A Different Kind of Daughter

Starred review from February 29, 2016
In this powerful memoir, professional squash player Toorpakai paints her personal history from her early years living as a boy in South Waziristan, a Federally Administered Tribal Area of northwest Pakistan, to her ultimate escape and triumph: under threats from the Taliban, she defies the odds stacked against women of her culture to become an international professional athlete. The harrowing details of her story include human rights abuses and shameful treatment of women, and Toorpakai’s personal account gets to the truth of the matter in a uniquely powerful way. The reader is right with Toorpakai as she witnesses murder in a shop and the execution of a young woman by stoning, or when Toorpakai’s mullah beats her for possessing even the desire to play squash and calls her a “dirty girl” for challenging traditional notions of gender. Fortunately for Toorpakai, she was born to a progressive family, Her father held liberal ideas and allowed her to live as a boy: “Not long before my fifth birthday, I became keenly aware that I wasn’t a typical tribal daughter—I wasn’t a typical girl at all.” At one point in the narrative, “I told my father in a long impassioned tirade that I wanted to wear clothes like my brother’s.... Not long afterward, my generous Baba came home from the bazaar with a pair of yellow shorts and a matching T-shirt for me to wear around the house.” Toorpakai’s story stands as a reminder of all the women currently living under oppressive regimes.