 "True grit")
A DIFFERENT KIND OF DAUGHTER: THE GIRL WHO HID FROM TALIBAN IN PLAIN SIGHT
Author: Maria Toorpakai with Katharine Holstein
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Pages: 326
Price: Rs 599
Champions across sports all have to overcome different kinds of odds. They all possess exceptional courage and determination in their pursuit of excellence. Maria Toorpakai, an unfamiliar name with an extraordinary story, had all these qualities but she also had something else of which few of her peers can boast: a doggedly rebellious streak.
A Different Kind of Daughter is Toorpakai's story of exceptional grit. Born in South Waziristan, a wild tribal outpost in north-west Pakistan, Toorpakai grew up in an area of Pakistan where women are restricted to household chores. Forget playing a sport, even dreaming about such "absurdities" is dealt with harshly.
But Toorpakai isn't your average tribal Pakistani woman and A Different Kind of Daughter isn't like any other sports biography. She is a rebel who dressed up as a boy, cut her hair and burned all her pretty dresses when she was four. Her academic parents - liberal by any standard - allowed her to chart her own path. That path meant making friends with street urchins, getting into street brawls with other boys and even participating in a weightlifting competition as a boy.
She takes on a boy's name - none other than Genghis Khan - and is far more comfortable with boys. "Life as a boy was beautiful," she writes, "without silk ribbons or beaded dresses or long, black braids. It was a bold and rugged beauty…. It was sweat-soaked T-shirts and my brother's cast-off shorts." Even though she shares a close bond with her sister, it's her brother with whom she goes to the gym and lifts weights.
It's not as if there haven't been stories about women athletes who have overcome significant odds to become champions. Almost all top women athletes will share stories about facing prejudice, taunts, and even harassment. As a child, Toorpakai was beaten up by a religious cleric for playing football in the streets. But as she writes, she was known as Levanai, the Pashto word for insane. It's this insanity that actually kept her sane when there was more than curious glances at her cropped hair, hand-me-down clothes from her brother, and "biceps which were bigger than other girls' thighs".
The book has two parts - the first deals with her growing up years and the different battles she faced. This part of the book tells us how her parents kept shifting from one place to another in order to give their children a better life. From Darra Adam Khel, a city of guns, where she learns to ride a bicycle and encounters weapons, to Peshawar, where she finds her calling in squash.
This isn't a book peppered with sporting anecdotes, but it tells us about the psyche of a girl who did everything a boy would do. And what makes it fascinating is that she did it first in tribal Pakistan and then the city of Peshawar. There's a chilling note in the book when her brother warns her of the consequences of anyone finding out that a girl beat a bunch of boys at weightlifting. Her transformation from Genghis Khan to Maria isn't easy and you genuinely feel for her.
The second part of the book is where sport comes into play. At 12, Toorpakai first picks up a squash racquet and is immediately taken by the sport. However, she is subjected to bullying and harassment once it's known that she is a girl. The boys she plays against cannot stand the fact that a girl is beating them in what is still a male-dominated sport in Pakistan.
The book is as much about Toorpakai as it is about her parents - more so her father. The parents display a tremendous amount of courage in not wilting in the face of societal prejudice and give their children the best education. "We didn't have good clothes and wore torn shoes but attended the best schools," she writes. Her sister, Ayesha Gulalai, is a member of the National Assembly in Pakistan.
Toorpakai, ranked 48 in the world, has won medals in the South Asian Games and other competitions. As she became a "star" in Pakistan, life became difficult. As she writes, Pakistan after 9/11 and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars was a totally different place. She encountered different kinds of challenges - death threats to herself and her family. It's interesting to read about the changes that have taken place in Pakistan from an athlete's point of view, someone who is driven out of her homeland.
Though Pakistan has produced world-class squash players like Jansher Khan and Jehangir Khan, the sport has somehow always remained on the periphery on the sub-continent. The story of Toorpakai would have been more widely known if she was playing any other sport, say, tennis.
Still, A Different Kind of Daughter is a remarkable story and makes for a compelling read. The book, co-authored by Katharine Holstein, has a narrative that will appeal to all kinds of readers. It's not just a story of a squash player but of an underdog, someone who is chasing her dreams with an insane amount of courage and passion. It's also a story of extremely brave parents who are willing to support their child in the face of adversity. Above all, it is about the journey of a fearless woman who became a beacon of hope for many other young girls in a land where they aren't allowed to dream.
