A Different Kind of Daughter

by Maria Toorpakai

  The man peered across his desk, his eyes twitching, and he touched his face in wonder. You might have thought from the way he looked at me that I’d flown down from the sky and landed there in front of him. When he grinned, it was as though the whole world opened and let me in.

  “So, you’re a girl.” He said it right to me as though my father wasn’t there at all. And I felt my father step back, giving me space for my bravery: he knew I was all right—and I was.

  “Yes. I am Maria.”

  The man came around from his desk. In my entire life, I’d never been more grateful for a stranger’s smile.

  “Welcome.”

  12. Playing Like a Girl

  At first, nothing changed. Through a haze of half sleep, I got up and dressed as before—in Taimur’s cast-off shorts and an old T-shirt. On the cusp of morning, a cool silence covered everything like mist. I rinsed my face, looked into the cracked mirror over the sink—shorn black hair, sideburns. If I’d wanted to look like a girl, I wouldn’t have known where to begin. Gym bag strapped across my back, I rode my Sohrab through the pale dawn rising over Peshawar, feet pumping the pedals in beat-up running shoes. In appearance, I was no less Genghis than I’d been the day before, when I’d said my real name and held my breath. It didn’t occur to me to change a single physical thing about myself. The acceptance of my family meant I didn’t have to—not for them, and not for anyone else. After so many years living as I had, carefree in my brother’s hand-me-downs and comfortable in my tough skin, I existed somewhere between Genghis and Maria— breathing no more as one than the other.

  A few people studied me from their cars as I stopped at a light and took a quick drink from my full canteen, one foot on the ground tapping the concrete. I stared back, squeezing the handlebars and showing off the ridges of muscle tightening along my arms. It was so early that most of the shops were closed, and the long roads were wide open. I looked into the dark banks of cloud rising in the distance and imagined the slumbering ranges of my lost Waziristan. It was so still and quiet in the streets that if I closed my eyes, I could be back in the valleys, living under the Abode of God again. Mile after mile, riding between the shuttered facades of buildings, I could see the way ahead for blocks. Along the roadsides, kebab vendors hauled white, headless carcasses from the backs of carts and put them on hooks to hang outside. All through the morning they’d butcher the meat. The gutters in the food streets would run red with fresh blood. The smell of smoke as cooking fires were lit; the scent of rain on the horizon. It was going to be a long, wet day outside—I’d spend it inside, running around between four walls.

  I arrived at the sports complex alone, just as the streets began to fill with sound. Taimur was taking exams that month and wouldn’t be able to start playing until they were finished. Inside, I could hear only the soft thwack of rubber against a wall. The beat grew louder as I neared the court. The kind man who had signed me up just days before was dressed in perfect whites and hitting the ball against the back wall. There was something ferocious yet beautiful about it—hard and fast like the sharp echoes of a firing range. As before, I felt each slap against the wall reverberate deep inside my chest. Inside the court, his feet covered the expanse of polished floor as he danced across it through the lit-up air. The black rubber ball darted from wall to wall in a dizzying blur, painting hypnotizing angles.

  My first squash coach was also a wing commander in the air force and director of the PAF (Pakistan Air Force) Squash Academy Peshawar. He had the split-second reflexes of a man accustomed to commanding things that moved at Mach speeds— he owned that ball. Without a break for breath or a drink, he hit again and again, arm and racquet shearing the air, an electric precision propelling his every move. I could see the tilt of his forearm, the slight twitch of his shoulder blade, the barest movement of the racquet altering angles, changing trajectories. The ball obeyed, punching through the air at whatever speed its commander had in mind. Long and lean, the man’s body was capable of a mesmerizing swiftness. He looked like he could catch a bullet in the palm of his hand. Then, as though catching my fleeting thoughts, he stopped in his tracks, raised an arm high, and grabbed the ball out of the very air. He turned around and flashed a grin all the way up to me in that darkness. Then he waved, inviting me in.

  “Taimur said you needed a racquet. This one is for you.”

  He held it out to me.

  The handle was warm and damp with his sweat. As the racquet slid into my palm, I felt it connect to the rest of me like a joint fitting into a socket. I look back on that moment now and believe it was like finding a missing limb. My coach stepped back, his face covered in a sheen of perspiration, and looked me over. I knew he was thinking things about me: maybe how boyish I was—hopefully, how brave. I squeezed the grip, moved the racquet, slowly at first, up and down, back and forth. When I held a flat hand to the taut, stringed face, I could feel the tight mesh boring into my skin. I was ready: suddenly, all I could think about was hitting the ball.

  “Thank you, Coach. It feels good.”

  “It’s a Jonathon Power signature edition. He’s a world champion—Inshallah, it brings you good luck.”

  “I think it already has.”

  My coach, whom I would often refer to as the Wing Commander, looked at me and nodded, a curious gleam without a trace of malice. I remember thinking that he had eyes like my father’s. From the moment we met, I trusted that man with my life. He took my hand and offered me the ball—soft and hot from that unforgiving round of pummeling. I curled my fingers around it, felt the trapped heat—at once every muscle in my body came to life. I thought I had found squash, but I believe now that it found me.

  Though I felt the soul of the game, I still knew nothing of the rules. My coach stood me at the back wall and gave me a rundown of the full squash court. In theory, there wasn’t much to it; in practice, mastering the game would require a monumental combination of agility and stamina. To chase a bullet, you had to run like one; to control it down to the millisecond required a mastery that can only be described as magic. The Wing Commander positioned me between the lines of the service box. We practiced a few empty swings. I slashed the air with my new racquet, slamming an imaginary ball so hard that I felt like I was splitting atoms. Then he went to the other side and told me to go for it.

  “Just see if you can hit it—hit as much as you want, for as long as you can.”

  From the first shot, I was committed. At the command of my arm, the racquet strings made clean contact. Before I knew it, the hot rubber hurtled through the air, smacked the back wall, and came shooting back. I jumped over to the centerline, tilted my racquet, and sent the ball back to the wall again. It kissed the surface and fell dead to the floor, but I’d made it one full round. The joy of making that first shot erupted all through me, and I let out a laugh that resounded against the four walls of the court— to this day, I can still hear it. Then rain started outside and pounded the roof. Thunder shook us in the tank. We were deep inside a fortress, the world outside at war with itself. Racquet in my hand, feet on the court floor, ball in my sights, for the first time since moving to Peshawar I was in my true element.

  When I fell, I went down with my whole body, crashing straight onto the floor like a felled tree. I didn’t see it coming; my body simply gave way. I leapt straight up, barely shaken, and went right back into position. My coach stopped me here and there, explained things: the top out line against the far wall, the bottom tin, the center sweet spot I aimed for in my serve. Again, he let me at it—just hitting, sending the ball to the back wall, watching my aim, playing each move as I’d seen my coach do, until my chest heaved. My coach stood far back, calling out to me—

  “Watch your feet. Slow down. Get used to the feel. Keep going back to the T.”

  Over and over, I stumbled as I raced to make a hit, bruising my knees, cracking my sides, but I didn’t care: each stroke of pain as I hit the floor and got up again was sweet. The Wing Commander just observed me,
arms folded across his chest, nodding with each thwack, thwack, thwack. I was playing with an urgency that I’d never experienced, but not well—a big twelve-year-old kid with gargantuan arms and lazy feet. It didn’t matter.

  When the coach leapt out and grabbed the ball out of the air, he took me out of a trance.

  “You’re playing against your demons, Maria Toorpakai, and you have many.”

  “Is that good?” Sweat was pouring down my face.

  “Yes. It’s the only way to win.”

  He took up his racquet and we started a game.

  I learned the basics, scrambled, tripped over my own feet, shouted out, felt my heart galloping so fast I thought it might just stop. I was like a giant in a shoebox. The ball zigzagged all around me like a hummingbird. Before we knew it, two hours turned to three, and the Wing Commander caught the ball in his hand. Turning his face sideways, he looked over at me—panting. I was already sprawled on the floor, chest pumping hard. The rain overhead was still pounding and the lights flickered over us, on and off. It felt as though there was lightning in the box.

  Then I got up and stood tall, spinning the racquet between my beat-up palms. If he thought I was done in, he was wrong. I wasn’t any good—I could barely hold a rally for more than ten seconds. In fact, I was a lumbering mess. But I knew one thing— inside that cube, I’d just found my game. I walked over, and my coach gave me a high five. He’d never had a kid take to it like I had, like a warrior, and he said so. That’s when I told him that I wasn’t just a girl. I was my father’s daughter. I was a Wazir—down to my last drop of blood.

  *

  The boys all crossed the court in new white shoes, more than a dozen of them. No one exchanged names, only shifty glances. I’d only been playing squash for about ten weeks, but over a two-month period of weekly round-robins, I’d encountered a few of them in the courts. The ones I’d defeated readily, I never saw again. The Wing Commander was sorting us out into teams. There were other coaches there, but he was the leader and ran the academy. Taimur was there with me, lurking in the back, doing up his shoes—newer than mine but still as scuffed up as a beggar’s. I stood in front of my brother, stared straight ahead, listening to the echo of all those low male voices against the high white ceiling—so like the inside of a mosque. We were inside one of a long series of courts. A row of benches stood behind the glass back wall, where more kids waited. Our coach walked the length of the courts, assessing his teams. I was the only girl among us yet.

  Coach came into our box and checked his clipboard. He lined us up against the back wall and counted heads. When he got to me, he stopped briefly and nodded. I wasn’t sure why. Even then, I didn’t realize that I was still tiptoeing along a knife-edge —no one could tell by looking at me that I wasn’t 100 percent male. I had signed up as a girl, but for all intents and purposes was playing as a boy. The truth was, I was also more comfortable not flat-out disclosing my true gender. I let the others think what they wanted. There wasn’t another girl in sight.

  Whenever the Wing Commander passed by or entered a court, every voice went silent. In Pakistan, divisions of the military oversee the three main sports: cricket went to the army, field hockey to the navy, and the air force runs squash. The system was set up as a way for the government to channel federal funds directly into their most important teams and affiliated programs. In my country, in terms of national pride and cultural identity, military and athletic prowess go hand in hand. Under the eye of the most powerful organizations of Pakistan, each boy watched himself. Even in such close quarters, with so much time to kill, no names were exchanged, no introductions of any kind took place.

  Another coach came in, stood at the center T of the court with a ball held up in his hand, and set us to our first hitting drill. One boy after the other went careening after the ball, then scurried to the back of the line. First we just swatted the ball straight to the back—a standard game maneuver. After a while, we worked on a battery of wild hits, whose technical names it would take me months to remember: rolling nicks, corkscrews, cross courts, and boasts. We all ran around the full court until every kid in the line was panting like a dog. Eventually, the same coach narrowed us down into smaller groups and we were set up for small, one-on-one matches. Taimur was sent off to play with boys in a different division. He glanced back at me, looked over the boys in my group. I nodded and told him to go.

  Barely anyone spoke. The silence gave me a chance to keep things straight. I was more serious about playing squash than I’d ever been about anything. My mind was fully engaged on learning the game and figuring out the other boys—who could beat me, who didn’t have a chance. I didn’t want to bother with the weaker ones—girl or not, I was the biggest kid there. A few of the boys eyed me, and some of the more experienced players— the ones with bright whites and new laces, expensive-looking racquets and their own leather bags—jeered a little in my direction as they stood around the court. It was strange how with one look a boy could make me feel inferior; many had tried in alleys and valleys, but until that morning they’d all failed. During the drills, I’d watch those nimble boys race around the court with a lightness and agility I simply did not possess. They had an aerobic stamina that I lacked, but my arms were like battering rams, and that was the single silver bullet in my holster. I couldn’t wait to meet their insolent glowers with one hard hit. Fast or slow, I planned to send them all to the floor.

  I got my chance before the hour was up, when I was sent into the tank with another kid, maybe a head or two taller, but far leaner than I was. We didn’t so much as shake hands—that just wasn’t how things were done. It was better for me that way. What would I have said? I was there as Maria Toorpakai Wazir—but only the Wing Commander and my brother knew it. The wiry boy scrutinized me in my tattered athletic clothes, assessed my racquet. It looked well used, but I knew it stood out; it was a special edition—Taimur had explained the meaning of that to me. In an instant, I could see he thought from my equipment alone that I knew my way around the court, had been playing for years. The spin of a racquet determined that I should make the first serve. When I took a breath and smacked the ball, it punched across the court, pinged against the wall, and shot back like a filament of lightning. The boy next to me lunged, going airborne after it. I could hear the air leave his lungs in a quick, frustrated gasp. He missed, and nodded at me, took a good look at my pulsing arm and the tributary of blue veins that always showed when I’d exerted myself. I went back to the box and served again— same straight dive, same way—killing it. And I did it five times in a row. Every time the ball died before him, the boy exhaled and bit his lip. When I looked back to the glass I saw a row of faces watching. They’d all heard my first serve like a gunshot and dropped their racquets. Then the Wing Commander stepped inside and looked at me.

  “Switch.” That’s all he said.

  I tossed the warm ball to my opponent. In his corner, he stood looking directly ahead. I’d set something alight in him— the desire to set me straight, I think. Purposefully, he lobbed the ball, as soft as a baby’s breath. I hurled myself forward, crashed to the floor, my racquet outstretched—and missed by a mile. Then he did it again, that same feather touch, and I went for it hard, barely picking the ball up with the frame. When he’d proved his point five times to meet me on level ground, he gave me one nice clean drive. I got to it, hit it back. We needed a no-nonsense rally to get into a genuine game. Right then, I was reminded that this was not a blood-and-sweat fist fight outside in the street; this was squash, and I was a member of a team. Back and forth we volleyed, gently at first. It didn’t last long. He had it all: precision and speed. After minutes of criss-crossing the court, I was blinking rivulets of perspiration from my eyes.

  In barely a ten-second rally, that kid had uncovered my glaring Achilles heel and exposed it for all to see: I could murder with a hit, but I couldn’t chase one to save my life, so he sent me on a futile tear from corner to corner. I made up for setbacks the way I al
ways had—with full-throttled tenacity. The ball came away from the wall and kept dying before me. We were just kids learning the game, but the competition between us had a gripping tribal quality. We shouted out at each other—sometimes laughing, sometimes just letting the other one have it. Taunts meant nothing between boys—I knew that already. Once or twice, I hit back so hard he jumped away from me as though I’d just fired a bullet from a pistol. In between those short-lived rallies, I fell many times, always getting up from my knees with a tortured smile.

  The boys assembled behind the glass had never seen anything like me in a squash court. The power in my legs catapulted me far too fast and hard. I couldn’t stop in time to grab and command the ball with my racquet, but I ripped into that game tooth and claw. My well-heeled opponent knew how to cherry-pick shots and had all the angles in his mind. All I had was raw power and a cut-throat instinct. Still, I held my own for a long while, even when I was breathing so hard it felt like there was a knife in my chest. The coach stopped us, shaking his head; he looked me up and down, my battered knees and swollen hands. He picked up our match ball, curled his fingers around it, whistling through his teeth, and dropped it to the floor like a burning nugget of coal. I was taking off my shoes and pulling off the bloodstained socks. A few boys pounded the wall. By now they all wanted to play me. The boy next to me was catching his breath, taking a drink, giving me the once-over I recognized from my weight-lifting days. He’d won, but he’d also lost. He handed me a towel. Through the open court door, I could hear the sideliners jabbering away. They were talking about their own matches and they were talking about me. What kind of kid, one of them said, played to the death?

  “Look at that big Pashtun—he looks like someone shot him in the kneecaps.”

  I took it for granted that I was safe in that group. I’d crossed through a rite of passage the way I had from the start of everything, proved my rank among them with a show of force. Regardless of my scuffed-up shoes, I would be a part of the group.