Shams Qayyum Wazir

Father Shams Qayyum Wazir breathed the azan into one ear of a new born Maria Gulgatai Toorpakai; into the second year, 'Your given name is Maria, for purity, because the cruelty of our world has yet to alter you. Inshallah, it will never succeed. Second, I give you Gulgatai, as your pink face even now is pinched tight and betrays only the innocent promise of a rose bud. We have yet to know the great beauty that lies hidden within you. Lastly, you'll be known as Toorpakai, a girl with black hair that is the envy of the darkest night. Maria, you have three names,  but one life. Live well and with meaning. Never be afraid, because you are my daughter. Above all else, in your blood, you are Wazir.' Born in spare and bare Waziristan in Pakistan, the little girl bumps into a mullah with the plea, 'I would like to play'; the Mullah turns violent and blusters 'Dirty Girl'. In A Different Kind of Daughter; The Girl Who Hid From the Taliban in Plain Sight, Toorpakai, the androgynous girl, gets into weight-lifting for a year; then into squash; chased by itinerant Taliban (Brother); ever in fridging fright; plodding along protected by a thinking father; becomes Pakistan champion, makes it to Canada to be trained by Jonathon Power, twice world champion. She and her sister make it from a society best told by Maria: 'Every memory I have of our first house, with its mud-coloured pucca bricks, begins the same way: a slow film opening in the silent morning, warm sunshine thick over everything. In my home there seemed to be magic in the way the day was born, though it was always the same routine, like a family anthem of activity playing out in every home and in every village. All Pashtun mothers woke very early, before the first crow of the rooster......In everything a Wazir mother did, she followed in the long, rutted path of the mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers who came before her. She was permitted no other way.....Knowledge itself was a stranger, not to be trusted - or even invited in.' I grew up with the accepted practice that a Pashtun woman remained in the home and only ventured out enveloped in head-to-toe garments called abayas or burqas, or big shawls called chadors and with a male - even just a young boy - watching at her side.' Me mother (plus self) did fear Father; sought okay for every move; uncomfortable; a well made, baked dadgiri with paternal grandmother harmed by grandfather in Ashramam village. Between scholarly tomes on Taliban and Pakistan society and A Different Kind of Daughter, prefer a a Daughter's say with scents of a Waziristan village wafting .... When Maria is sick in a hospital bed in East Asia, her mother slaughters a black goat; Maria gets well. For her mother, Written is Written. Am not sure if Maria agrees. Tossed me to Kabir. In Songs of Kabir (translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra) Kabir says: 'Cut the throat of desire,/Not a poor goat's, if you must.' Thanks Ravi Krishnan for lending the book.