Thanks Nathan Clarke for giving me a chance…
By Framboise Gommendy
Somewhere in the early hours, beneath Cairo’s sodium haze and after the last shuttle bus had long since left, Malak Khafagy was standing at baggage claim.
Her luggage, which held her match kit, her rackets, her shoes, her identity as a squash player, wasn’t there.
She had landed bleary-eyed from Pakistan at 1 am, hoping to compete in one of the biggest tournaments of her life, and the contents of her squash bag — now adrift in the ether of airline logistics — held her chances of even stepping on court.
This is squash at the edges: not the spotlight, not the glass box show court, but the corners of the tour, where the top seeds travel with physios and the wildcards borrow kit from their sisters. Where being good — even really good — is no guarantee that anyone will watch, or care, or even get your name right.
But Khafagy played. Of course she played.
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