Dad - dive off the edge. And not into his arms, but simply into the water. I look over to Dad, who is sitting on a lounger and looks interested. Then back to Ramesh. There's something about the matter-of-fact way he gives me his instructions that takes away all my fear. I dive in and, my head under water, I see the sky-blue surface clearly through my goggles. I do the frog and the jumping jack and break through the surface. Like Ramesh said: I can do this. I have to laugh.

Again. And again. Ramesh shows me that I don't have to hold my nose to avoid breathing in the burning chlorinated water. It suffices to slowly exhale air under water through my nose to keep it clear. And he's right! Then he has me lie on my back in the water, without moving, without a swimming board. First he supports me with his hands - then he takes them away. And indeed, the air in my lungs acts like one of the yellow buoys over in the sea. When I breathe deeply and calmly stretch my arms and legs, I float on top.

Water is my friend. It carries me when I trust it. When I don't try to control it. Water is something against which I can't win, against which I don't have to win, unlike against my little sister. But it helps me if I just accept it.

I've always had more energy than everyone else. At home in Marburg, I'm always outside. I run through the garden, jump on one leg, build dens in the forest and climb trees. My parents do their best to channel my energy. They sign me up for children's ballet classes. For tennis. For piano lessons. I join in, dance a few pirouettes, hit a few balls, play the first few bars of the Flea Waltz - but then I lose interest.

What I enjoy are challenges that I seek out for myself. Which have not yet been set by someone else and written down. And I find them almost everywhere I look.

An Easter brunch in Marburg. My parents take us to a restaurant with a huge garden. The restaurant is decorated for Easter, there are little nests with painted decorative eggs on the windowsills and little carved wooden bunnies adorn every table. The waitresses have hidden Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies in the garden for the young guests. Before the meal, Nicola and I are each given a basket, then we dash off, past the other children, who still carefully scrutinise the garden. We know without saying it - we're on a mission.

Twenty minutes later, we return to the adults' table, out of breath and with leaves in our tousled hair. The other children have long since returned to their tables; they're eating their chocolate eggs and look at us as if we were two aliens.

"Look, Dad, what we've found!"

"Great, you've been busy!"

But Dad looks a bit . hesitant. Isn't he happy for us? We let him count our finds, because of course we need to know who has won. I found 32 eggs and nine rabbits, Nicola has 24 eggs and seven rabbits. What a haul! The Easter bunny must be proud of us. We jump around the table with joy and...