Pakistani squash player Maria Toorpakai Wazir's war against the Taliban

The South Waziristan region of Pakistan is remote and rugged, with hot summers and freezing winters. Men dress in traditional smocks and turbans, and women are considered second-class citizens. Sharing its border with Afghanistan, it is one of the most war-torn places on Earth.

And for as long as 25-year-old Maria Toorpakai Wazir can remember, it has been a stronghold of the Taliban.

"I didn't know that girls were any less than boys": Maria Toorpakai Wazir.Credit: Carrie Lee, courtesy of Pan MacMillan.

How Maria fled Pakistan, after rising to become the country's best female squash player, is the subject of her memoir, A Different Kind of Daughter. The book tells the extraordinary story of how Maria dressed and lived like a boy, to hide from the Taliban.

In it she describes the Taliban as a constant presence, "stretched [over the region] in a linked chain of common hatreds and shared ideals".

Maria with coach Jonathon Power at the 2014 Asian Squash Championship in Pakistan.

Despite the danger that still exists for her and her family, she describes, over a crackly phone line from her adopted home in Canada, the Taliban leaders as "not even human, not Muslims, nothing to do with Islam or any religion".

"This book is a story about a girl [from] the most dangerous part of Pakistan," she continues. "[A place where] schools struggle to function, and there are no universities or hospitals. No one has heard of the people there, they're still living in the stone ages.

"But this book shows that change is coming. This book is about a family who wants to reach out to the world and say, 'We oppose terrorism'.  "

Even aged four, Maria was feisty. She wanted to play outside with her brothers, rather than stay inside, where it was safe, with her sister. One day, while her parents were out, she burnt all her girls' clothes and cut off her hair.

Maria Toorpakai Wazir when she was living as a boy, with her mother, Aami, and her younger brother.

"So now no one could recognise me as a girl and I could play with boys," she says. "I could play marbles, fly kites, run around. I could go hunting with the boys. We used to go out with slingshots and guns, all the kids. It was fun."

Dressing as a boy gave Maria a new identity. Her father, Shamsul Qayyum Wazir, an ethnic Pashtun ostracised by his family because he believed in women's rights, supported her.

His own sister, also named Maria, had doused herself in kerosene as a young girl and set herself alight, preferring death to the inequality dictated by tribal custom.

Maria's father wanted more for his daughters, so he dubbed his defiant four-year-old Genghis Khan – in honour of the Mongolian warrior – and set her free to roam outside. With her muscular build and short hair, no one thought to question her gender.

I don't believe the burqa or veil can protect women. Their best protection is their character.

Maria rarely went to school, finding it impossible to sit still, and instead ran errands and cared for her younger twin brothers. In her free time, she joined a street gang and earned a reputation as a fearsome brawler.

At age 10 her family moved to the city of Peshawar, where, aged 12, Maria's father enrolled her in a weightlifting program. Competing secretly as a boy, she won a silver medal after only eight weeks training in the sport.

Weightlifting gave Maria a sense of purpose. But it was a lonely sport and she knew she could only pass as a boy for a short time. Meanwhile, she had begun to fall in love with squash.

"Where I did weightlifting, there were squash courts and I watched kids play during my break," she says. "I loved their determination, seeing them jump and dive to get to the ball after one bounce."

There was only one problem. To enrol at the squash academy, she had to produce her birth certificate. So for the first time since she was four, the stocky Pakistani girl with the spiky crew cut and her brother's cast-off clothes introduced herself as Maria.

Months later, at her first competition, officials and spectators did not believe her. "It was my first tournament and lots of people were arguing, saying, 'That's not a girl,' " she says. "So they stopped the whole tournament and said, 'Let's check her birth certificate and find out if she's a girl.' "

Maria was finally allowed to play and was so strong she kept every other girl off the scoreboard.

"I beat them 9-0, 9-0, 9-0," she says. "And when they came off court they were crying, saying, 'They made us play with the guys, it's not fair.' I won that tournament and it was super exciting."

It came as a shock to Maria that she could only compete against girls. Her goal, even then, was to become the world's best squash player. She did not know her gender would limit her.

"I didn't know that girls were any less than boys or inferior to boys," she says. "I thought we were equally strong and capable of anything. So I came ready to play the boys and become the world champion of boys."

Maria's squash game went from strength to strength. At 16, she turned professional, winning medals and making money for her family, and was honoured in a ceremony officiated by then Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf.

She was also pushing boundaries for her gender, being the first Pakistani woman to play squash in shorts and a T-shirt. But her success drew the attention of the Taliban.

One day, her father found a note pinned to his car. It threatened "dire consequences" if he did not stop his daughter. The note said Maria's sporting success was "un-Islamic" and "against tribal traditions".

At first, her father shrugged off the threats. But when the Taliban threatened to bomb the squash centre, Maria knew her days of training in public were over.

The Pakistani government gave her 24-hour security and the national champion retreated to her bedroom, practising alone, hitting the ball against its concrete walls. She continued to compete, even attending tournaments outside Pakistan, but her travel plans were always organised at the last-minute for fear of alerting Taliban spies.

The white-washed walls of her bedroom were darkened with countless ball marks. During her four years of virtual house arrest, Maria was plagued with depression and self-doubt.

"My dad told me I had to decide to either stop playing squash or go outside the country permanently to play," she says. "At that time I still played squash in my room. I still had it in my head I could become world champion. So I kept playing and playing."

From her bedroom, she began sending hundreds of emails to squash centres around the world, begging them to help her with sponsorship so she could leave Pakistan for good, play professionally overseas and escape the death threats against her family.

Then in 2011, after a life-threatening brush with dengue fever during a tournament in Malaysia, she managed to get a visa to play in the United States.

It proved to be her ultimate ticket out of Pakistan. Her family scraped together a fare for her to Delaware, on the US east coast, and $200, but her illness had left her weak and she crashed out of that tournament early on.

With no money, Maria was taken in by a fellow Pashtun, who was driving a taxi and raising five children in North Carolina. While she was there, an email arrived that changed her life.

Jonathon Power, the Canadian former squash world No. 1 who had retired and opened a squash centre for at-risk youth in Toronto, wanted to work with her. He wanted her to mentor his young players.

"I got an email from him but I didn't know if it was really him," she says, still not quite believing her good luck.

Power had spent time in Pakistan during his playing days and knew better than many in the West how significant Maria's achievements were.

"I read her email and felt she was someone who overcame great odds to pursue her goals and that she would be a great mentor," he says.

Power paid for her flight to Toronto and picked her up from the airport. He took her straight to the squash court but when she began to play, it was clear she was out of practice.

Yet he saw something special in her powerful hit and her soft hands with the ball. He has since become both coach and surrogate father. For Maria, whose first racquet as a 12-year-old in Peshawar was a Jonathon Power signature edition, training with one of the game's giants was a dream come true.

"Dealing with the threats to her family while she is so far away has been very difficult, and she and her squash have suffered because of it," Power says. "But she is tremendously determined."

The path to world No. 1 is long. Maria has been plagued by injury and continues to struggle with fitness.

Ironically, the physical traits that enabled her to pass as a boy during childhood work against her squash game. "She has always struggled with her body type and lack of speed," Power says. "This has gotten better but will always need constant attention."

But squash is her politics. She hopes her game and her story will bring change for the women of her country.

Her sister, Ayesha Gulalai, is also agitating for change, as a politician who was recently elected as a member of the Pakistan National Assembly for a seat reserved for women.

"Squash is my medium, I love it so much," Maria says. "But also I am using it to explain to the world that sport is not un-Islamic.

"I don't believe the burqa or veil can protect women. Their best protection is their character.

"Fathers and brothers should trust their mothers and sisters. That's when we will get a lot more confidence and strength. We want mutual respect." •

A Different Kind of Daughter by Maria Toorpakai Wazir is published by Pan Macmillan, $33.