Hope, Determination, and The Courage to be ‘Unbound’ A young woman fights to be a champion athlete under Taliban rule

Written by Rebecca DeRosa

Athletes are no strangers to hard work and adversity—they endure long hours of training, grueling workouts and injuries, leaving little time for a social life. But few athletes have the added hardship of facing death threats from the Taliban.

Girl Unbound: The War To Be Her premiered at DOC NYC Saturday, and follows Maria Toorpakai Wazir as she fights for her dream to be a champion squash player for Pakistan.

Her family lives in a tribal area where women and girls are expected to stay covered and stay in their homes. They are strictly forbidden from participating in sports. Wazir knew at a young age that she wanted all the freedoms boys had, so she wore her brother’s clothes and cut her hair short. Her family supported her and Wazir’s father even entered her in squash competitions under the name “Genghis Khan.”

But by the time she was 16, she could no longer pretend to be a boy. She won a tournament under her own name and as a girl. She appeared in a newspaper holding a trophy that she had won, and that’s when the threats started. They were so bad that she locked herself in her room for three years. But still she did not give up. “I practiced in my room everyday,” Wazir said following the screening. “I skipped and did lunges. I hit the ball on the wall so much that the neighbors complained,” she said and laughed with the audience.

During this time, she wrote emails to anyone she could looking for help, reaching out to coaches and directors of sports facilities all over the world. Finally she received a reply from Jonathon Power from Toronto, a retired professional squash player and coach. He invited her to train with him and she has been living in both Canada and Pakistan ever since.

She’s now a top female squash player in Pakistan and competes internationally. Wazir hopes her accomplishments will help change the minds of people in her country who do not want to allow girls to go to school, play sports, or enter other areas of public life.

Girl Unbound shows how determination, confidence, hard work, plus the support of family can help someone realize their dreams. “There is always a way,” Wazir said on Saturday. “You have to look for it…I want to tell girls that fear is taught. You are born free and you have to live free,” Wazir said.

Rebecca DeRosa is a writer, musician, and yoga teacher living in Brooklyn. When she’s not writing reviews for Tom Tom Magazine, she is playing drums in the band Fisty.