Saturday, April 30, 2016

Disguised as a Boy to Play Sports in Pakistan

No school, no sports, no school, no going outside for girls in Pakistan in the conservative area of Waziristan, .

Maria Toorpakai burns her dresses at age four, and dresses as a boy. She becomes the best squash player in Pakistan, but when the officials discover she is a girl, the Taliban starts threatening her, and she goes inside.

She sends out hundreds of emails across the world hoping someone would sponsor her to leave Pakistan, and heard from one person, Jonathan Power, a world squash champion living in Canada.  He wants to help her become a world champion, and brought her to Canada.

Her story is coming out in a book next week, "A Different Kind of Daughter: The Girl Who Hid From the Taliban in Plain Sight."

 http://abcnews.go.com/International/squash-pro-disguised-boy-play-sports-taliban-controlled/story?id=38772528