A Different Kind of Daughter

by Maria Toorpakai

Ten months later, in January 2012, I was in Philadelphia for the Liberty Bell Open. After nearly a year of grueling training under Jonathon, it was my maiden tournament. I’d found my old body again, limber and strong, able to tiptoe around the courts, bewitching the ball. When Jonathon told me I was ready—I believed him.

  From the start of the tournament, I was a curiosity and an underdog. I’d been there before, nearly everywhere I’d lived—in the valleys running wild as Genghis, in the alleys taking down enemies, in the weight room stacking up the plates with Taimur, and on the courts those first few weeks in Peshawar when I was Maria again. Even with Jonathon at my side, stopping to sign autographs, shake hands, and pose for pictures, they all thought I was going to lose—and maybe that’s why I didn’t.

  In the qualifying rounds, I stampeded through four seeded players—from France, Japan, Canada, and the United States. I didn’t stop there. There wasn’t any choice: I had to make my mark, or it would all have been for nothing. Game after game, I tore right through my opponents, not giving them even a square inch of wiggle room. I went in and yanked out every hit, took it into my racquet, hurling the ball back in a wild zigzag, with Jonathon shouting to me over the frenzied crossfire, the squeal of my shoes, and the roar of the blood rushing through my veins. Later, the press would refer to it as a giant-killing spree—I took the title, winning every single game.

  My trophy, which I accepted with so much joy I could hardly speak, had the Liberty Bell engraved on it. Over and over again, his hand on my shoulder, Jonathon had to tell me to stop holding my breath. Back in my hotel room, I Skyped with my family back in Peshawar on the computer Jonathon had given me the week I arrived. I can still see how my father squinted forward when I held the trophy up to the screen, his face momentarily filling the frame and obscuring everyone behind him.

  “Maria, just a twenty-minute walk across downtown Philadelphia from the Liberty Bell is the Rocky statue. Imagine that. I had Ayesha google it.”

  Then he held up an opened book that I recognized from the stacks he kept on the floor in our living room. The old American history tome had followed us from house to house and town to town, through the hellfire of Darra, whose dust still hid in its spine. An image hovered over the screen, and I was looking at a sepia-toned photograph of the cracked Liberty Bell, the tips of my father’s fingers holding back the page. Then his voice boomed behind it. My father didn’t need to read the words, he’d long had each one memorized—and I was sitting there living them.

  “Listen to this, all of you. Don’t make a sound: ‘Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.’”

  The trophy was still in my hands. I couldn’t let go of it. “I don’t know how I got to this land, Baba, but those words came true.”

  My father let the book fall, and a tiny plume of dust went up against the screen. Through it I could see his big smile and, through the darkness of another blackout, the joined forms of my family silhouetted behind him. Their battery was running low. I reached out then and caressed the screen.

  When he spoke, my father had no idea I was touching his face, or that I might not see him in the flesh again for years. I might not see him at all if the Taliban got hold of him—or any of them.

  “It was simple combustion, Maria. You found that bottle of kerosene and struck a match.”

  Epilogue: One Thousand Marias

  When my hard-won liberty was still new, I kept track of it in simple everyday acts—each one a marvel: taking the subway, buying T-shirts, trying on a pair of designer jeans, learning to play guitar, riding a bike through snow. For the first time, I had roommates of all races and creeds that I came to know as friends. We shared meals, a bathroom, utility bills, practical jokes, and a pet cat. We shared dreams, both small and lofty—I wanted to get a driver’s license, go to high school, take acting classes, star one day in a Hollywood movie. On weekends, I often went to the movies, perused bookstores, ate fast food. In October, I carved my first pumpkin, dressed up as a witch for Halloween. On one of many explorations of Toronto, I discovered an art supply store, bought an easel, brushes, blocks of canvas, and started to paint. Whenever I wanted, I listened to music—loud—watched television, danced, thumbed through a magazine, rolled out my mother’s silk mat and prayed. In those early days, I prayed a lot: Alhamdulillah, to thank my God for writing the word freedom into my fate. When I was finished, I thought of my family and of every person who had helped me along the way and I just bowed to the ground saying one thing—merabani, thank you—again and again and to them all. Every morning, I took the public bus, stood among the bleary-eyed commuters, all of us one and the same. Most days, I met Jonathon Power at the National Squash Academy, where he always greeted me with a high five before we went together into a court.

  When I first came to Jonathon, I was but half a person, a dying champion whose destiny was slipping away in tandem with her mind. He worked me hard and, in less than half a year, made me whole again. When I needed something, he knew it and quietly gave—a cell phone, a computer to reach home, words of encouragement, a hand on my back. Most of all, the space and time to heal, then the chance to win again against all conceivable odds. He provided doctors and therapists, a clean place to live, and a job—a second life. Over time, as we sat in the courts between drills, he learned about my first life in Pakistan, never prodding. Uncertain, I doled details out to him in small morsels. We talked about our mutual drive to win, what it really meant, and found our common ground. At first it had been about the accolades and later, when there had been more than enough of those, it grew into something greater than any accumulation of spellbinding wins, or even ourselves. At some point, we looked at each other across that polished court floor and realized the magnitude of what had happened between us. All the way back in Peshawar, I’d jumped off that cliff with nothing more than my racquet in hand, and he’d reached out and caught me. There was no trophy in the world that could compare to the miracle of that simple act—replying to one desperate email and binding us together, win or lose, in friendship for life.

  *

  Nearly two years after I landed in North America, The Economic Club of Canada secured a visa for my sister to fly to Toronto for a two-week visit. Months before her trip, on May 11, 2013, Ayesha had been elected to the National Assembly, representing the Pakistan Movement for Justice, and became the first female parliamentarian ever elected from the tribal regions. Right away, she was the target of extremists. It was only when I walked the city streets with Ayesha that I saw my freedom again, in all its glory, through the timidity of her white veil and wide eyes. Often, we just went out for no reason at all, so she could feel what for me had become so casual—the power to just go where I wanted, without a male companion, dressed however I pleased, five earrings in one ear—not a single sniper in sight. It took her days to break the habit of always looking over her shoulder, checking passers-by for the extra padding of a suicide vest. Before leaving for the airport, she told me that the experience of full autonomy, more than any other, despite all she’d accomplished at school with her degrees and political career, had changed her. Upon her return to Pakistan, the glow from our visit still all over her, she called me on Skype.

  “Our time together gave me the one thing I needed to do my job well, Maria, more than any other. Even now, when I look at you, I see it. You have actually become that thing.”

  “What was it?”

  “Hila—hope—that’s you.”

  *

  After Ayesha took the reins of office, my father gave up teaching to further her mandate of building a modern state based on the rights and welfare of each and every individual. In the morning he drives himself into FATA to find out what the region most desperately needs—everything from medical doctors to sewing machines or seeds—and brings back lists for his daughter to fulfill. Not long after, Taimur started doing his part and joined a non-governmental organization (NGO) providing charitable services across the country. The twins are stu
dying at university. Babrak continues to play squash and has started competing in international tournaments, and Sangeen plays varsity tennis. My mother, the bravest of us all, wakes up each dawn with more threats against her now than any of us ever had. She continues to run schools, though most have been bombed to rubble, and her burqa-cloaked trips into the tribal belt are now few and far between. With two tribal daughters out in the public domain, defying the Taliban—one in government on their doorstep, the other playing squash and making speeches in the infidel West—she is considered a malignancy. On any given day, she can be found at the kitchen table, grading papers or going over maps, scouting new locations for schools. Even colleagues at the education board have begged her to seek a transfer into a safer district, fearing that a gunman will walk up to her any day and open fire. She says she isn’t afraid. Girls out there still need schools. They need sports fields. They need her. “This is my life’s work, Maria. I am not afraid. It is written.”

  *

  Not long after I arrived in Toronto, still somewhat disheveled, Jonathon settled into my seat and took a turn on Skype with my father. They spoke for a long while, laughing together in no time as though they were long-lost friends meeting again in the ether—6,700 miles of Earth between them. Before saying goodbye and closing his screen, my father looked out through the darkness, a single light shining over his tired face, and told Jonathon: “My precious daughter is now your daughter. Our job here is done.” I thought my new coach, mercurial legend that he was, would be taken aback by the statement. It was a heightened responsibility he might not want. After all, he and I were just squash players—a master and a protégé.

  Unflinching, Jonathon only smiled. I could see him in the periphery, his skin tinged blue before the screen, and he lowered his head, nodding.

  “Merabani—thank you.”

  Right then, more than at any other time, I knew I was all right. And I was overcome with gratitude.

  After that, becoming world champion meant more than winning at a game—that ambition transmuted into a new way of life and purpose. Soon, I started making speeches, getting my feet wet in small local venues. At first, standing up onstage under the hot glare of spotlights was terrifying, and I wasn’t sure that what I had to say would matter to a soul. Then, the more I met with people from around North America, and saw my story unfold through their eyes, I began to realize that my journey, and all its minute details, wasn’t singular at all. I was only one girl with a racquet—and a lot of luck.

  The night I won the Liberty Bell tournament, the last thing my father said to me before we signed out of Skype has become the mantra through which I map every day and my entire future.

  “Behind you, waiting alone in the dark, are one thousand Marias.”

  My dreams are for them.

  Acknowledgments

  Maria Toorpakai:

  I am grateful first and foremost to my whole family, who have always accepted me for who I am. My parents risked everything so that their children could receive a genuine education and reach their dreams. I am privileged to have a father who not only respected my individuality as a girl, but also gave me the courage to express myself and relentlessly pursue my own freedom; and a mother, who in giving hope to thousands of oppressed girls across the tribal regions, is my great inspiration. My wise and beautiful sister, Ayesha, is not far behind her. Above all, I am nothing without my parents.

  So many people have made my long journey to freedom possible. I am fortunate to have the steadfast support of my coach, mentor and friend, double world champion, Jonathon Power, who makes every single day a living miracle.

  I would also like to thank everyone at the National Squash Academy (NSA) in Toronto, Canada, for their daily encouragement. You have all become my second family. In particular, Karen Knowles, Jamie Nicholls, Gary Slaight and the Gary Waite family. You all have my heartfelt gratitude. Thanks also to my fitness trainers Bob Bowers and Hajnal Laszlo. And a great thanks to S. Kristin Kim, Rhiannon Trail, Julie Mitchell, and to Cathy Eu who has worked selflessly supporting my dream to empower other young women to follow their dreams.

  The coaches and individuals who have enriched my life and game deserve particular mention: Air Vice Marshal Inamullah Khan (Pakistan), and Wing Commander Pervaiz Syed Mir (Pakistan). Rahim Gul (National coach for the women’s team of Pakistan, 2003), who my father always refers to as “good”, will never be forgotten for his many acts of kindness. The generous and in many ways life-saving Zia-ur-Rehman family (North Carolina), as well as Tanveer Khan and Meher Khan (Philadelphia), Sami Kureishy and Romeena Kureishy (Philadelphia).

  I am also appreciative of every squash player from around the world whom I have ever competed against. Win or lose, our shared passion for sport unites us all. If more people picked up a racquet as we do, fewer would reach for a gun. And a thank you to the many who tried relentlessly to stop me from playing and living as I am, for making me stronger and giving me a louder voice with which to reach all the girls I left behind.

  Many thanks also go to my people in FATA, across Pakistan and the entire globe for their unwavering support and encouragement.

  The staff and doctors at the hospital in Kuala Lumpur whose names I never learned were extraordinary. You brought me back from the brink of death and never charged my family a single rupee. Also in Malaysia, I am grateful for the kindness and generosity of Umehani and Dr. Saadat Ullah Khan.

  I’d like to give Cassandra Sanford-Rosenthal a heartfelt thanks for helping me share my journey with others and managing the full spectrum of my career outside of squash. I am also fortunate to have Meg Thompson as a literary agent, along with her colleagues, Elizabeth Levin and Sandy Hodgman (foreign rights), at the Thompson Literary Agency. Because of their attention and commitment to this project and others, I have been able to concentrate fully on my sport. Also to a team of champion editors who believed in this story: Libby Burton at (TWELVE/Hachette), who was there right at the start. Thanks as well to Carole Tonkinson (Bluebird/Pan Macmillan, U.K.) for her great insight. And to Nick Garrison, Associate Publisher at Penguin Canada, who was wonderfully enthusiastic.

  Also on the book, a very special thank you to Katharine, for making my dreams her own and somehow turning them into these beautiful pages. You brought such patience, tireless skill and positive energy to your work. It simply amazed us. Above all, you understood.

  More than anything, I would like to thank the peace-loving people of Canada, for welcoming me into their beautiful nation and making it a safe home away from home.

  Katharine Holstein:

  First, I’m grateful to Alexander Holstein, fellow scribe and an unfathomable genius, for calling Jonathon Power and saying: you need to talk to Kate right now about writing the book—and then for encouraging me all those months when the toil took over. It worked! And I thank Jonathon for saying: OK.

  The team at Twelve/Hachette have been amazing, especially my exceptional editor, Libby Burton, who led me to huge rooms in my own brain that I didn’t even know were there. And to Rick Ball whose copyediting skills are simply spellbinding. And across the ocean, thank you to editor, Carole Tonkinson, at Bluebird/Pan Macmillan for adding her own extraordinary brand of magic. I must also acknowledge Nick Garrison, associate publisher at Penguin, Canada, who was among the very first to get behind the book.

  Thank you, to my agent, Marcy Posner, at Folio Literary Management. You take care of the good, bad and ugly with amazing charisma so that I can just hunker down and write. I must acknowledge the assistance of Scott Hoffman, also at Folio.

  I am profoundly grateful for the generous love and support of my mother and father, who contributed to my work in innumerable ways, and made so much possible. And thank you to my fine big brother, John, who has always been my rock.

  Many thanks to the families and people who enrich my life and career; Trevor and Hilary, Cristiano and Jane, Eddie and Maggie, Jasmin and Julian, Lesley and Ian; also to the Fyalls, Hayeks, Greens, and Boyles; Alex Van
Wey, Mike Williams, Eli Campbell, Dr. P. Thibault, Dr. A.E. Brown, and “Nana”.

  I could never have finished this project without the boundless generosity of Matthew, Avery, and Eden. A particular thank you to Kalen Kennedy at whose IKEA desk these pages came to life. You always made me welcome.

  My heartfelt gratitude to the people of Pakistan, a country that I have come to love. So many of you helped me to find my way to the end. My gratitude goes especially to Maria’s father, Shams, and her sister, Ayesha, for the time we spent together. In an instant, your warmth bridged the world between us.

  Above all others, to my treasure—my children. Thank you for enduring my many long absences with such love and patience. Your smiles alone make me the richest woman on earth.

  And finally, merabani, lovely Maria, for giving me the thread from which to weave the tapestry of your life. Our time together was a gift.

  About the Authors

  Maria Toorpakai is a professional squash player, currently ranked as Pakistan’s top female player and in the top fifty in the world. As a child growing up in a highly conservative tribal area of Pakistan, where girls’ involvement in sport was forbidden by the local Islamic culture, Toorpakai trained and competed as a boy. Toorpakai currently resides and trains in Toronto, Canada, under former two-time world champion squash player Jonathon Power. Toorpakai is the sister of Ayesha Gulalai, who is a member of the National Assembly representing Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf on a reserved seat for women.

  Katharine Holstein has lived throughout Europe and North America. Working with actors, personalities and producers, she develops and creates original material for both print and screen. Her writing has sold around the world.

  A Letter about MariaToorpakai.org

  Dear reader,

  The book that you hold in your hands is more than the story of my struggle to live life and play my sport in peace. Through it, I am raising my voice on behalf of the millions of “Marias” I left behind, who remain the hostages of regimes and ideologies that have stripped them of their most basic human rights. My own fight for freedom has made me feel the distress of so many— men, women, and children alike, all ravaged by war and unimaginable cruelty. Lighting their dark path to peace has become my purpose. When I fled the Taliban with no more than a squash racquet and my every worldly possession stuffed into a small duffel bag, I made a promise to one day ignite hope in the hearts of the forgotten. Now I pledge to provide the tools that foster freedom and build a lasting peace.