Iodine

Tonight as I stepped on my porch I smelled iodine coming from the channel. A powerful smell it is for me. Associated with my childhood in Tunisia by the Mediterranean sea, and all the summers I've spent there in the subsequent years after we moved back to France.
I'd spend all my days in the water, I'd come down the hill from the family beach home to the beach around 9 or 10am, and wouldn't come back up till after 5pm. I'd end up with a dark skin and sun burnt fair hair.
We had an uncle, uncle Mohsen, then about 80 years of age, who'd do his daily lap swim in the sea no matter what the weather or season. Nobody could persuade him not to do so, even in the winter time.
Me and my cousins would occasionally follow him in his long, slow lap swim from Marsa Cubes to the Gammarth beach, coming back on foot hiking along the beach.
It was a long, slow swim, several miles long, but we were trained to do so, we were "Bent El Bhar" as we say in Arabic, which means "daughter of the sea"
Uncle Mohsen, in spite of his age, was a very healthy, lean, muscular man. The sea was his lover, he couldn't live without it. It runs in the family blood, my dad was a very good swimmer too, and nothing would make him happier than eating fresh seafood on the beach or on a boat.
My childhood and teenage memories are peopled with the taste of salt,cold showers to cool off from the heat, eating fresh urchins and octopus, watching the sea drinking mint tea, and large family gatherings, hence, I guess, my taste for large gatherings and cookout parties.