Won bronze at junior worlds

Continued from FP13 It was devastating. Her father — a teacher who is dedicated to women’s rights — insisted again he would support his daughter, whatever decision she made about her career.

“That was a time when there were bomb blasts every day,” she said of the conflict in her area in 2006.

“I thought, ‘let’s not make trouble for my dad, he has been through a lot.’ It would be heartbreaking for me to cause trouble for my family.

“Also, if a bomb blast goes off in a squash court, there’s so much glass, many innocent kids can die, too.”

So she played sporadically for three years with the help of the Pakistani national squash federation, which provided snipers to secure her passage to and from the squash courts.

Home-schooled as a child, she wrote letters around the world in search of a way out.

At 19, she won bronze at the world junior women’s championship and later received a reply from Canadian squash champion Jonathan Power, who offered to train her at his facility in Toronto.

She’s been a Canadian resident ever since.

“I truly respect Canadians — they’re always on the humanitarian side,” said Wazir, who has dropped to 82nd in the world rankings after missing the last year due to injury.

“Justin Trudeau is a very respected person in Pakistan.

“They have portraits of him on truck art because he’s super kind and has a lot of humanity in him, and that’s what Canada is about.”

Still on the mend, Wazir played her way into the Calgary tourney as a qualifier but lost in the first round to the top-ranked player.

Her next stop is London, England, for the Human Rights Watch Festival, which will feature a documentary on her life: Girl Unbound — The war to be her.

Her sister is the youngest parliamentarian in Pakistan, and Wazir doesn’t rule out joining her at some point to help effect more change.

An obvious women’s rights advocate, she has set up a foundation back home encouraging families to educate girls and allow them to play sports, all of which is documented in her 2016 memoir, A Different Kind of Daughter: The Girl Who Hid from the Taliban in Plain Sight.

“I just want to help people — that’s all I care about,” said Wazir, whose face still bears tiny scars of a rugged childhood fighting with boys.

“If I can help through politics, I will do that.

“I think sports can bring all of us together, and so I want to build sports facilities and schools for under-privileged kids and a hospital for women and children in tribal area.

“I’m young and I think the youth can very much change the world.

“Young people understand this is not the way the world should work. They have more humanity, more understanding and more information.”

Few know that better than Wazir.